I don't know Mertz and the criticism seems harsh but lots of coaches would love to have her experience, maybe not her record, but her experience. How many female "A" licenses are there out there with her years of experience in college and ynt program?? Gender equity considerations do make this an easy hire, at least easy to justify. I do think the testimonials are impressive but also think they are often put in press releases as a cya for the committee. And these names do provide some cover. My simple test is this - off the record, would DiCicco or Ellis be happy sending their daughters to play for Mertz? Compared to just coaches in the Pac12 or even just the NW of the country? Would love to hear a truly candid response to that question.
like the collegiate system, the national team program rewards a person based on their gender. Hence the recycled coaches and females who run sub-par programs collegiately and yet are quickly elevated to lofty coaching positions in the national team program. In essence they also try to balance a supposed social inbalance by hiring less qualified females. How many "A" licensed/Premier Diploma (if you actually believe licenses are true representations of coaching ability) male coaches are there with equivalent experience but a greater record? In essence the reason she has experience is due to being afforded opportunities that would not have been extended had she been a make. Of course there are exceptions to the rule.
Maybe she was the next qualified person that applied and did not turn it down. Maybe a few men turned it down.
Lots of good topics here... National staff- our national staff seems to have its share of coaches who have failed in college (Taliaferro, Patberg, Duerst, etc.) it's almost a requirement to underachive in college before you join our country's finest staff. Even Swanson and Ellis are more renowned for underachieving on the biggest stage than winning. If you take a look at the coaches over the last 2 years who have been sacked, a majority had head coaching experience when they took the job, but there didn't seem to be a gender bias to it. 2011-2012 Arkansas- Aubrey, female, HC Morehead State Colorado- Hempen, male, HC Duke Northwestern- Foster, female, HC Harvard Nelson- Nelson, female, HC Stephen F Austin Pitt- Sue-Moy Chin, female, Asst Coach TCU- Abdalla, male, HC UNLV Texas- Petrucelli, male, HC Notre Dame 2012-2013 Arizona- Oyen, female, Asst Coach Cincinnati- Salmon, female, HC Ball State Indiana- Lyon, male, HC Evansville Mississippi State- MacDonald, male, Asst Coach NC State- Springthorpe, male, HC Fresno State Oregon- Erickson, female, HC Portland State 7 female- 6 male 10 w HC'ing experience - 3 without I don't know that it is easy to speculate on how a coach will do simply based on their paper credentials. While Oregon hiring a coach with a less than stellar résumé is easy to jump to conclusions, the accusation of hiring unqualified people because of their gender seems unsupported recently. Of the 44 jobs who hired last year, 8 were female.. And of the 7 BCS jobs, 2 were women (Kelly to Texas and Golan to Minnesota.) Thought it would be interesting to grade the hires before and after for last year and them grade the hires for this year. We could peak back in a year and see how close we were. I would not have fared well on last year's hiring speculation.
I've been part of hiring committees that were told in no uncertain terms "you are only to consider females, we will not hire a male" - I've never heard it said "we will only consider males........" The number and gender of the coaches hiref/fired in the past isn't the question, the issue of whether there was someone who applied & was more qualified is - regardless of gender.
I know that SLU passed on someone last year because they were worried that the coach would leave as quickly as possible and that's why they went with Mertz. That is looking like a great decision now, haha
Really? All the committees I have been involved with have gone over the title IX issues, but they have never been given a mandate. It's illegal. All the school needs is a disgruntled committee member and the school is toast.
Absolutely it us illegal. And it happens ALL the time. Let's be honest here. Mertz got this job because of her anatomy. She was at the top of the pool of a weak candidate list of people with vaginas. That may sound very crass but it is true. Nothing was accomplished at Texas, despite their resources. She did nothing as a goalkeeper coach nor as a recruiter and somehow the school with one of the 2 biggest budgets in America had trouble getting into the Tournament. Same could be said of the other assistant, who got the head job at George Washington and then led them to their worst conference record in school history. Mertz somehow gets the SLU job and posts 5 wins and gets a PAC-12 job. It is an utter joke. Oregon will get what they deserve. They have facilities and Nike but without a qualified coach it will not mean a thing.
It may not be spoken within a search committee, but it sure is implied a lot. If Mertz was a man she might be out of coaching and sure wouldn't have all these wonderful quotes from US Soccer higher ups.
