Jill Rosenfeld is a freelance journalist based in Santa Monica. She spends her leisure time at the local playground, scoring relentlessly against imaginary opponents.
Can I just tell you? I have a total crush on Geno Auriemma.
I interviewed Geno Auriemma in 1996, shook his hand, even touched his NCAA championship trophy. You should have seen his twinkly blue eyes. And ohmigosh, those dimples. True, I found him the weensiest bit fascist, but you know what? I love him anyway.
Geno, Geno, Geno.
(Are you out there, Geno? Are you reading this column? I love you, Geno. My heart trembles for you like a bird, Geno. It beats as if to take wing. Come to L.A. and we'll make passionate, dizzying conversation about women's basketball. Maybe my boyfriend will join in. He's a hoops fan too.)
Geno Auriemma is the University of Connecticut coach who made women's basketball a national event. His team's NCAA championship game against Tennessee in 1995, televised on ESPN, was the most-watched sporting event ever -- ever! -- in the state of Connecticut. It even beat the Super Bowl.
Beat the Super Bowl! I'm doing a funky-chicken touchdown dance right now.
Yes, women's basketball was popular in regional pockets: Tennessee, Stanford, Texas. But UConn raised the sport to a new level, and brought it unprecedented exposure. As an ESPN spokesman said when UConn was named Outstanding Team of 1995, "[UConn] helped raise the sport, and bring it unprecedented exposure."
Very Important People sat up and took note of UConn's success. How could they not? ESPN's headquarters are in Bristol Connecticut, only 45 minutes from the university; SportsCenter is taped in Bristol; and New York City, home of the NBA, Sports Illustrated, and the New York Times (which covers both home and away games), is just a morning commute from the southern end of the state.
What I wanted to know was: How did he do it? How did Geno make Connecticut go nuts over women's basketball?
I interviewed Geno, where else? Mecca. Gampel Pavilion, home of the Huskies. In the team's office, on an unassuming knee-high table, sat the 1995 championship trophy, the Minneapolis net draped over one corner. It looked so approachable sitting there, so immediate and attainable, I couldn't help but walk over and finger the nylon, still glossy and new.
Players were hanging around -- most notably Kara Wolters -- like big kids home after school. Kara Wolters now plays for the ABL; Geno also developed WNBA figurehead Rebecca Lobo, as well as ABL players Jennifer Rizzotti and Carla Berube, all of whom played on the UConn team that went 35-0 in 1995.
Perhaps you remember Geno as from ESPN's WNBA games. He was the devilishly adorable, athletic-looking, 42-year-old commentator. Well, that's pretty much how he looked the day I interviewed him, only Robin Roberts wasn't standing beside him.
And you should have seen his eyes light up when he started to talk about women's basketball. He looked just like a kid with a brand-new shiny red bike.
Geno was hired out of UVA (where he was primary assistant women's coach) back in the dark ages of women's sports: 1985. He was chosen by then-Associate Director of Athletics Patricia Meiser-McKnett, who had absolutely no intention of hiring a man. "I was committed to hiring the best woman for the position," she told the author of 'Husky Mania,' a book about the 1995 season. All that changed when she met Geno. How can you meet Geno and not adore him? He's a charismatic cutie-pie with a passionate vision.
Yeah, everyone worships hall-of-famer K.C. Jones, the New England Blizzard's coach -- yeah, K.C. is God and all that -- but where was he in the days before television coverage? Where was K.C. when UConn's gymnasium had a leaky roof, when the women had to relinquish their locker room any time a men's team was visiting? I know where Geno Auriemma was. Under that leaky roof, coaching. Mm mm. My kind of man.
When the Huskies took home the Big East trophy in 1988-89, Auriemma asked the athletic director to shut down the gymnasium so that people weren't running on the track during games. Bring out the band, the cheerleaders, the mascot. The answer was no.
Geno is not the sort of person to get caught whining about inequitable treatment. "The school has limited resources," Geno says. "They give them to people who maximize them." So Geno focused setting an unprecedented standard of excellence both on the court and off. While male college athletes made headlines with their poor grades and criminal activities, Auriemma's recruits had -- and continue to have -- a 100% graduation rate. Since 1991, most of his starters have been on the dean's list.
