Basketball Coach Slams NCAA's Treatment Of Women In Brutal Thank-You Note

Georgia Tech womens basketball coach Nell Fortner has just penned a thank-you note to the NCAA , but she probably doesnt expect the organization to respond by saying youre welcome.

Thats because Fortners note is a brutal takedown of the way the organization handled its womens basketball tournament , especially how it treated the players as an afterthought.

Fortners note, posted on Twitter Tuesday morning , took no prisoners:

Thank you for using the three biggest weeks of your organizations year to expose exactly how you feel about womens basketball an afterthought.

She continued:

Thank you for showing off the disparities between the mens and womens tournament that are on full display in San Antonio, from COVID testing, to lack of weight training facilities, to game floors that hardly tell anyone that its the NCAA Tournament and many more. But these disparities are just a snapshot of larger, more pervasive issues when it come to womens sports and the NCAA. Shipping in a few racks of weights, after the fact, is not an answer. Its a band-aid and an afterthought.

Fortner then took the group to task for claiming to be a nonprofit devoted to helping student-athletes while giving short shrift to half the athletes. In what other non-profit educational endeavor is it acceptable to give women inferior text books and cheaper cafeteria food because of their perceived cash value? she wrote.

The coach conceded that while the TV contract for the NCAA womens tournament isnt as lucrative as that for the mens tournament, its still worth half a billion dollars to the organization and attracts a loyal TV audience.

For too long, womens basketball has accepted an attitude and treatment from the NCAA that has been substandard in its championships. Its time for this to stop, she wrote. Its time for womens basketball to receive the treatment it has earned.

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Nell Fortner (@NellOnWheels) March 23, 2021

The NCAA came under fire this past weekend after players and coaches first noted the dramatically disparate amenities given to male and female athletes competing in the March Madness tournaments.

Not only was the womens weight room in San Antonio just a stack of dumbbells compared with the mens spacious setup in Indianapolis, the available food choices for the women were much less appetizing than the food offered to male players. The men received better quality COVID-19 tests than the women as well.

The NCAA took steps to improve the amenities for the female players after being shamed on social media .

The organization also apologized Friday and vowed to do better.

I apologize to the womens student-athletes, coaches and committee for dropping the ball on the weight room issue in San Antonio, well get it fixed as soon as possible, said Dan Gavitt, the NCAAs senior vice president of basketball.

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