Geno Auriemma moved women’s basketball forward by staying put.
As the wins and the national titles piled up at UConn, Auriemma could have had his pick of men’s jobs. Oklahoma wanted him at one point. So did Miami. When Jim Calhoun retired as the Connecticut men’s coach and again when the school fired Kevin Ollie, Auriemma was mentioned as a potential replacement.
He thought about making the move. Almost did it once, too. But Auriemma, now the winningest coach in college basketball, never felt he had to coach men to validate his success or his abilities. He never saw himself as a “women’s basketball” coach, just as he never saw his players as “women’s basketball” players.
He was a coach, and a damn good one, regardless of who was playing for him.
By not chasing a men’s job, however, Auriemma gave the women’s game more credibility. He could have coached anywhere, yet he chose to stay in the women’s game. He didn’t stay at UConn because he didn’t have other options; he stayed because there weren’t better options.
“I do think it’s important that coaching women isn’t seen as a stepping stone, that coaching men isn’t seen as superior,” television analyst Rebecca Lobo, who was Auriemma’s first big star and led UConn to its first national title and undefeated record in 1995, told USA TODAY Sports.
“Him staying in the women’s game, it means he never gave the impression that it’s better to coach men than women.”
It shouldn’t require the staying power of one man to give the women’s game legitimacy. But for far too long, the women’s game was considered inferior to the men’s game. The men had better facilities, more resources and a larger reach, so of course the assumption was that the coaching jobs were better. They certainly paid more.
Auriemma’s dedication to the women’s game, along with his insistence that his program be taken as seriously as any men’s team, was a powerful endorsement for those who needed convincing. He believed in the women’s game at a time when most people with influence, particularly the men in positions of power, didn’t.
“A lot of people only listen to someone like Coach Auriemma talk about women’s sports — and it made his voice matter more,” Sue Bird, who won two titles and was national player of the year while at UConn, told USA TODAY Sports.
UConn was not a women’s basketball powerhouse when Auriemma arrived in 1985. Far from it. The Huskies had one winning season in their previous 11 years and were still playing in a fieldhouse with fewer than 5,000 seats.
In Auriemma’s second season, UConn had a winning record. In his fourth, the Huskies made the NCAA Tournament. In his sixth, they reached the Final Four.
“Maybe that’s the other thing. We did it under those circumstances where, I don’t think we were getting any help from anybody. Matter of fact, some of the biggest battles we had to fight back in those days were right on this campus,’ Auriemma said last week. “But we managed. We persevered.”
His success — the Huskies have won 11 titles under Auriemma, and UConn’s victory over Fairleigh Dickinson on Wednesday night was his 1,217th, most of any college basketball coach — gave Auriemma leverage. He could demand resources few other women’s teams were getting, and UConn delivered.
First-class facilities. Support staff. Charter flights.
“We started at the absolute ground level, and it’s evolved into this,” Auriemma said.
Other schools began paying attention, especially when UConn challenged Tennessee’s longtime dominance in the game.
It was one thing when Pat Summitt and Tennessee had a chokehold on the game. Nothing to be done when one coach is that good and gets all the best players. But when Auriemma was doing it, too, it raised the stakes for everyone.
“Over the years, we created an environment where athletic directors, university presidents were able to look at what we did and what we were doing and ask their coaches and their administration, ‘Well, why can’t we do that?’ In the beginning it was, ‘Cause we don’t want to. They want to do it, but we don’t want to.’ And that’s the only reason why it didn’t happen, because they didn’t want to — because they certainly had way more resources than we did,” Auriemma said.
“So I think, over a period of time, we made it so they had to do it because it just meant too much to everybody.”
Now look at the game. When USA TODAY Sports compiled salaries last year, 18 coaches were making $1 million or more, with LSU’s Kim Mulkey topping the list at $3.264 million. Auriemma and Dawn Staley were second at $3.1 million each.
The list of legitimate title contenders now stretches well beyond two. Facilities and support services have improved. Most of the top schools are flying charter.
And last year’s NCAA championship game, featuring Caitlin Clark and Iowa against Staley’s South Carolina team, had higher ratings than the men’s final for the first time. The women’s final drew 18.7 million viewers compared with 14.8 million for the men.
“He deserves his flowers,” North Carolina coach Courtney Banghart said of Auriemma. “Sometimes when it’s a guy it’s like, ugh — but it’s not like that with him. He lifts others up, and he’s brought others with him.”
Not all of this progress is because of Auriemma. But his commitment to the women’s game, when he could have coached anywhere, made it impossible to ignore the gains in the sport and paved the way for this current explosion in growth and visibility.
Auriemma, 70, hasn’t said how much longer he’ll coach. When he does retire, though, there’ll be no question he’s left the women’s game in a better place. All because he chose to stay.
Lindsay Schnell contributed.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.