Tennesee Vols should be ashamed of athletic dept.changes when P.Summit was diagnosed w/ALZ

[Are_grits_groceries]

Personnel Fouls: Sex Discrimination Suits Shake Tennessee Athletics
For years, the women’s athletics program at the University of Tennessee was a model of gender equity. No longer.

For nearly 40 years, the University of Tennessee’s Lady Vols were a role model for college athletics — everybody’s favorite example of what is possible when a major university devotes major resources to women’s sports. No one embodied that promise more than Pat Summitt, the legendary basketball coach who helped elevate UT’s entire women’s sports program into something approaching a Title IX utopian fantasy.

“It was a fabulous place to work,” said Jenny Moshak, the one-time head of women’s sports medicine at UT. “It was a place that celebrated the student-athlete and the promotion of women as a whole. It was easy to give heart and soul because you felt like you were making a difference. Many, many people would say, ‘The women’s athletic department does it right.’ They couldn’t say that about the men’s department.” Little did she know.

Summitt retired at the end of the 2012 season, her 38-year career abruptly ended by early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Moshak is gone, too — demoted and marginalized, she claims, for resisting UT’s efforts to bring the women’s sports program under male leadership. After 24 years at UT, she quit this August.

Pride over the Lady Vols’ achievements has been wounded by two lawsuits alleging that Moshak and her colleagues had to work harder than their men’s counterparts, under worse conditions, for less money and fewer benefits, and then were punished when they dared to complain. The suits mostly faded from view after causing a stir when they were filed a year ago, but based on new filings and exhibits, some sex discrimination lawyers believe they will become a model – and a test—for similar cases nationwide.
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http://www.propublica.org/article/personnel-fouls-sex-discrimination-suits-shake-tennessee-athletics

This is on the entire administration.
Hart treating Summit like he did is despicable. She has been an exemplary member of the Vol community for decades as opposed to some other morans. Looking at you Bruce Pearl.

Getting Pat Summit to step down was an exceptionally difficult and emotional issue. Her son and staff were keenly aware of the effect her condition was having on the WBB program. They were not going to let it continue and they were ready to deal with it in a dignified manner.

If you think this was about streamlining the athletic department, think again. Look at all the men who took over positions in the restructured athletic department. It was about making the women beholden to the male AD and cutting them off at the knees.

If Pat Summit did not have a debilitating disease they would never have dared to try doing this. She would have turned them every which way but loose.

AND another issue is the number of men now being hired to coach women's basketball. Many of them never considered it when the salaries weren't high. Women and some men built the women's programs on a wing and a prayer.

Men should be hired if they are the best candidates. However, considering that most athletic directors are men, the people they will consider is weighted towards their connections which include few women. One AD hired a man because he liked how he coached his daughter in a church league.

This is the same problem with hiring minority coaches in many areas. The people in charge turn to the people they know and will time and time again hire coaches who have had middling to poor records in previous positions. That's why the NFL created the Rooney Rule that stated teams had to at least interview minority coaches for head coaching jobs. That's how bad it was and is.

Other schools other than Tennessee also should be ashamed of their treatment of women's athletics. This is a particularly egregious incident.