Geno was shaping the team's profile, and, not incidentally, creating a marketable product. Geno and publicist Barb Kowal (subject of a future column, "Why I Love Barb Kowal") arranged for players to host Girl Scout days, and to make other charitable appearances in the community. And he set the tone for how the players present themselves in public. "We have pretty definitive ideas that we believe in, certain dress codes, a particular image," Geno said. "Don't succumb to, 'I want to express myself.' Don't draw unnecesary attention to yourself unless it's to how good you are. You can have orange hair and piercings or you can be on the dean's list and have 12 rebounds."
When the team travels the players wear crisp team sweatsuits, or casual slacks, skirts and blazers. No T-shirts. No walkmans in the airport. No baseball caps on backwards. And absolutely no blue jeans. Assistant coach Chris Daily has come to be known -- affectionately, one would hope -- as "the fashion police."
I asked Barb, the publicist, whether any of the players chafe at these restrictions. She said that Geno only recruits girls that fit the program. "Geno has pulled away from some top recruits," she said. "He doesn't care if they've broken records. It's more important that they blend in and fit in."
"We're old-fashioned," Geno told me. "There are no names on our jerseys. Family entertainment and the team, that's what believe in."
I was a little unnerved by what I was hearing, and not just because some of my favorite people wear jeans. (I, for instance, was wearing them that day.) It's wonderful that his players are getting good grades, and there's nothing wrong with blazers. But where are the cracks? When can these young women show a little humanity? Why are piercings and the dean's list mutually exclusive? What's wrong with 'I want to express myself'? How much longer before Auriemma's Disneyish vision seems as improbable and obsolete as the heroic biographies of early baseball players?
Pretty soon, I think.
Geno's brand of athlete are people like Rebecca Lobo, Kara Wolters, Carla Berube, Jen Rizzotti, fresh-faced small town girls making good for Mom and the team. Kara Wolters loves makeup and wants to be Rikki Lake; Rebecca Lobo is "unselfish" (which must be Geno's favorite word), and wears French braids and mini-skirts to demonstrate that you can be feminine and you can be athletic at the same time. As Lobo reveals in a Reebok ad, "You can be feminine and you can be athletic at the same time."
(Thanks for that insight, Rebecca.)
See, the reason I can find Geno the weensiest bit fascist and love him anyway, is that his plan worked. The team won. His product sold. People bought it. Men bought it. And it was men Geno was aiming for. "Women are our worst audience," he told me. "It had to be the guys. Guys in America had to make that leap. They control all of the media."
Geno had created the sort of team that appeals to guys. "Men see us and say, 'This is how I used to play. Not like Pippen or Olajuwon. And I've got a daughter at home who's 12. Cool. She could get a scholarship.'"
One of the things Geno made a point to show me was a copy of Sports Illustrated from January 1996. The table of contents were laid over a two-page spread picturing the UConn bench late in a game. The bench itself was empty; all of the women -- girls really -- were on the ground, kneeling in a row along the sideline. Doe-eyed, praying, teary with excitement, they were intent on the game. "That picture says it all," Geno told me. "The way we play, we bring emotion to basketball."
The picture did say it all. No one talking shit in your face. No showboating. No astronomical salaries. Kids playing for the joy of the game and to get an education. Good citizens. Cute, smart, guileless, eager, doe-eyed girls. "What better on a Sunday afternoon than to take your kids and expose them to that?"
I couldn't think of a thing to say in response. I was so enthralled by Geno's enthusiasm and by his boyish smile, and yet so equivocal some of the things he said, that all I could do was nod.
Geno's marketing vision was eventually reproduced by the WNBA. Rebecca Lobo became a figurehead, along with Sheryl Swoopes and very-feminine Lisa Leslie. (As Leslie revealed in an ESPN halftime report, "I've always been very feminine.") ESPN created a (quite hilarious) series of ads designed to appeal to male fans. And wholesome family entertainment became a mainstay of the WNBA's marketing efforts. Players make charitable appearances. They sign autographs after the games. Instead of cheerleaders are there hip-hopping pre-teens, and at halftime kids shoot baskets for prizes. There are kiddie rides in the parking lot. Kids kids kids. It's not my first choice of marketing plans, but you know what? If it can make women's basketball beat the Super Bowl, I'm all for it.
As for Geno, I adore him despite his foibles. Everything about the man comes down to one thing: love for women's basketball. For that I can forgive him anything. On Geno's bookshelf there is a small framed photograph of a sunrise over a golf course. "Passion," the inscription says. "There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart. Pursue those."
Geno, my darling, I'm in hot pursuit.
10/17/97
