The most decorated coach in the history of women’s college basketball says the men’s game has become ‘a joke’.
Geno Auriemma, who has coached the University of Connecticut to a record nine national championships, could hardly conceal his disgust at the state of the collegiate game during a conference call on Wednesday ahead of the Women’s Final Four.
“College men’s basketball is so far behind the times, it’s unbelievable. I mean women’s basketball is behind the times. Men’s basketball is even further behind the times,” Auriemma said in response to a question from SI.com’s Richard Deitsch. “Obviously it’s immensely popular. Look at the interest paid on the NCAA tournament. I don’t know that it’s as immensely popular during the regular season as it used to be, but obviously the tournament is just at another world when it comes to that.
“Having said that, I think the game is a joke. It really is. I don’t coach it. I don’t play it, so I don’t understand all the ins and outs of it. But as a spectator, forget that I’m a coach, as a spectator, watching it, it’s a joke.”
Auriemma’s remarks come at the back end of a season that’s seen worrying declines in scoring, field-goal percentage and attendance on the men’s side – a state of affairs Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis described as a ‘crisis’ in demand of an ‘extreme makeover’.
“Every other major sport in the world has taken steps to help people be better on the offensive end of the floor,” the 61-year-old Auriemma said Wednesday. “They’ve moved in the fences in baseball, they lowered the mound. They made the strike zone so you need a straw to put through it. And in the NFL you touch a guy it’s a penalty. You hit the quarterback, you’re out for life. You know, in the NBA, you touch somebody in the perimeter, you whack guys like they used to do when scores were 90 to 75, they changed the rules.
“This is entertainment we’re talking about. People have to decide, do I want to pay 25 bucks, 30 bucks to go see a college scrum where everybody misses six out of every 10 shots they take, or do I want to go to a movie? We’re fighting for the entertainment dollar, here, and I have to tell you it’s not entertainment from a fan’s standpoint.”
Auriemma’s Huskies are in the Final Four for an eighth straight season, where they will face Maryland in the national semifinals on Sunday night in Tampa. The longtime women’s powerhouse is taking aim at a third consecutive national championship, a feat they first accomplished from 2002 through 2004.
Wednesday was not the first time Auriemma has suggested the rules be adjusted to make the game more entertaining. In 2012, he proposed lowering the rims from the standard 10 feet for women’s games.
“What makes fans not want to watch women’s basketball is that some of the players can’t shoot and they miss layups and that forces the game to slow down,” he told the Hartford Courant. “How do help improve that? Lower the rim.”
A six-time Naismith College Coach of the Year award winner, Auriemma also helmed the US national team to a gold medal at the London Olympics. In 2006, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.
