Sarah Fuller’s debut is a reminder of lack of women in college athletics | Yahoo Sports College Podcast
Yahoo Sports’ Dan Wetzel and Pete Thamel, and Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde discuss Vanderbilt K Sarah Fuller’s groundbreaking debut, as well as, why there haven’t been more women hired to coaching roles throughout college athletics.
Video Transcript
DAN WETZEL: Sarah Fuller.
PAT FORDE: Yeah?
DAN WETZEL: She is the star of college football. Got many people excited about college football. She's going to apparently be the kicker again this week.
Pete and I were talking with this earlier. I wrote a story about-- I talked to a bunch of women who work in the National Football League-- coaches, agents, league personnel. There are referees. There's all this stuff. There's a bunch of women-- not a ton, but they're growing ranks working in the National Football League, and they were very excited about Sarah Fuller.
And their feeling was that this will inspire more women to think-- not to play football. They're not going-- you can't play in the NFL as a woman. Just it's not happening, sorry. But why do we not have more women working in college football in the coaching ranks? You have these huge staffs, more schools, more places, and we don't have an offensive analyst anywhere. We don't have an assistant tight-end coach. We don't have a-- you know, video coordinators. We don't have women.
Literally half the population is not included in the job pool, and just common sense tells me that there are women out there who would be quite adept at all sorts of jobs in college football and, quite honestly, one day should be the head coach. We don't even have it much in basketball. Could it happen? Could it work? Is this an advantage for somebody? Like, I mean, seems like a lot of teams is treading water here. Maybe, you know, go open up the pool of candidates here.
PETE THAMEL: Let me start here. I give college football credit. Where you have seen an influx of women, especially in the past seven or eight years, is in the recruiting departments. For example, I know Lee Davis is the director of recruiting at the University of Florida and is a vital part of that staff and their recruiting effort. She's a daughter of a high-school football coach, and she's relied upon for evaluation both of football and of character and knowing families and being kind of the face of the recruitment.
And she is by no means the only woman. There have been a handful of other women who have been in those operation roles. I think Bob Diaco had a woman at UConn. Like, they're-- we have seen more and more of them, and I do really feel like the coaches who have hired women have really said, oh, they add such a different perspective and a balance to the staff and can relate to the kids in such different ways that they've gone and hired more.
But when will we cross that Rubicon to having a woman as a position coach? I don't know that, but I do feel like we're close to that within the next 10 years.
PAT FORDE: Boy, I hope it's sooner than 10. It is mysterious to me that we still haven't gotten to that point. And, you know, there's plenty of smart women. There was a woman on the Stanford swim team who got an analytics internship with the NFL office, you know, people like that. I mean, there's plenty of great number crunchers, probability people, you know, I mean, that can step in and be helpful in those positions that are becoming increasingly valuable or at least leaned upon in coaching departments.
Why it hasn't happened in college as much as the NFL, Dan, Pete? I don't know other than the fact that college, in general, in almost every hiring practice in athletics has been behind the professional leagues.
DAN WETZEL: I just, you know-- again, it's not even like, well, you should do this. It's why not take that advantage?
PAT FORDE: Yeah.
DAN WETZEL: And the Boston Celtics had Kara Lawson as an assistant coach, and then she got the Duke women's head-coaching job. If you can be the assistant coach of the Boston Celtics-- there's 330 college programs out there. Like, it seems like she would be capable.
And I know that old idea. This is a men's locker room and blah, blah, blah. Like, those days are over. Coaches are getting fired for that culture.
PAT FORDE: Yes.
DAN WETZEL: You know, there's tons of people who coach who never played competitive football beyond high school or if that, and the games are so much more complicated than even when someone might have played 40 years ago. It doesn't matter. So I think this is sort of-- it was an interesting conversation.
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