Age and gender of coaches

[KnightBridgeAZ]

So I started out looking at coach's ages (5 Power Conferences plus BE), after issues being raised about Geno and Tara. Both 67, they are 2 of the 5 coaches over 65 (Mark Trakh is 65). Doug Bruno is 70, Vivian Stringer is 73 and Gary Blair is 75. Only Doug Bruno's age was a surprise.

Then my wife said something about the number of male vs. female coaches - I commented that you should want the best coach regardless of gender, which is true, but my wife pointed out that - in a women's sport - you would think a higher percentage of women would be coaches (and referees, for that matter).

It is true that 48 of the 76 schools in those 6 conferences have female coaches (63%). While I supposed this was a gain over the last 20 years, when I checked, boy was I surprised:

20 years ago, 57 of these schools (75%) had women's coaches. In fact all 12 of the teams that currently make up the PAC were coached by women 20 years ago.

Although I didn't do an "in depth" check of the numbers, it looks to me like about 27% of the women coaches (and 21% of all of the coaches) are black, as opposed to 16% in 2001, 20 years ago. I noted it only because so much was made of Dawn and Adia both making the Final Four.

I present these numbers as being interesting, there is absolutely no editorial comment intended, except that I am indeed surprised there are more male coaches now than then.

 

[bballnut90]

I recall reading an article relatively recently about how we're seeing more and more men take head coaching roles in women's basketball. I think Muffet referenced this when she said she'd only hire women a few years ago.

Black women have been very under represented too outside of the SEC in recent years. Youd think a larger percentage of black women would be head coaches considering majority of teams are predominantly black, and players often become coaches.

Worth noting, women's basketball is doing well in the 'women leading women' department compared to volleyball. Volleyball has been an NCAA sport for 30 years and has never had a woman win a title. Im pretty sure Mary Wise is the only woman to have even coached in title games (twice), meaning that of the 58 teams who competed for a title, 56 were coached by men. At lower levels almost all major volleyball clubs (similar to AAU for basketball) are led by men too.

 

[Lorcan]

It’s a weird phenomenon when it comes to coaching and it produces an uneasy answer. First and foremost, of course, the programs should pick who they believe is the best fit with the most experience. That being said, how do you provide equitable opportunity and experiences for women, particularly minorities? Very few women are provided with opportunities to take meaningful positions in the men’s game. As such, a man has vastly more opportunities to succeed, gain experience, and find meaningful employment in basketball than a woman does regardless of their background just because of their gender.

 

[TC22]

Before Title IX almost all women's basketball teams were coached by women. Title IX made the conditions and SALARIES much better and those positions were more attractive to men.

When Dawn was hired by SC she was the only black female head coach. I believe there are now 8 in the SEC.

 

[Aluminny69]

If you look at coaching staffs, you will find more diversity. I don't believe Geno has ever had a male coach on his staff. But many of the women head coaches have at least one male assistant. It seems there are many black female assistant coaches. ( I don't have time to look up the numbers.)

 

[UcMiami]

I think there are two issues at play:
1. WCBB head coach was for a fairly long time a sinecure for a lot of schools : don't do anything to make waves, win a little, and you have a job for life. And recruiting was not a generally national but regional and local, with very little attention, or media, or competition because honestly not that many schools were serious about it. That probably started to change about 30 years ago, but was still working its way out of the system 20 years ago. And now, most D1 colleges are demanding performance of their coaches (though they still tend to wait until contracts end rather than doing buyouts.)

2. When Geno was hired, he was the second choice, and with a much worse resume, but he was cheaper than the first choice. He had a resume as a HS assistant coach followed by 4 years as an assistant at a good college. Oklahoma hired a HS head coach 25 years ago. So major universities were still hiring 'unqualified' coaches in 1996 to head their WCBB programs. But around that time something else was happening ... real money was being handed out to a few WCBB coaches and then ten years later in 2007 Texas actually outbid Duke for a WCBB coach paying reportedly $1+M. The money that flowed into the WCBB coaching positions went from subsistence (Geno in 1987) to substantial (GG in 2007.) You didn't actually have to love women's basketball to make a career in it that could pay you a substantial salary. And in some ways it was actually easier than men's CBB with women's players staying in school for 4 years and still less recruiting competition. And so more men were became interested in the jobs.