OT - Kim Mulkey's Disingenuous Statement

[ZagDad84]

For those who don't know who she is, Kim Mulkey is the head coach of the #6 (for now) Baylor Lady Bears Wbb team and today was Mulkey's first game back coaching after being afflicted with Covid-19. Just after her team's loss today (to unranked Iowa State) Mulkey let loose this statement and she left no doubt about how she feels about a season that is proceeding amid the coronavirus pandemic:

“The answer is this: The season will continue on. It’s called the almighty dollar,” Mulkey said after her team’s 75-71 loss to Iowa State in Waco, Tex. “The NCAA has to have the almighty dollar from the men’s tournament. The almighty dollar is more important than the health and welfare of me, the players or anybody else.

“One conference does this, one conference does that. The CDC says this. Everybody is confused. I’m confused. I’m uncomfortable coaching. I understand, covid is real. I’ve had it — come talk to me sometime. But I don’t know … all the calls and procedures, that’s going to go on and make it unusual, uncomfortable for every program. We’re no different at Baylor.”

The NCAA is setting the guidelines for those conferences and teams that want to play BB this year. What the Big-12 as a conference and Baylor as an individual team choose to do is entirely up to them, not the NCAA. The Big-12 conference could have elected to shut-down and not play the season at all, just like the Ivy league and at least one other league. If you, as a school, do not want to play and your conference does, simply elect to shut the season down like Duke and Virginia have done even though the ACC is still proceeding with Wbb play.

As far as Wbb is concerned, the NCAA is certainly not reaping big dollars from holding a Wbb tournament. The entity after the notoriety, fame and money by continuing to play Wbb is Baylor, not the NCAA.

If Ms. Mulkey, her team and her AD don't want to play Wbb, don't, but if you continue to play, at least place the blame where it needs to go.

ZagDad

[Markburn1]

If Ms. Mulkey, her team and her AD don't want to play Wbb, don't, but if you continue to play, at least place the blame where it needs to go.

ZagDad[/QUOTE]

Coach Mulkey gave her personal opinion on why the season will continue. Until her bosses decide she is correct that’s how it will be at Baylor. It isn’t her decision although she probably has considerable influence.

She is also correct. If billions weren’t involved there would be more teams and more conferences with elevated concerns about health.

[upan8th]

It's a tricky proposition ZD. Polls taken of the young men & women playing collegiate BBall this season show that, almost unanimously, the athletes want to play. Even with differing, uneven applications of Covid protocols and school by school methods of isolation and quarantine. Why should they not? None of them, as far as I've been able to discern, have died of the virus & of those afflicted, most, possessing the robust health of young athletes, are asymptomatic. It's the rest of us, older, no longer confident of immunity, that the rules are supposed to protect. But do they actually achieve that goal? Incomplete studies have yet to determine quantifiable results.

And so the athletes, a finite clock ticking on their careers, are the ones left in the barrel. They want to play. Let them, in a quasi-bubble restricting their access only to each other & their coaches. Masked, tested regularly, sacrificing any semblance of normal college life, let the games go on. Mulkey is lashing out because, essentially, she feels she let her team down by contracting the virus somehow outside the program's realm; she knows she didn't get it from her players.

[ZagDad84]

Markburn1 and Upan8th, I agree with both of you.

Of course the NCAA wants the Mbb tournament to continue, they have already lost hundreds of millions of dollars from the cancelation of last year's tournament and the teams who would have been selected to the tournament lost hundreds of thousands (in some cases), millions of dollars in others from their athletic budget leading many schools to cancel or eliminate non-revenue generating sports. If this year's tournament was cancelled, the revenue shortfall for both the NCAA and the member schools would be dire.

Upan8th, I agree with everything you said, especially the college student athletes being confident of immunity. However, the NCAA has given the players a mulligan. It has given every senior, in every winter sport, an extra year of eligibility and allowed the schools to exceed the normal scholarship limits for next year. So senior student athletes do not lose the year if they elect to opt out this year. Non-senior athletes can opt out for this year using a redshirt (St. Mary's Wbb Sam Simeon is one such player).

How the schools pay for these extra scholarships and how it screws up next year's roster is the real problem and has been largely ignored by the NCAA. For example, the Lady Zags currently have 16 players on the team with 4 incoming freshman (so far) for the 2021-2022 school year. If Gonzaga offered every senior on the Wbb an extra year of eligibility, the Lady Zags would have 20 players on their team next year. While it is nice for the seniors, what about the juniors who have put their time in and were expecting to start next year and now have another year (their senior year) sitting on the bench. They did not get an extra year of eligibility.

Yes, for the NCAA and member schools, if there was no money involved, I am sure that many more schools would have opted out of playing this year. My point was that the NCAA cannot mandate that the schools play basketball this year or any other year. The NCAA can offer an opportunity to play, they can offer teams money for playing in their tournament, but they cannot make a school play. The final decision to play rests with the individual School Administration, School Athletic Department and coaching staff and of course the players, and that is where the ultimate responsibility lies, IMO, not the NCAA.

ZagDad

[ZagDad84]

Some input on Kym Mulkey's statement from Geno Auriemma head coach of UConn Wbb.

"Talking to coaches around the country. Almost nobody gets infected by playing basketball," Auriemma said on a Zoom call. "I think the number of people that contract COVID by playing against somebody, it's been like almost zero. Everything that's happened has happened off the court.

"So you mean to tell me these players wouldn't be getting COVID? Matter of fact, coaches are getting COVID at home. If you ask these players, 'Do you want to play, or do you not want to play?' except for a few minor instances, ask the players and 100% of them are gonna say, 'I want to play.'"

Auriemma, asked to comment on that said, "You know, Kim has some strong opinions on things. And I think if we asked anybody, I don't know that anything that she said was completely off the charts wrong.

"However, having said that ... the almighty dollar has a lot to do with what we are doing. And without the men's NCAA tournament, there's a lot of things that happen in the NCAA that don't happen. There's a lot of championships -- mainly all of them -- that wouldn't be held, if it wasn't for the men's basketball tournament."

Auriemma also said players and coaches who don't want to take part in this season for safety reasons can choose not to participate.

"But the reality of the situation is, if we don't have a men's basketball tournament for two years in a row, then a lot of things that we are used to having, you're not going to have," Auriemma said. "Because it's not like the women's tournament is going to go out there and make enough money to pay for anything. We're gonna make some money, but not enough to survive.

"And yeah, maybe it's easy if you're at a Power 5 football school, and you're making millions and millions and millions of dollars, that's great. But 90% of the schools in America are not in that situation. So, it is about the money. That's just the reality of it."

Kim Mulkey caught Covid-19 from a family member during the Christmas holidays.

ZagDad

[23dpg]

Some input on Kym Mulkey's statement from Geno Auriemma head coach of UConn Wbb.



Kim Mulkey caught Covid-19 from a family member during the Christmas holidays.

ZagDad

I’m don’t think there’s any way to know that.

[ZagDad84]

I’m don’t think there’s any way to know that.

That is where Ms. Mulkey said she caught it.

I took her at her word.

ZagDad