Basketball's Game Changers by Brendan Prunty

Author:Brendan Prunty
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781493026999
Publisher: Lyons Press

NO. 24

PAT SUMMITT

A Benchmark for Greatness—Regardless of Gender

In the summer of 1994, ESPN’s directors of college sports programming—Carol Stiff and Tom Odjakjian—were trying to plug a hole. The network had an opening on Martin Luther King Day in the afternoon and wanted to find a showcase game for women’s basketball. The home team was already set: Connecticut, with its senior All-American, Rebecca Lobo, which would open the season ranked fourth in the country.

Their opponents were much less certain.

ESPN tried to get North Carolina—the defending national champions—to take the game. Sylvia Hatchell and the Tar Heels declined. The next call was to Louisiana Tech, which would be ranked third in the preseason poll. Leon Barmore and the Lady Techsters turned them down. Two more calls to two other teams resulted in two more rejections. Finally, needing to make the game happen, Stiff called Pat Summitt at Tennessee. Summitt’s Lady Vols were the top-ranked team in the country to start the season, one year removed from a trip to the Sweet 16. Summitt was already a legend in the game, having made her reputation as a head coach who would play anyone, at any place, at any time. But Stiff’s request was a non-conference road game in late January against a loaded team.

It was a tall ask.

“For the good of the game,” Summitt told Stiff. “I’ll take the game.”

Stiff was stunned it was that easy. Then again, she shouldn’t have been—that was Pat Summitt. The game was paramount. And putting Tennessee and Connecticut, the two best teams in the country, on national television via ESPN on a holiday, with no other sports to compete with was the best thing for women’s basketball.

If there was anyone who knew where the women’s game had come from, it was Summitt. She was there at its infancy, when it wasn’t even a sanctioned sport by the NCAA, before Title IX made it possible for women to have opportunities in college athletics. She was a part of the first-ever US Olympic women’s basketball team, at the 1976 Summer Games. She was the head coach by the time the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles rolled around, and there she led the US team to its first gold medal in history—creating the foundation that would pave the way for six more golds.

SHORT LIST

Pat Summitt Career Resume

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