Category: CBB

Nothing is more perishable - and forgettable - than sporting events.

No matter how important sports media tries to make a game, competition or athlete out to be, history teaches us that it won't be long before no one can remember the teams and/persons involved, let alone details of what actually went on.

The only exception to the above is when an event of societal significance takes place immediately before, during or after a sporting event takes place.

The best example of such an exception that we can immediately think of is the 1968 medal stand-protest by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the Olympic Games in Mexico City.

Another such exception took place in Tampa yesterday.

In a year-or-three, we won't remember the outcome of the 2018-2019 Notre Dame basketball season, which culminates this weekend at the Final Four in Tampa, Florida.

But we will remember the remarks Notre Dame basketball head coach Muffett McGraw made yesterday because history teaches us that to forget the details of such indispensable sentiment is to pave our own road to irrelevancy. 

The following are remarks made by University of Notre Dame head basketball coach Muffet McGraw in Tampa, Florida, on April 5, 2019.

"Did you know that the Equal Rights Amendment was introduced in 1967 and it still hasn’t passed?

"We need 38 states to agree that discrimination on the basis of sex is unconstitutional.

"We’ve had a record number of women running for office and winning and still we have 23 percent of the House and 25 percent of the Senate.

"I’m getting tired of the novelty of the first female governor of this state, the first female African-American mayor of this city.

"When is it going to become the norm instead of the exception?

"How are these young women looking up and seeing someone that looks like them, preparing them for the future?

"We don’t have enough female role models.

"We don’t have enough visible women leaders.

"We don’t have enough women in power.

“Men run the world.

"Men have the power.

"Men make the decisions.

"It’s always the man that is the stronger one.

"When these girls are coming out, who are they looking up to, to tell them that’s not the way it has to be?

"Where better to do that than in sports?

"All these millions of girls that play sports across the country, we’re teaching them great things about life skills, but wouldn’t it be great if we could teach them to watch how women lead?

“This is a path for you to take to get to the point where in this country we have 50 percent of women in power.

"We have right now less than 5 percent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

"When you look at men’s basketball, 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?

"Maybe it’s because we only have 10 percent women athletic directors in Division I.

"People hire people who look like them.

"That’s the problem."