A Damaged Legacy: The Tyler Summitt Story
If you’re a pro-sports fan from the Northeast or the West, you may not know about Pat Summitt, or her legacy. However, SEC fans and even a casual follower of women’s college basketball know just how important she was to the sport. Pat Summitt was the women’s basketball coach for the University of Tennessee “Lady Vols” from 1974 to 2012. She led the Lady Vols to 8 championships, and a team record of 1098–208. She never had a losing season.
More importantly, Pat Summitt was a trailblazer of the role of women’s sports in general, as her team was the poster child for sucess in the NCAA, soon after the NCAA allowed women’s championship games in 1981. Summitt even received the Presidential Medal of Freedom upon her retirement, in large part to to the role she played in popularizing women’s sports in America. Pat Summitt may be a living legend in Knoxville, Tennessee, but her role in women’s athletics is felt around the world.
Throughout the Lady Vol’s best seasons in the 1990’s, Pat Summitt’s son Tyler Summitt was a common sight in the arena, and was even seen as an unofficial mascot of sorts. The young man was surrounded by women’s basketball throughout his childhood, as constantly witnessed some the of the best basketball play the World had ever seen. Therefore, it seemed like a smart choice for Louisiana Tech, a school with a middling athletics program (except fora history of sucess in women’s basketball), to hire the 23-year-old Tyler Summitt in 2014. Summitt wasn’t exactly a great basketball player (he played a grand total of 9 minutes on the Vol’s basketball team, though he did apparently win free chicken for the fans at a game), but the pedigree of the Summitt name was more then enough for LA Tech to take a gamble on him.
That gamble did not pay off. First of all, Tyler Summitt was not the coaching guru his mother was. His two years coaching the team led to a losing record of 30–31, and never finished higher the 6th in the Conference USA standings. However, the team’s losing record wasn’t what made him abruptly resign— it was a sexual controversy. Summitt, already a married man as he took the job, was forced out of LA Tech because he impregnated one of the players on the team. Summitt has asked the media to respect his own privacy and the team’s on the matter of who Summitt impregnated, though its rumored to be point guard Brooke Pumroy.
Amidst this scandal, Tyler Summitt has failed to continue his mother’s legacy in two ways. In a narrow scope, he failed as a women’s basketball coach. The “Lady Techsters”, a team who won 3 NCAA women’s basketball championships, finished with a losing record under Tyler Summitt, a man hired primarily on his mother’s achievements. Tyler also failed as a role model because he abused his status as a position of authority to take advantage of a young woman. While the sex does appear to have been consensual and legal, the relationship was still highly inappropriate, because aspects of obligation to follow an authority figure and favoritism come into play. It was Summitt’s job as a coach to be a leader, and to set an example for more integrity than most, but he instead demonstrated none by using his authority to conduct an inappropriate sexual relationship.
On a much larger scale, Tyler Summitt has failed to continue his mother’s legacy as a leader for the progression of women’s athletics. The work that Pat Summitt put into her Lady Vols helped popularize women’s sports around the world. The WNBA turns 20 next month, an achievement only possible because of women like Pat Summitt. She and select others elevated both the quality of women’s basketball and its popularity in the mainstream sports media. Tyler Summitt, by coaching women’s basketball, could have elevated womens’ role in sports even more. Instead he damaged his team and his own reputation, setting back the progression of womens’ athletics by a small but symbolic measure. I am just 8 years younger then Tyler, and I feel that our generation’s duty in the sports world is to increase the equality and popularization of women’s athletics, because all people deserve the many benefits of its positive impact. Tyler, if you ever read this, I hope you join me in that goal.
