The Wrong Man for the Job

Jim Izard coached the Indiana Hoosiers women's basketball team from 1989 to 2000. In that time the Hoosiers won 188 games, making Izard the winningest women's coach in school history. For 12 seasons, Izard worked on a one year, year-to-year contract. But Jim Izard was a man coaching women's basketball at a time that most of the power conference programs were looking for a different sex to coach. Success didn't matter. A good coach, but not so stupendously successful that he was irreplaceable, Jim Izard was on borrowed time. Even legendary UConn coach Geno Auriemma says men are on their way out in women's hoop, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2003:

"It's over for men as head coaches at the big schools because no president or no athletic director is going to have the guts to hire the best coach. They are going to have to go out and hire a woman whether she is the best coach or not."

After the 2000 season, Jim Izard was replaced by Kathi Bennett. She didn't get a one-year contract, though; it was for 5 years at over $110k a year. Izard's best year was less than $77k. Izard sued Indiana University for discrimination. Faced with Izard's lofty record, the contract differential and salary differential, apparently the school didn't want this one to go to court. They settled. Over the next few years the team did, too. After winning 20 games in Bennett's first year, they won 17 the next. Then 13. Then 12. Then 10. Bennett resigned. Indiana moved on to another coach.

But for Izard, no Division I programs moved on to him. Not only was he the wrong sex, he'd been litigious as well. Despite 188 Division I wins, Jim Izard fell all the way to little NAIA Berry College in Rome, Georgia, a long way from the Big 10. Maybe it was too long. After coaching in a premier conference and doing it well, there had to be frustrations. Midway through last season, Izard called it quits, leaving Berry College in January 2005.

Last week, Izard called it quits again. He put a bullet through his head. Dead of a suicide, Jim Izard was 57 years old.

A few days after his death, Berry College won its conference tournament. Every player on the team was recruited by Jim Izard. The players said the title was a gift for him.

The whole story is very sad. It's funny how discrimination has a lot of different faces, and even if one kind gets snuffed out another is ready to take its place.

But there might not be someone else coming along to take Izard's place. His job description is being phased out, and the men like him, who have devoted their lives to building a career in this particular sport, will be phased out, too. Just like in any case where decisions are based on sex or race, we're all a little worse off for it.

Rene Portland, the coach at Penn State, is one who knows we are worse off without Jim Izard. After a Big 10 tournament game this week, Portland remembered her former rival to the Indianapolis Star:

"Jim had a personality that didn't let the game get in the way. He played to the crowd. He had a great sense of humor. . . . It's such a shame."

It is.