Her numbers speak for themselves. She's the all-time winningest coach in college basketball history, and the only one with more than 1,000 wins. She was a seven-time National Coach of the Year. Tennessee won eight National Championships, including a threepeat with those great Chamique Holdsclaw-led teams in the late-90s, and two in a row a decade later with Candace Parker.
Tennessee has been to every NCAA Tournament (which started in 1982), and reached the Sweet 16 every year but one. The Lady Vols played in 18 Final Fours, not counting the four in the AIAW, the precursor of the NCAA. Every Tennessee player from 1978-2008 got the opportunity to play in at least one Final Four, perhaps the most remarkable of her records. Oh yeah, and every single Tennessee player under Summitt graduated.
But those incredible stats only tell part of the story. Did you know she won a silver medal in the 1976 Olympics, the first to feature women's basketball? As a player. When she was already the head coach at Tennessee. Eight years later, she was the head coach as the USA won gold.
Of all the tributes to Summitt that came out today, one of the best came from Peyton Manning. Manning played four years at Tennessee before becoming an NFL legend. When he was debating whether or not to return for his senior season, he sought out Summitt's advice about what he should do. He, of course, decided to come back, then was drafted No. 1 overall by the Colts in 1998. He was proud to call her a friend. The biggest compliment he gave her, though, was when he said that he considered her one of his coaches.
A lot of people said that Pat Summitt was such a good coach that she probably would've been able to coach men. Manning took it one step further. He said that she could've coached any team in any sport. He's probably not the only one who thinks so. She commanded that much respect.
Whether or not she could've coached men will forever remain a matter of debate. (Tennessee asked her to coach the men's team twice.) And it's really an irrelevant argument. Because her impact on the game of women's basketball will never be forgotten. When she started at Tennessee (as a 22-year-old recent college graduate), women's athletics were an afterthought. There was no budget, and they weren't even sanctioned by the NCAA. When she retired 30 years later, she was making seven figures and her team was regularly appearing on ESPN, as part of its multimillion dollar deal for exclusive broadcast rights to the women's NCAA Tournament.
Everyone knows that none of that would've been possible without Pat Summitt. She made women's basketball relevant. She made people take notice of her team, and lifted her sport in the process. Tennessee hasn't been to the Final Four since Summitt retired (in fact, they haven't been there since the 2008 title). That's not because Tennessee has "struggled" under her successor, Holly Warlick. Rather, it's a testament to how much better women's college basketball has become.
She brought out the best in everyone, from her players to her opponents to her rivals. The Tennessee-UConn rivalry was legendary. Her battles with Geno Auriemma were legendary. And the feud between the two of them that led to the discontinuation of the series was well-documented. They eventually mended their relationship, and Auriemma penned one of the most touching tributes to Summitt on Tuesday.
I can't even imagine what life was like for her in her final years. She was a shell of her former self. Dementia deprived her of everything. When her family announced on Sunday that she was in bad shape, we unfortunately all knew what that meant. Her suffering is now over, and that we're thankful for.
Pat Summitt. A coach. A teacher. A mother. An innovator. A Hall of Famer. She was to the women's game what John Wooden was to the men's game. She will never be forgotten.
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