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Basketball on a football field
‘How ‘bout that Iowa women’s basketball team!” Playing basketball on a football field — and before a crowd of 55,000 no less.
Where will they perform next? Perhaps a Broadway theater? There’s been real basketball on stage recently. My son-in-law, Jason, recently played the foul-mouth coach in the basketball play, “The Great Leap.”
Maybe they could play basketball on the Moon — or inside a modified Space Station.
How far women have come since the fight for Title IX began in 1972. Iowa’s Christine Grant spent much of her life effectively responding to the male opposition that continues to this day — leadership producing benefits beyond Iowa to the nation and world.
Clearly the highlight of the sports law class I taught was the hour she was willing to come and mesmerize the students.
No one else was willing to teach sports law and I felt, when students are begging to learn something, a faculty has an obligation to respond.
My teaching it was otherwise a peculiar choice. In a small high school (U-High) a six-foot-three, 195-pound male was required to participate in all sports: football, basketball and track. In Austin I was urged to play football for Texas. (I declined.) I liked the Green Bay Packers primarily because of its nonprofit public ownership.
In my Washington jobs I thought the demands required a self-imposed “maximum work product per unit time” (something I’m not proud of).
And so it was, when reading the L.A. Times on a return to Washington, I flipped over the sports section to the business pages. Though unmarried at the time, I hadn’t noticed or spoken to a woman my age next to me. A tap on my shoulder. “Yes,” I responded. “Would you marry me?” she asked. “Anything’s possible,” I replied, “but the plane is full of men more handsome and wealthy. Why me?” “All my life,” she said, “I’ve been looking for a man who doesn’t read the sports pages.”
As Maritime Administrator during the Vietnam War, I had some responsibility for “sealift” of military materiel, using refurbished World War II cargo ships. Although based in Washington I needed to visit our office in Saigon. The White House requested that, while there, I write up my observations about the war.
The startling lesson I learned was that whatever one thinks about wars in general, there are times, places and circumstances when they are impossible to stage.
For example, when locals have lived through centuries of invaders and we’re just the latest; it’s an ongoing civil war; we don’t know the native language, history, culture, or tribal relationships; we wear uniforms but our enemies don’t; we can’t distinguish enemies from the locals we employ; our efforts increase rather than decrease chaos; and there’s no front line, as territory is gained only to be lost again.
And what’s this got to do with women’s basketball?
I had summed up my report with the concluding line, “You can’t play basketball on a football field.”
Nicholas Johnson is a fan of Iowa women’s basketball, no matter where played. Contact [email protected]
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