Woman's work

It was back in the days after Charlie Weis schematically advantaged himself out of the Notre Dame football job that the Blob planted its tongue in its cheek and made a mostly modest suggestion.

Maybe, I said, Notre Dame should forego the search committee and hire the best coach, who happened to already be on campus: Women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw.

Thought about that again yesterday when someone at the Final Four asked McGraw about her  pronouncement that she wasn't going to hire any more men for her coaching staff, on account of men were already way over-represented in women's college buckets. This happens to be true, because the numbers say so: In 1972, when Title IX arrived on the scene, women comprised 90 percent of the head coaches of women's teams in a dozen sports. That's down to 40 percent now, and in women's basketball, it's 59 percent -- 20 percent lower than four decades ago.

So, yeah. McGraw's got a point. And, it turns out, not just about basketball.

Here's what she said about the latter yesterday: "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.”

She was only getting warmed up.

“When these girls are coming out, who are they looking up to to tell them that’s not the way it has to be?” McGraw went on. “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? ...
 

“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? ... We don’t have enough female role models. We don’t have enough visible women leaders. We don’t have enough women in power.”

Here's the clip, in its entirety.

The Blob says amen to all of that. And also, you go, girl.

It also is reconsidering what it said a few years back, when it suggested maybe Muffet should take over the Notre Dame football program.

To heck with that. Maybe Muffet oughta be President.