Despicable Race-Baiters At USA Today Got It All Wrong: Women's Basketball Was Built By ALL Women
Black women did NOT pave the way for women’s college basketball.
Outraged?
Oh ya, well, so am I. I’ve had it, absolutely HAD IT, with the woke, race-dividing, venomous crap that I read almost daily in the liberal legacy media, such as USA Today. I AM FED UP. Completely sickened.
Black women did NOT pave the way for women’s college basketball because ALL women who have played, or who are playing college basketball, or who will one day play and continue what I'm sure will still be a fight, have paved the way for women’s college basketball.
ALL.
Black. White. Hispanic. Asian. Native American. Every ethnicity. All of them. ALL.
It’s taken ALL OF US!
Flushing, N.Y. - Immaculata College coach Cathy Rush in a huddle with players during a timeout against Queens College at Fitzgerald Gymnasium in the AIAW Tournament in March of 1973. (Photo by John Iacono /Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
From Day 1 To Present Day: Building Women's Basketball Has Taken EVERYONE
It's not always easy playing women's basketball. There are cynics and haters who make fun of and who degrade the sport, often without knowing much, if anything, about it.
Every woman who has fought the long, hard fight, dating back to a time when players had to hold bake sales and share uniforms because their programs had no money, and who had to cram into the back of cargo vans instead of flying in planes or riding in buses to travel hundreds of miles to road games…has paved the way.
Every woman who has sacrificed through middle school and high school to be the best player she can be in order to snag a scholarship, who has poured literally blood, sweat, tears and hours upon hours into her collegiate team…has paved the way.
Every woman who has talked with hundreds of aspiring little girls, and signed countless autographs and done every last media interview in an effort to promote her team and the sport…has paved the way for women’s college basketball.
Every. Single. One.
But Wait: The Race-Baiters Know Better…
USA Today writer Lindsay Schnell and her co-worker Nancy Armour, two white women who did not play college basketball, do not agree with me. At all.
And they know better, of course.
Last Thursday, Schnell wrote a story mostly about USC freshman star JuJu Watkins with a headline that partially read: "Women’s Basketball Needs Faces Of Future To Be Black."
Schnell reasoned in the story, "…in a game built by Black women, it matters that the faces of the future look like the faces of the past."
Armour shared Schnell’s story on X (formerly Twitter) and said, "This is such an important story by @Lindsey_Schnell. White players have long gotten the spotlight…."
I am a former Division I women’s basketball player ~ at Northwestern. I am White. I’d like to think in some small way, I helped the cause, that I helped pave the way, that I did my share to help build the sport. I’d like to think that every single one of my teammates at Northwestern, both Black AND White, helped pave the way and build the sport, too.
But according to USA Today, not true.
My blood is boiling. I barely even know where to go from here.
Race: Everything. All The Time.
Let’s start with the obvious: Why, why, WHY must EVERYTHING in our country today be viewed through the lens of race? It’s just so exhausting and so purposely divisive.
I am so sick of this "narrative" beating us over the head EVERY SINGLE DAY…and I just can’t even begin to try to understand it anymore.
Tell me, Lindsay Schnell and Nancy Armour…what do you get out of writing and promoting this piece of trash story? (And what editor at USA Today green-lit it? SHAME on that person as well!!)
What is the payoff to these people for sowing division, for alienating more than half the population, and for being DEAD FREAKING WRONG?
How do you put your name on this story? How do you endorse it? How does USA Today publish it?
I have been a professional journalist for nearly 30 years. This is one of the most irresponsible pieces of sports "journalism" I have ever read.
USA Today: Your Facts Are WRONG!
For starters: Nancy Armour, you are wrong when you write that "White players have long gotten the spotlight," as if to say that Black players have not.
Actually, plenty of Black women’s college basketball players have gotten some of the very brightest of spotlights. And rightfully so.
Cheryl Miller, Cynthia Cooper, Clarissa Davis, Teresa Weatherspoon, Tina Thompson, Dawn Staley, Sheryl Swoopes, Chamique Holdsclaw, Tamika Catchings, Candace Parker, Tina Charles, Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus, Angel McCoughtry, Nneka Ogwumike, Brittney Griner, Jewell Loyd, Arike Ogunbowale, A’ja Wilson, Aliyah Boston and Angel Reese.
L to R: Maya Moore (Photo: Jim Rogash/Getty); Tamika Catchings (Photo: Andy Lyons/Getty); Jewell Loyd (Photo: Mike Carlson/Getty)
I could go on and on. These women are some of the very best players ever in the history of the game. They have done so much for the sport…and they have been highly celebrated for it. For years.
