Geno Auriemma Caused An Internet Explosion. Let’s Deal With The Light, Not The Heat

When a fuel-containing object explodes, a burst of light and a wave of heat emerge from it.

Such was the case on an otherwise-dull Wednesday afternoon. It was an afternoon bereft of a major sporting event in this down period before the Final Four, The Masters, the start of the Major League Baseball season, and the not-too-far-away NBA and NHL playoffs.

On a busy newsday, a strong quote might get a brief mention in the news cycle before being swamped by bigger developments. Wednesday, though, was the perfect time to hit the headlines by saying something provocative. Connecticut women’s basketball coach Geno Auriemma, one of the two most successful coaches in the history of his sport, delivered a series of statements on men’s college basketball, all of which are contained here.

Auriemma’s comments are extensive – hence the need to unpack them – but everyone knows that the most incendiary statement in a larger series of remarks is what will get the most play. Here was Auriemma’s hand grenade, which went BOOM! across the internet and continued to create a stir on Wednesday in the realm of social media:

“I think the game is a joke. It really is. I don’t coach it. I don’t play it, so I don’t understand all the ins and outs of it. But as a spectator, forget that I’m a coach, as a spectator, watching it, it’s a joke. There’s only like ten teams, you know, out of 25, that actually play the kind of game of basketball that you’d like to watch. Every coach will tell you that there’s 90 million reasons for it.”

There are so many ways one can respond to such a statement, but the first thing to do is to read Auriemma’s other remarks, which put his most piercing words into (needed) context. The second thing to do is to try to generate light, not heat, from this discussion, taking some explosive sentences and cleaning up the area instead of leaving behind additional wreckage, primarily in the form of frayed nerves and the easy inclination to want to rip women’s college basketball.

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We don’t cover women’s college basketball here at The Student Section – but not out of a dislike of the game. Speaking personally and not for anyone else on staff here at TSS, I have freelanced in covering recent NCAA tournaments and Pac-12 tournaments. I also covered the Seattle Storm in their WNBA playoff runs from past years, including their journey to the 2010 WNBA championship. There’s a lot to like about the women’s game, and it really shouldn’t be surprising that an authority no less than John Wooden remarked in his later years that the aesthetic of the women’s game appealed to him. Because the temptation of wanting to play above the rim just doesn’t emerge very often in women’s basketball, women’s games don’t involve the attempts at circus plays you’ll see on a semi-regular (if not regular) basis in the men’s game.

Why does this outlet (like other outlets) not cover women’s college basketball? If I had a choice, I’d like to cover women’s basketball, but what stands in the way are market realities. Stories that would draw comparatively smaller pageview totals – stories someone has to pay for within the confines of a budget – would lose money for a company, unless said company has established such a robust brand in the larger theater of women’s athletics (particularly women’s basketball) that it would be able to deliver stronger readership numbers.

When discussing Auriemma’s remarks, then, a comparison between men’s and women’s basketball is simply unavoidable. The key is to make a comparison which honors both sports and their fan bases. In this way, one can toss aside Auriemma’s verbal hand grenade (“The game is a joke”) but respect the larger point he was trying to make in his clarifying remarks, which was that college basketball can do things to become a more palatable entertainment product.

Many conversations on Twitter were stirred up by Auriemma’s remarks. One commentator who hit back was Mike DeCourcy, a thoughtful longtime chronicler of men’s college basketball at The Sporting News:

In response to DeCourcy’s many valid points (remember, disagreeing with someone does not mean his or her points are invalid), Jay Bilas entered the conversation. He and DeCourcy engaged in a lengthy exchange that spilled into other conversations on Twitter. (Bilas has been extremely prolific on Twitter over the past 48 hours, making his feed a Twitter must-read, regardless of whether you agree with him or not.)

The point of general agreement reached by DeCourcy and Bilas is that FIBA rules on a number of fronts – something we wrote about here after SMU’s loss to UCLA on that controversial goaltending call – would definitely improve college basketball as an entertainment product. The lingering point of disagreement is on the length of the shot clock.

If we are to gain something from Auriemma’s remarks, it should simply be that there are several ways in which men’s college basketball can be readily and substantially improved. That being the case, the sport should hasten to get various rule and policy changes passed before the 2015-2016 season:

Let’s start with FIBA rules for goaltending and basket interference, plus FIBA rules pertaining to the prohibition of live-ball timeouts, which – with specific modifications to the college basketball rulebook – would be broadened to include even more liberalized goaltending rules (in favor of the defense) and stricter 10-second violation rules.

Let’s continue by cutting down the number of timeouts, and doing what women’s basketball does in terms of TV timeouts: If a coach calls a timeout with 12:05 left in a half, that should serve as the under-12 TV timeout.

