Geno Auriemma Discusses UConn Winning Streak And The Attention It’s Attracted
A game away from breaking John Wooden's Division I basketball record for consecutive wins, Connecticut Huskies women's coach Geno Auriemma found the time to get everybody stirred up, as he's been known to do. Aureimma charged the media with sexism, claiming women's basketball only gets major coverage in the context of men's basketball:
I just know there wouldn't be this many people in the room if we were chasing a woman's record. The reason everybody is having a heart attack the last four or five days is a bunch of women are threatening to break a men's record, and everybody is all up in arms about it.
All the women are happy as hell and they can't wait to come in here and ask questions. All the guys that loved women's basketball are all excited, and all the miserable bastards that follow men's basketball and don't want us to break the record are all here because they're pissed. That's just the way it is.
Because we're breaking a men's record, we've got a lot of people paying attention. If we were breaking a women's record, everybody would go, 'Aren't those girls nice, let's give them two paragraphs in USA Today, give them one line on the bottom of ESPN and then let's send them back where they belong, in the kitchen.
The media responded to media criticism the way it usually does: soberly and with cautious perspective. Our own UConn Blog appreciates Geno being Geno, cataloguing what it sees as his history of making the story about himself rather than his team, relieving his players of attention and pressure. Opposing fans, players, and coaches have been fair game for Auriemma in the past, and he’s turned on media members before, too, so taking on the entire institution shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.
If it works, it works, though you’d have to wonder how much patience UConn fans would have for this if the Huskies didn’t win.
Besides all that, most of his argument is correct, worth discussing but not worth arguing against. The media cares about this winning streak as much as it does because it is likely to end up being longer than a men’s record. If a men’s team broke a women’s record, that would not be a major story.
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