The NCAA has a persistent downside with undervaluing women, author and host Jemele Hill mentioned Friday — and the most recent controversy over weight room discrepancies places a highlight on that inequality.
“This has been a protracted standing, constant downside in terms of the dearth of fairness between males’s and women’s sports activities,” mentioned Hill. “This ought to let all people know who’s watching this and listening to about this story, that this was concerning the truth they did not think they have been worth it to start with.”
A Stanford University sports activities efficiency coach posted pictures to Twitter Thursday revealing inequities between the women’s and males’s weight rooms.
The pictures, posted by Ali Kershner, a coach with the Stanford women’s basketball and golf groups, confirmed the women’s weight room facility on the NCAA bubble in San Antonio — a rack of dumbbells and a few yoga mats. The males’s weight room facility, at their NCAA bubble in Indianapolis. was decked out with a fitness center’s worth of kit.
On a Zoom name Friday morning, NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt vowed to do higher.
“I apologize to the women’s student-athletes, coaches and committee for dropping the ball on the weight room subject in San Antonio, we’ll get it mounted as quickly as attainable,” Gavitt mentioned.
The NCAA’s Vice President of Women’s Basketball Lynn Holzman mentioned later Friday the group is reviewing the right way to modify sq. footage and supply extra coaching opporunities.
Hill defined to CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” on Friday that the fast response was telling.
“When they obtained caught and this video went viral, out of the blue inside 24 hours they’ve a change of coronary heart,” mentioned Hill, who hosts the Spotify podcast “Jemele Hill is Unbothered.” “The cash was all the time there. The cash is not the difficulty. The subject is that they don’t think these women are worth it.”
ESPN has a $500 million, 14-year deal by way of the 2023-24 tutorial yr with the NCAA for expanded rights to 24 collegiate championships, together with continued protection of the women’s Division I basketball event.
Hill informed host Shepard Smith that, transferring ahead, the NCAA should “do the whole lot that they will to indicate that they take women’s sports activities significantly, as a result of this seems to be even worse, given the truth that the backdrop of that is that it is Women’s History Month.”
Representatives for the NCAA weren’t instantly obtainable Friday to answer Hill’s feedback.