LSU coach Kim Mulkey and University of Connecticut coach Gino Auriemma appeared together at Aspen Ideas on Wednesday for a panel discussion on women’s college basketball called “The Tipping Point: How Women’s Basketball Captured the Nation’s Attention.”
Auriemma has coached at UConn for 39 seasons, leading the Huskies to 11 national championships, the most of any coach in the men’s or women’s game. Mulkey played college basketball at Louisiana Tech, won a gold medal at the Olympics in 1984 and is the first person in basketball history to win national championships as a player, assistant coach and head coach (she has won four national titles, three at Baylor and one at LSU).
If there is any one sport that is currently cresting on its own wave, it’s women’s college basketball. In April, the NCAA signed a $920 million, eight-year deal with ESPN that will give the network broadcasting rights for various men’s and women’s sports, including women’s March Madness. The new contract is expected to put $65 million into women’s basketball.
When asked why women’s basketball is meeting its moment right now, Auriemma didn’t miss a beat.
“Social media has discovered something that has been happening for some time and elevated it to a point where it’s now mainstream, where it wasn’t before and it’s a great thing. I’d like to think it’s something that was bound to happen and we need to make sure it continues to happen,” he said.
Mulkey’s experience in college basketball dates back to the early 1980s when she was a player at Louisiana Tech.
“When I was playing, there was only one women’s basketball game on TV and it was the national championship game,” she said. “So obviously, television coverage, media coverage, the internet and now social media has allowed people to be exposed to the game. People that have never watched women’s basketball are now being drawn in and it’s brought a whole new level of attention to our game.”
Moderator Stephanie Ruhle asked about the Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark effect. Reese and Clark, who played for LSU and Iowa respectively, had an intense college rivalry that ended this year with their entries into the WNBA. They have contrasting styles: Reese is a dominant defensive presence on the court and an inside scoring threat while Clark has an amazing touch from behind the arc.
Many people are comparing them to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, who came into the NBA in 1979. Both Reese and Clark have over three million followers on various social media platforms. Reese has a reputation, rightly or wrongly, as the “bad girl” while Clark is viewed differently. Both play tough and play to win.
“Those two players brought a lot of attention to the game,” said Mulkey, who coached Reese to LSU’s first NCAA national championship in women’s basketball last year. “They know they’re not the best players in the WNBA, but they will be Hall of Famers.”
Auriemma agreed, saying, “I agree that they’re not the two best players in the WNBA but they are the two most-talked-about players. At some point it’s going to be about the game and not everything around it.”
Both coaches warned of the double-edged sword that is social media.
“You have to be prepared for the fact what when you put yourself out there on social media you have to be ready for all the great things that are said about you but you have to be prepared for all the other things people are going to say about you that might not be so great,”Auriemma said.
Mulkey echoed the sentiment, saying, “These kids live on social media and I tell them, ‘If you live on it you better be prepared for what you read on it.’”
Much like the rest of NCAA sports, the women’s game has gone through some significant changes in the last few years, including the NIL and the transfer portal.
NIL refers to “Name, Image and Likeness” which allows players to be paid for the use of their likeness on promotional items such as magazines, banners, etc. Auriemma joked that NIL means “now it’s legal” and coaches are paying athletes hundreds of thousands of dollars to play for their schools. He said “college basketball coaches are criminals that haven’t been caught.”
Both Auriemma and Mulkey expressed their disdain for the transfer portal which allows players to leave their school with the snap of a finger. Auriemma said the portal allows players “to become mercenaries” and Mulkey said it makes recruiting very difficult because “you go out looking for four players and end up needing six.”
Mulkey was asked by someone in the audience if there was a story behind the elaborate outfits she wears courtside.
“I’ve always liked to dress nice,” she said. “When I got to LSU, my assistant Jennifer was in a boutique and the owner said, ‘I’ve always kept up with coach Mulkey and she always dresses so nicely, and do you think she would ever wear something like this?’ and she pulled out some outfits with lots of sparkles on them.
“Jennifer laughed and said, ‘I don’t know, I’ll take it to her and see.’ Jennifer dropped them off and I said, ‘No, I’m not going to do that. No, no. no.’ And they kept pressuring me so one day I wore one of the jackets and then it just got outrageously crazy,” Mulkey continued.
“I keep doing it for one reason. You talk about growing the game. We have more season ticketholders at LSU who don’t know a damn thing about basketball. They come to see what I’m wearing. Ain’t that a heck of a note? But we take their money and sell them season tickets. So you can say, ‘I took one for the team.’”