Ding, dong, the witch is dead.
Well, not dead. Penn State women’s basketball coach and avowed homophobe Rene Portland has resigned. Good riddance.
Yes, in her 27 years as coach of the Nittany Lions, she brought the program to national prominence, earning more than 600 wins and taking her team to the Final Four in 2000, but she also cloaked the program in a veil of shame. She was a pioneer as a player – she played for tiny Immaculata College in the 1970s when it was a three-time national champion – and as a coach and touched the lives of many in a positive way, but she’ll be remembered for her intimidation tactics, discriminatory behavior and refusal to admit wrongdoing – or change.
Dating back to the 1980s, she was quoted more than once unashamedly proclaiming that she wouldn’t tolerate lesbians on her team. And yet she kept her job.
It wasn’t until 2005, when a suit was brought against Portland and the university by a player dismissed from the team, that the school finally took some punitive action. The player, Jennifer Harris, alleged that Portland discriminated against her based on race and her perceived sexual orientation, and that the coach asked her to look more feminine. The case was settled out of court in February, and the terms were not disclosed. After an internal investigation, Penn State fined Portland $10,000, finding she had created a “hostile, intimidating and offensive environment” for Harris based on what Portland perceived to be her sexual orientation. And still she kept her job.
I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating for my continued incredulity that a state university with a non-discrimination clause – rewritten by the faculty senate to include sexual orientation AFTER Portland’s anti-lesbian comments were published for a second time – would not fire an employee, a high-profile one at that, a molder of young women, for what appears to be blatant discrimination. Substitute any other group for “lesbian,” blacks, Jews, Muslims, Asians, Italians, and Portland would have been canned a long time ago.
John Amaechi, the recently out retired NBA center who played at and graduated from Penn State, addressed the Portland issue in an interview with me before the resignation. “If you’re serious about winning, then you won’t discriminate,” Amaechi said. “I went to Penn State. Penn State is always about excellence. If you’re not about excellence, then you shouldn’t be at Penn State.”
I asked him if he was saying Portland should be fired, and he replied, “I’m just saying what I said. If you’re the kind of person who would say no to the next Sheryl Swoopes, then you’re not serious about winning and that seems incongruent to the idea of Penn State.”
PSU Athletic director Tim Curley says Portland was not pressured to resign. That’s disappointing. When I first saw the news, I thought the university finally had seen the light and given her a not-so-gentle prod out the door. After all, there are a number of high-profile coaching vacancies – Texas, Florida, Louisville, LSU (which I’ll address later) – it figured that Penn State would want to get on line now before some of the prime candidates were scooped up. I thought, even if it wasn’t for the trouble but for the past two disappointing seasons the team has had – perhaps because of the controversy – I’d be OK with that. But no, Portland, who has not spoken publicly about the resignation, apparently made her own decision. She shocked many of her supporters and detractors by electing to leave.
Is it finally an admission that she’d done wrong? A step toward admitting she has a problem? A valiant gesture to step aside, realizing she’d outlived her worth to the team and the school? I hope so.
Coaching pioneer and legend Jody Conradt elected to step down this month after her Texas team missed the NCAA tournament for the second consecutive year. Though she’d been a revolutionary and finished her career with 900 wins, second to Pat Summitt on the all-time wins list – men’s or women’s -- she had been unable to get it done the past few seasons. She did the honorable thing.
The previous week, Pokey Chatman, the popular, effervescent coach of LSU, resigned. She’d taken over for another pioneer, Sue Gunter, when she became ill with the emphysema that soon killed her. Chatman had been a star point guard at LSU, became an assistant coach there right out of school and helped lead the team to the past three Final Fours. Almost immediately after she resigned, rumors flew and it was soon confirmed that she’d had inappropriate contact with former players. Some might want to find parallels in the LSU and PSU situations. They might use the LSU episode as an argument that Portland is right, that lesbians have no place on a team or as coach. That’s illogical. First of all, we don’t know what actually transpired between Chatman and her former player(s), nor of her or their sexual orientation. Second, male coaches are just as likely – if not more so – to have inappropriate contact with their female players. Still, resigning was the only thing Chatman could do.
I hope Portland’s reasons, like Conradt’s, were honorable too. Her staying would have been bad for women’s basketball. The college game is about more than winning and losing, it is about teaching young people to value themselves and others, it is about teamwork. Regardless of how one feels about homosexuality, discrimination is incongruent to the concept of team.
While Conradt is 65 and has had a full career -- the first undefeated season for a women's NCAA basketball team and a national championship -- some might argue that at 54, Portland still has several good coaching years in her. Any team or school that gives her a job would be foolish to do so. At the very least, they open themselves up to liability, at worst, they send the message that Portland's kind of discrimination and failure to accept blame are OK, even encouraged. That message, too, is contrary to the concept of team.