My first memory of having a woman to look up to in basketball was when I watched the 1986 NCAA Women’s Basketball National Championship game between USC and Texas on TV.
Cheryl Miller of USC, who is Black, was amazing. She had great moves. I wanted to be just like her. Cheryl was tall, and so was I, even back then when I was in middle school. I was 6-foot-2…as an eighth grader. And I loved basketball. Cheryl Miller made me love it more.
In that game, I also loved watching Texas point guard Kamie Ethridge. She quickly weaved through defenders like it was nothing.
Ethridge is White. And she was good ~ as were, and are, so many other white players in the women’s college game.
I wonder how Ethridge feels to know that she didn’t build women’s college basketball.
How about other amazing White players such as: Caitlin Clark, Paige Bueckers, Sabrina Ionescu, Kelsey Plum, Breanna Stewart, Courtney Vandersloot, Allie Quigley, Lindsay Whalen, Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Shea Ralph, Ruth Riley, Katie Douglas, Stephanie White, Kellie Jolly, Ticha Penicheiro, Michelle Marciniak, Rebecca Lobo, Jennifer Rizzotti, Katie Smith, Jennifer Azzi, Kim Mulkey, Nancy Lieberman and Anne Donovan.
And again, I could go on and on. There are so many more. And these players have done so much for the game as well.
L to R: Nancy Lieberman (Photo: James Drake, Sports Illustrated via Getty); Diana Taurasi (Photo: Elsa/Getty); Kelsey Plum (Photo: Aric Becker, Icon Sportswire via Getty)
Hey, Lieberman, Lobo, Taurasi, Bird, Stewart, Plum, Ionescu, Bueckers, Clark…I’d love to hear from you, or any White women who have played the game. Do you believe that you did NOT build women’s basketball…because you are White?
Because that’s what USA Today believes. Are you OK with that conclusion?
Do White Athletes Not Count In Other Sports, Too?
Would USA Today also argue that Larry Bird, Dirk Nowitzki, John Stockton, Nikola Jokic, Jerry West, Steve Nash, Pete Maravich, Kevin McHale and other White men who had stellar careers had nothing to do with building the NBA because Black men built it?
Would USA Today argue that Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, John Elway, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Peyton Manning, Joe Namath, Dick Butkus, Roger Staubach and countless other White men who were amazing players had nothing to do with building the NFL because Black men built it?
L to R: Larry Bird (Photo: Mitchell Layton, Getty); Tom Brady (Photo: Maddie Meyer, Getty)
The notion is completely absurd, of course.
So many people of so many different backgrounds, across decades and decades of time, have helped build all the sports that we know and love.
In fact, in women’s basketball, there have also been Asians such as UCLA’s Natalie Chou, and Hispanics such as South Carolina’s Kamilla Cardoso, who is from Brazil and UConn’s Lou Lopez Senechal, who was born in Mexico. Native Americans, such as sisters Shoni and Jude Schimmel, have been a part of the history of the sport as well.
Again, ALL Women Have Built Women's Basketball
The point is, it’s been all of us who have grown women’s basketball. All of us ~ no matter our color, our ethnicity, our sexual orientation, our religion, our nationality ~ have had some kind of impact, big or small, on the sport.
ALL. OF. US. TOGETHER.
DALLAS - How far women have come together. A sold out Final Four in 2023 as Caitlin Clark reacts after Iowa's win over South Carolina during the semifinals of the NCAA Womens Basketball Tournament Final Four at American Airlines Center on March 31. (Photo by Ben Solomon/NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
It’s been the purest form of teamwork there can be. Fighting the good fight, fighting through all the tough times, one and all, year after year after year, because, simply…we love the sport.
All of us.
ALL. OF. US.
So, please…go back under your slimy, race-baiting rocks, Lindsay Schnell and Nancy Armour.
Women’s basketball is doing, and has always done, just fine without you.
Full disclosure: I occasionally used to cover sports around Chicago with Nancy Armour, who worked for the Chicago Tribune years ago. Back then, I considered Armour a friendly colleague and a nice person. And maybe, on a personal level, she still is. I have not spoken with her in years. Back then, it seemed that she genuinely enjoyed covering women's sports, and was fair. But this narrative that Armour is helping to push is all the more hurtful to me because of this context, and because I would expect better from Armour. Way better.