Let’s do even more to improve the product of college basketball by removing the endless foul parade from the final minutes. Make “purposeful” fouls (distinct from the already-punitive “flagrant fouls”) in the last two minutes a situation in which teams get free throws plus possession, or the choice of a clock runoff if “free throws plus possession” seems like the very thing that would continue to drag out endgame minutes.

If Geno Auriemma’s remarks wind up getting these things done, they will have served a great and noble purpose.

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Before leaving this discussion to you as readers – because it’s a discussion very much worth continuing beyond a single day or week – let’s make one final point about women’s basketball in the marketplace.

It’s easy to view Auriemma’s remarks as self-serving, given that he wins easily and at an absurd rate against comparatively little resistance in the women’s game. However, before viewing women’s college basketball as an inferior product (a fair view, but a view that needs to be seen in context), let’s make several notes about this year’s women’s tournament:

1) If you loved Notre Dame’s ball movement and spacing in the men’s tournament, another team unexpectedly made an Elite Eight run and played better than many pundits were anticipating: The Dayton women’s team, as a 7 seed, roared to the Elite Eight, winning a road game at second-seeded Kentucky in a thrilling round-of-32 contest before taking down third-seeded Louisville in the Sweet 16. The women’s tournament had a team every bit as compelling and fun to watch as the Notre Dame men’s team.

2) The women’s Sweet 16 and Elite Eight provided some substantially compelling games: South Carolina’s last-10-seconds win over North Carolina and its thrilling Elite Eight win over Florida State in a magnificent punch-counterpunch drama; Tennessee’s 17-point comeback on the road against Gonzaga in the final 6:34; Notre Dame’s 77-68 win over Baylor in a typically contentious battle between proven national powers; and Maryland’s hard-fought win over Tennessee in the Elite Eight. Strictly in the realm of dramatic theater, the women deserve to be seen in the same conversation as the men this year.

3) For anyone who thinks that the top seeds in the women’s game always make the Final Four, realize this: 2015 marks just the third time all four No. 1 seeds in the women’s tournament have moved to the Final Four together. This is the 34th NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament, by the way.

In many ways, what represents entertainment in basketball is partly a matter of taste: It is certainly enjoyable to see a game played above the rim. It expands a sense of what is possible and puts various kinds of athletic displays into the equation. That’s compelling and impressive – it enlarges the sum of a spectator’s (and a paying customer’s) total experience. Women’s basketball hasn’t yet provided that.

However, while acknowledging that the men’s game consistently eclipses the women’s game on that level, there’s something women’s basketball suffers from which is – if not necessarily preventable – certainly correctable over time. This isn’t a likelihood, but it rates as something which is possible if networks make a fundamental adjustment.

One thing which separates women’s sports from men’s sports is that by being relatively new in a commercial marketplace, women’s sports have not established the deep cultural roots men’s sports have long enjoyed. Major League Baseball, college football, and the NFL were deeply embedded in and imprinted upon the minds of young boys for decades as they grew up in a pre-Title IX world. The great baseball announcers of our time; the Sabol family at NFL Films; and the immortal voices of college football in every corner of the country – not to mention national writers such as Grantland Rice and then TV figures such as Chris Schenkel, Curt Gowdy and Keith Jackson – made the sport’s biggest events can’t-miss spectacles.

Women’s sports simply have not been able to attain that level of cultural centrality – not so much because they’re played by women, but because they have lacked a larger-than-life broadcast experience to bring them to the cultural forefront. Being new — not necessarily being played by women — is what has held back this side of the basketball world.

What if Brent Musburger called women’s college basketball games during the season instead of men’s games? (Cue the flood of jokes and one-liners, I know, but can you see the larger point being made here?) What if Dan Shulman and Jay Bilas did this weekend’s Women’s Final Four? Would you be more interested in watching?

Perhaps not for most of you… but some of you probably would.

When we differentiate between women’s basketball and men’s basketball as an entertainment product, that’s a part of the equation.

How large? That’s for the individual to decide.

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There is so much to discuss in the wake of Geno Auriemma’s verbal grenade on Wednesday. If we can take the light from those comments instead of the heat, we can do a lot to improve men’s college basketball… and gain a greater appreciation for women’s college basketball.

That’s the endgame I want… instead of one plagued by timeouts, fouls, and a lot of rules that should be turned into a FIBA-based brand of basketball… for men and women alike.

If we get that kind of game at the end of this discussion, Geno Auriemma will have won something bigger than another national title at Connecticut: long-needed reforms of how collegiate basketball is played in the United States.