Notre Dame coach Muffet McGraw says it’s past due that women receive more coaching opportunities. She isn’t just talking about it either.

McGraw aims to maintain an all-female staff.

“We don’t have enough female role models,” McGraw said Thursday at the Final Four in Tampa, Fla. “We don’t have enough visible women leaders. We don’t have enough women in power.”

McGraw’s moratorium on hiring male assistants has been a talking point in Tampa, where the defending national champion Irish will play Connecticut in Friday night’s second semifinal.

What isn’t a talking point at the men’s Final Four in Minneapolis is the fact women are not on men’s basketball coaching staffs. I wonder if anyone has ever asked Michigan State’s Tom Izzo or Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski or any other men’s coach why they have all-male staffs.

They likely have never given it much thought — or been asked to.

But for McGraw, it’s clearly frustrating to coach talented women for decades and then see over the course of her 37-year career more women’s head coaching jobs go to men while nothing changes in the men’s game.

“When you look at men’s basketball, 99 percent of the jobs go to men,” said McGraw, who has had an all-female staff for seven seasons. “Why shouldn’t 100 or 99 percent of the jobs in women’s basketball go to women? Maybe it’s because we only have 10 percent women athletic directors in Division I. People hire people who look like them. That’s the problem.”

As women’s basketball became more prestigious and the coaches became better compensated, more men began pursuing — and receiving — those jobs. In 1976-77, 79.4 percent of NCAA women’s basketball head coaches were women; that figure had dropped to 59.3 percent in 2017-18, according to an article about McGraw at ThinkProgress.com. Only 18.8 percent of the teams in this season’s NCAA Tournament had all-female staffs.

You’ll not be shocked to hear that 100 percent of teams in the men’s tournament were coached by all-male staffs.

McGraw sees her role as a basketball coach as a way to advocate for gender equality. While speaking to reporters Thursday, she spoke passionately about the lack of women in leadership positions inside and outside of sports.

McGraw started by citing the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and acknowledging that while the gender pay gap still exists for all women, women of color are paid even less. She mentioned how less than 5 percent of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are women. She sounded rightly baffled that while women make up 50 percent of the population, they make up only a quarter of Congress.

Parents and teachers need to show McGraw’s speech to girls and boys. And they need to watch for themselves.

If ever in need of motivation — whether fighting for equal pay or considering entering a male-dominated field — just listen to McGraw’s remarks.

“Enough,” she said. “I think women across the country in the last few years have just said: ‘Enough. Time’s up. It is our turn. If it’s going to happen, we have to do something about it.’ You see women marching in record numbers across the country. Women are coming out and being more active politically.”

McGraw, who played basketball at St. Joseph’s University and professionally in the short-lived Women’s Basketball League, knows sports can be an exceptional avenue for women to become leaders. This is her ninth trip to the Final Four with the Irish, and she has become a respected voice in college basketball.

“All these millions of girls that play sports across the country, we’re teaching them great things about life skills,” she said. “But wouldn’t it be great if we could teach them to watch how women lead?”

That’s exactly what McGraw is doing.

sryan@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @sryantribune

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