Archrivals aren’t expected to cooperate, much less collaborate. But these are different times in college sports, and with the historic move to the Big Ten on the horizon, doesn’t it make perfect sense for coaches from UCLA and USC to join forces?
Women’s basketball coaches Cori Close of the Bruins and Lindsay Gottlieb of the Trojans are doing so, and it’s largely but not solely because of the logistical challenges created by joining what will be college sports’ first coast-to-coast conference.
They’re looking out not only for their schools and for basketball in L.A. but for the welfare of the women’s game, period, in attacking this challenge as allies and sharing concerns and ideas for best practices. And it’s not incidental that they’ve also enlisted the L.A. Sparks, and specifically Coach Curt Miller and General Manager Karen Bryant, as partners in their collaboration.
“I think it has to be bigger than any of our institutional or pro hats,” Close said. “It has to be bigger than all of us. We’ve got to be committed to (work for) something greater than ourselves. And we need each other. We need to be connected. I mean, isn’t that what we’re trying to do with our teams? We’re trying to take the talent of our teams and the opportunities of our individual pieces, and we’re trying to link them together to do something bigger than any of the individual players could do on their own.
“… It’s bigger than just growing it on the court. It’s about our culture and what it does for women and self-esteem, and women in sport, and women being treated as investments and a really, really valuable product and not a charity. I think those are really important shifts that need to take place in our culture.”
The first reactions when the move became public involved concerns over travel in a conference otherwise based in the eastern and central time zones. As it turns out, those burdens could be less than expected for women’s (and…
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