It’s not a stretch to argue that Geno Auriemma has the most powerful voice in college basketball. It’s a combination of his outspoken nature, his Hall of Fame resume, his elite-level program, and simply that there aren’t many others in his corner of the sport that will get a bit of attention from national media.
He knows that when he speaks, people listen, and it helps that he knows exactly what to say and when to say it.
We’re four days from a presidential election in a year where social justice initiatives have taken their long-overdue place in the spotlight. Geno was never going to stick to sports during the Big East media day Zoom.
Our friend Daniel Connolly transcribed the whole thing because I know you don’t have the attention span to watch eight minutes:
If you think Geno came up with this off the top of his head, you clearly haven’t been following the program for long. He’s masterful at picking his spots and striking the right chord, and boy did he do it here.
Every coach was asked about the conference’s social justice initiatives on Thursday and commissioner Val Ackerman spoke about it at the beginning of the day. Men’s and women’s basketball players in the conference will wear Black Lives Matter patches on their jerseys and the Big East established the John Thompson Jr. Award this year, which will go to the department, individual, or team that has made the greatest strides to “fight prejudice and discrimination and advance positive societal change.”
As for UConn, preseason player of the year Christyn Williams (Arkansas) and preseason freshman of the year Paige Bueckers (Minnesota) say they have both already voted absentee. The entire team is invited to watch election results at the Auriemma residence on Tuesday night.
All that is to say there was no reason that Geno HAD to take the final eight minutes of media day, which to this point was three-and-a-half hours old, and deliver such a powerful message. But who was going to stop him? Friend of the Site John Fanta, who moderated the Q&A session, wasn’t going to shut the Zoom down. Geno had the floor for as long as he wanted it.
His monologue, which was about 800 words long, boiled down to the four words he said at the end:
“Your support comes on Tuesday.”
He said he supports the patches, the t-shirts, and the catchphrases that have become commonplace on social media, and seemed to imply that his vote would back that up (take from that what you will). He also said he knows people who claim to support the initiatives but “when it comes time to vote….nah, I’m not going to go there.”
This is personal for Auriemma and he says it up top. He’s the son of immigrants and, like his mother, took pride in becoming an American citizen. Now he’s a millionaire with a wine cellar. Something, something, something, American dream.
He says he feels bad for his grandchildren who are growing up in today’s climate. He says his players — and people their age or older — have a chance to make a statement about that climate on Tuesday.
You think he’s talked to his players about that? Here’s what Bueckers had to say:
“It was really big for me to use my platform and use the social media image that I have to try to get people to vote,” she said. “I can’t ask people to do it if I don’t do it myself. We could talk about change all we want but until we take steps toward action it’s not going to mean anything.”
Williams might only have 27,000 followers on Instagram (Bueckers has over half a million), but she knows it’s important to use her voice as well. It’s what the players she looks up to in the WNBA have done and she wants to follow their example.
“I follow a lot of WNBA guys on social media so just to see them being aware and participating in certain things is very important to me because I want to be in the league one day,” she said. “Just knowing once I get there that they’re doing the same things I’m doing right now, I think that’s pretty cool.”
Geno has 11 national championships and has won approximately one billion games. If you listened to him for five seconds on Thursday, it was clear that what his players had to say means just as much to him, if not more. At one point, he reminded the media that sports really don’t matter in the grand scheme of things.
Tuesday does. For everyone.
