In the past 24 hours, the internet has seen at least two articles which state that Tyler Summitt’s affair with one of his players tarnishes the Summitt family legacy. This is not only wildly unfair, but also sexist.

Tyler Summitt’s actions are reprehensible, given his position as the coach of the player he slept with. That said, if this is painted as the defining moment of anyone in the Summitt family, that is tremendously unfair to his mother — a woman who many would argue is the greatest women’s coach in history, and a contender for the greatest coach in the history of sport.


Pat Summitt-coached teams have won 1,098 games (the most of any college basketball coach, male or female), eight national titles, 12 Final Four appearances (tied with John Wooden for the most of any coach), 16 SEC regular-season championships, 16 SEC tournament championships, and an .841 winning percentage at Tennessee. Her 1997-98 Volunteers went undefeated, going 39-0 against one of the toughest schedules in the nation. She won five Naismith Women’s College Coach of the Year awards, an award that only began 13 years into her coaching career. Every single one of her student-athletes who completed their eligibility at UT graduated — every single one. In addition, Summitt coached an Olympic gold-medal winning team in 1984, as well as three gold-medal teams and two silver-medal teams in other international competitions. On top of that, she played on three medal-winning teams in international competition, including a gold medal in the 1975 Pan-Am games and a silver medal in the 1976 Olympics.

Pat Summitt was named the Naismith Coach of the 20th Century, honored as the best college coach of the first full century of basketball’s existence. Not the best women’s coach — the best coach. She was inducted into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999 — the first year of its existence. She was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.


She is, without a doubt, one of the greatest minds in basketball history, and her role in women’s college basketball is without equal. The amazing thing is, if not for the horror of early-onset Alzheimer’s, she’d likely still be adding to these accomplishments today.

Yet her son cheating on his wife with one of his players and impregnating her, as awful as that is for someone in his position to do, is supposed to completely negate all of this?


No.

Look, what he did was absolutely, inarguably, and obviously wrong. It abuses the coach-player dynamic, and it displays the inherent patriarchal sexism of society’s male-female dynamic as well. And, yes, he almost undoubtedly got his position due to his mother’s accomplishments, though in fairness, by all indications he had legitimate and unique qualifications for the position.


That said, the idea that Tyler’s actions somehow tarnish Pat’s legacy is quite possibly even more sexist than the actions themselves. To be able to brush off a list of accomplishments that would make any other coach — male, female, basketball, non-basketball — green with envy, just because of the actions of her son, is unacceptable.

One has to wonder if there is a gender-role dynamic in play, if there’s an underlying implication of “Pat Summitt is a great coach, but obviously she failed as a mother” to all of this. If so, this takes the already-established unfairness and carries it to an exponentially silly level.


One comparison that can be made here is the Pittsburgh Drug Trials. Among the players who were listed as having used cocaine was Dale Berra. An admittedly brief LexisNexis search did not pull up anything that hinted at admonishing his father, Yogi Berra, in any way. He was mentioned, but only as Dale’s father — nothing more. Yogi’s legacy was not mentioned, or even hinted, as tarnished by Dale’s drug use.

One can legitimately speculate as to whether this amounts to a coded reinforcement of what the role of the mother is supposed to be in our society. If it is, and it sure reeks of it, it belittles all women.


Nobody should condone Tyler Summitt’s actions. If he was honest in his statement to the public, he doesn’t condone them himself. That said, to somehow put these actions onto his mother and reduce her accomplishments in any way at all — especially the extreme way that the articles I read did so — is wrong at best, and absolutely horrid in its inherent sexism at worst.

As Pat Summitt slowly and unfortunately fades into her way-too-early sunset, we should celebrate her myriad accomplishments. Let these accomplishments stand on their own.