Cliveish - I've seen this first hand as well. It DOES happen. There is gender bias in hiring in college women's sports and I'm not going to open the can again and pass judgement on this forum but it does happen. I've seen committees handle it in subtle ways but they know the HR compliance person and/or their boss (a VP usually) is going to overrule a male hire. Let's be clear though. Big difference between "qualified" and "most qualified" or "best candidate". Mertz was CLEARLY qualified in every way for the Oregon job. It would be very hard for a committee looking at her credentials and references to pass her up. What would the AD's at SLU and TX say? (her recent former employers) If those references gave her a green light or were at least neutral, there are very few HR/EOE people that would approve a committee bypassing her for a male candidate. Sorry guys but reality bites sometimes. You get to go apply for all the boys/mens soccer jobs out there that Mertz wouldn't consider, including all the MLS and semi-pro mens jobs that don't even exist on the women's side (at least currently). Happy holidays...
There may be gender based hiring, but you can't tell a committee to only hire from one gender. It's just too risky. And why would you bother to take the risk? There are lots of ways to get around it. You can select the committee chair and members who understand the expectation and title IX issues, or you can tell them they need to submit candidates from both genders to the AD, who will, of course, decide which is the better fit from the fine candidates presented. I have seen both of those scenarios play out. I've also seen a committee refuse to propose fron the desired gender and a new committee was formed.
You're overestimating the intelligence of some of these folks. Plenty of these admins can do it when they know the penalty for speaking out is a lifetime ban from college coaching.
I must say, all of the posters quoted above sound like complete idiots to me. Look at the men's college sports and tell me how many females are being hired to coach men's teams? 100% male or very close to it. Are you on the men's sports sites complaining about penises being a requirement to coach men's sports? Personally, I kinda doubt that you are. Yet somehow it is ok to post comments here that that you are not going to pass judgment about women being hired to coach women athletes, but vaginas do happen, if you know what I mean, and therefore men are being discriminated against. This discrimination exists, you claim, despite the fact that men coaches have an overwhelming numerical advantage compared to women when you look at all college sports teams. Really, I can't think of anything more stupid than the posts quoted above.
So . . . allowing discrimination is a defense against further discrimination? So 2 wrongs DO make a right? I totally agree with you to a point - women in coaching have been willing to basically agree to discrimination in their favor in women's sports in return for allowing discrimination against them in men's sports. Ultimately, it's not a good deal for women, men, or student-athletes as it simply prevents folks from getting the best possible coach. However there ARE successful women coaching men's teams at the collegiate level - I think we referenced the woman who coached track/xc at Brown earlier in this thread . . . and there are others, though not enough. Ultimately when a less able person is hired due to gender, it's the student-athletes who lose, no?
So the Pac 12 now has TWO women coaches and you are claiming that is evidence of discrimination FOR women????? That is simply a moronic opinion, so easily refuted by basic statistics that it is difficult for me not to assign misogynist motivations to you.
If women make up 10% of the applicant pool (actually less, but we'll round up a bit), yet have 20% of the jobs, that could very well be evidence of discrimination. In the Big12 50% of the teams are coached by women. That's a 500% over-representation vs. the applicant pool, just to throw some "basic statistics" out there. Does the name-calling thing work for you often? Where gender equity work needs to be done, is enabling the pool of female coaches to grow and develop - elevating tokens and/or the less able has had a negative effect on this goal.
I'm actually not big into name calling which is why I avoid doing it. But sometimes opinions are expressed that simply endorse the status quo but are actually, for example, "moronic". I feel compelled to call that out as opposed to simply going with the flow. There is zero evidence to me of discrimination in the specific situation that is being held up by some posters on this board as profound evidence of discrimination. Your example of 50% women's coaches in the big 12 falls to 25% if we include men's soccer. It isn't going to get better until colleges and other institutions make the courageous choice to go against the status quo you advocate so strenuously for.
where did you get your figures on applicants? I didn't see any totals for U of O , for example. do you have a source, or are you making this up? Were there more or fewer Men applicants for that particular job? can you positively establish there were any male applicants at all? Near as I can tell, U of O kept the list confidential. Did you file a FOI request?
Hiring a less qualified applicant (not minimally qualified) for a position due to gender is wrong. If this occurs, then it shouldn't. When administration states that their intention is to hire the most qualified person, then they should adhere to their stated intentions. This standard should be applied to everyone in the applicant pool, regardless of gender. This should also hold true for those females applying for positions coaching males. If schools want to be "courageous", then they should require those less qualified female applicants (and males) to gain more experience. Hiring a less qualified applicant in order to right a social wrong is a contradiction. You hire a less qualified applicant, a female for example, and negatively impact the playing experience of females players. This doesn't seems to make sense. Perhaps this is a "moronic" statement though
So, even if the opportunities to get the qualifications are effectively closed to a gender, there should be hiring only based on qualifications? Great system. it explains perfectly why the legal profession was effectively closed to women when I was an undergrad, and why almost all fields were closed to women except grade school teaching and nursing when my mother graduated from college before WWII. The first question they asked her when she looked for a professional position was how fast she could type. they didn't ask male applicants that question.