As the women's Final Four college basketball games were approaching this weekend, Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw stirred up a hornet's nest by promising she will never hire a male assistant and griping about sexism in the hiring of college basketball coaching. She also complained that the U.S. has not passed the Equal Rights Amendment. An Oregon sports columnist strongly objected to McGraw's discriminatory remarks, prompting support for McGraw by panelists on ESPN's Around The Horn talk show.
McGraw's No. 3-ranked Notre Dame team played No. 2 Connecticut Friday night in a semi-final game at the women's Final Four. “Did you know that the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in 1967 and still hasn’t passed?" she said in a pre-game press conference. "We need 38 states to agree that discrimination on the basis of sex is unconstitutional ... Men run the world. Men have the power. Men make the decisions. It’s always the men that is the stronger one. And when these girls are coming up, who are they looking up to tell them that that’s not the way it has to be? And where better to do that than in sports? ... “So yes, when you look at men’s basketball and 99 percent of the jobs go to men, why shouldn’t 100 or 99 percent of the jobs in women’s basketball go to women?"
As coach of the defending national champions, McGraw's answer for discrimination based on sex is ... discrimination based on sex. She has an all-female coaching staff and told Think Progress she'll never hire another male assistant. So much for equal opportunity in hiring practices at Notre Dame.
Portland Oregonian sports columnist John Canzano soundly criticized McGraw for her own sexism, in a post titled, "Final Four Gets a Dose of Gender Gasoline." Canzano writes:
"It’s sexist. It’s discriminatory. And it’s a double standard. But none of those is the primary reason I believe McGraw’s stance — a blanket statement — is fraught with danger.
"Imagine if an employer said, 'I’m not going to hire anybody who is ...' followed by the words, 'pregnant' or 'disabled' or 'Christian.' It would not only go over like a lead balloon, it could be illegal under federal law.
"Coach, hire the best, most qualified person. You know what your team needs. Do that — and not only won’t anyone have a problem with it — but also, it’s what’s right."
Canzano says McGraw should have addressed race, not gender, because only nine of the 64 coaches in this year’s women’s NCAA Tournament field are African American, adding "just hire the best person for the job. It’s a position easy to defend."
Around The Horn host Tony Reali introduced the McGraw controversy by referencing Canzano's column. Panelist Michael Smith (photographed above), who formerly co-hosted SportsCenter 6 with the loose cannon Jemele Hill, completely overlooked the responsibility of universities to comply with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission law and disagreed with the Oregonian writer, based on good old progressive-style feelings. Smith said McGraw has no choice but to buck the law:
"I have an issue with the column. Well, if somebody said I'm not hiring anybody who is pregnant or anybody who is disabled, well, that's such a false equivalent. It's not like people who are disabled are in positions of power. There needs to be some kind of balance. If you identify this as a double standard, it's a double standard for the sake of offsetting an injustice that has gone on for far too long. ... She has to do it this way. If she doesn't hire women and women don't hire women, who will, men aren't doing it enough."
Panelist Sarah Spain agreed with tilting the playing field in spite of the law. "Sometimes you have to go to extremes to remedy an incredibly long-standing injustice that sometimes you have do it."
Around The Horn panelist Frank Isola pointed out the problems with McGraw's rant. "If a man's coach said I'm going to hire male coaches, if the lacrosse coach at Notre Dame said that, the men's soccer coach, you have a big issue. She is covering a lot of topics here. When she says, the problem is people hire people that look like them, that's exactly what she is doing. How is that a solution? ... "
Panelist Ramona Sherburne also realized McGraw's legal gaffe and said, "She should have just said. 'I enjoy having a female staff' and I think there is something to be said for that. There is nothing that they have said when you talk about discriminating against men."
Demonstrating a progressive mindset that reverse discrimination is justifiable, Reali made an analogy to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg having said she would be happy if all nine members of the High Court were women. "It's a conversation about destroying isms in the world and breaking through ceilings," he remarked, unaware of his own contradiction.
