UConn Continues Longest Winning Streak in Sports History

Is anybody interested in the fact that the UConn women’s team is about to complete a second-consecutive perfect season by winning another NCAA championship tonight? Now just imagine the media hoopla if North Carolina [or any men’s team] had won its championship in such convincing fashion [by defeating its opponents by an average of 33 points]…

I posed this rhetorical question in a commentary earlier this year because the NCAA Women’s Basketball tournament gets virtually no media coverage compared to that which always attends the men’s tournament. But it’s the second part of this lamentation that compels me to reprise it here.  Because the death of John Wooden constrains me to note that a men’s team has in fact posted a record that even this phenomenal UConn women’s team has yet to emulate. 

That team, of course, was the UCLA Bruins, which Wooden coached to 88-consecutive victories over three seasons from 1971 to 1974.

(John Wooden … is dead, The iPINIONS Journal, June 14, 2010)

When I wrote the above last summer, the UConn women’s basketball team was en route to a second-consecutive perfect season, amassing an astonishing, though (as indicated) not unprecedented, 78-consecutive victories. 

Well, on Sunday, UConn matched what was once thought to be UCLA’s unmatchable record of 88-consecutive victories; although, given the scant media coverage of this historic milestone, you can be forgiven for having no clue.  By contrast, because the media made such a big deal of it, you probably know that the Miami Heat was on a paltry 12-game winning streak until the Dallas Mavericks snapped it on Monday night.

Ironically, the media have dedicated more self-flagellating coverage to UConn Coach Geno Auriemma’s condemnation of them for failing to cover his team’s historic feat than to this feat itself.  Of course, my opening quote betrays the fact that I have long harbored Auriemma’s indignation at the media. 

In point of fact, when I expressed similar condemnation after UConn’s first perfect season in 2009, I was roundly accused of overhyping the women’s accomplishment and overdramatizing their relative lack of media coverage.

But I doubt anyone can read below what Auriemma said at a press conference on Sunday (after UConn matched UCLA’s record) and not feel moved to join him in condemning the media:

I just know there wouldn’t be this many people in the room if we were chasing a women’s record. The reason everybody is having a heart attack the last four or five days is a bunch of women are threatening to break a men’s record, and everybody is all up in arms about it.

All the women are happy as hell and they can’t wait to come in here and ask questions. All the guys that loved women’s basketball are all excited, and all the miserable bastards that follow men’s basketball and don’t want us to break the record are all here because they’re pissed. That’s just the way it is.

Because we’re breaking a men’s record, we’ve got a lot of people paying attention. If we were breaking a women’s record, everybody would go, ‘Aren’t those girls nice, let’s give them two paragraphs in USA Today, you know, give them one line on the bottom of ESPN and then let’s send them back where they belong, in the kitchen.’

(UConn Women’s Basketball Coach Geno Auriemma, ESPN December 20, 2010)

Auriemma is clearly bitter and resentful. But there’s no denying the truth of what he said. More to the point, though, I suspect that he expressed the feelings not only of the women on his team but of all women who play college and professional sports.  

Therefore, I hope all participants in, and fans of, women’s sports derive some consolation from the fact that the UConn women broke the UCLA men’s once-vaunted record last night by defeating FSU 93-62 to seal its run of 89-consecutive victories.  They have not lost since April 6, 2008, during that year’s NCAA tournament semifinals.

And, by the way, the notion that UConn’s streak is less newsworthy than UCLA’s because there’s less competition in the women’s game is just as specious and chauvinistic as the notion that a female swimmer who wins eight gold medals at one Olympic Games would be less worthy of international acclaim than Michael Phelps.

I also see no merit in the claim by sports writers and commentators that this winning streak is undermined by the fact that the UConn women never played their arch rivals, the Lady Vols of Tennessee, during this period.  For, whatever the petty, and allegedly personal, reason legendary Tennessee Coach Pat Summit decided in 2007 to discontinue their regular-season match-ups, the fact that her team has suffered 13 losses during this same period renders this claim moot. 

That said, I feel constrained to explain that I so accurately presaged two years ago what Auriemma lamented just two days ago – not because of clairvoyance but because of empathy. Indeed, if I were the coach, or a member, of this history-making UConn team, I would be bitter and resentful too.

Alas, I am not an influential editor at the New York Times.  All the same, I want the women of UConn to know that I am at least one man who truly gets and appreciates that theirs is a remarkable and (now) unprecedented achievement – not just in the annals of women’s basketball but in the annals of all sports, period.

NOTE: Because of the way Auriemma condemned and shamed them on Sunday, the media – in typical reactionary, parasitic and herd-like fashion – are now all over this story….

Related Commentaries:
UConn routs Louisville…
John Wooden … is dead