Monday, February 27, 2006. "The Inside Scoop on Title IX." Nancy Lieberman.

MS. LEE: We're going to start, if I can have your attention.

Thank you. In the spirit of this meeting, I have been given yet something else to read which was written by someone else. Jeanie Norris was going to introduce Nancy Lieberman, but her mother is very ill, and she's not here. So rather than trust me to come up with a biography, Jeanie has sent me the introduction that she would be giving, and I'm going to read it, because it's great. And remember, I am reading Jeanie's words; so when I use the first person, just imagine that Jeanie is speaking.

It was back in 2000 and word had leaked out that Nancy Lieberman would be our speaker for the opening of the new Anne Meyer Cross Athletic Center at Miss Hall's School. Barely able to catch her breath, an exuberant 16-year-old member of our basketball team rushed into my office. "You've just gotta let me introduce Nancy Lieberman," the breathless girl said. "She's awesome!" And for the next few minutes, Hillary bubbled over with a long list of Nancy's accomplishments on the court.

At 17, Nancy was named to the US Olympic team and competed in the 1976 games in Montreal. She was by that time 18, and thus the youngest player on the women's team to win a medal as she and her teammates captured the silver prize that year. Then at Old Dominion University, she and her teammates won two national championships, and from there, Nancy was drafted by the Dallas Diamonds.

They wanted to draft me, too.

Later, she made history when she joined the men's pro league and played for the Springfield Fame and later for the Long Island Knights. On a lighter note, she was a member of the Washington Generals, the team that occasionally lost to the Harlem Globetrotters. Of course, Nancy went on to become the president of the Women's Sports Foundation, a businesswoman, and general manager and head coach of the WNBA's Detroit Shock. In 1966, she was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, one of only 11 women. 1966?

MS. LIEBERMAN: You can play on my team!

MS. LEE: 1996. Yes. Currently, she is general manager and coach of the Dallas Fury. As impressive as Nancy's career is, what is even more remarkable is her unswerving commitment to her goals, her drive to prevail regardless of the odds, her pioneering spirit at a time when the world was not quite ready for girls to flex their athletic muscles. As Nancy's mother told her when she was growing up in Far Rockaway, Queens, "Girls don't play sports."

Nancy says in an article that appeared not too long ago in the Dallas Morning News that she responded to her mother by saying that not only did she intend to play, but also that she intended to be the best player ever.

For inspiration, she chose real live heroes that included such athletes as Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, and Muhammad Ali. About Ali, she said, "I wanted to be the greatest, like him."

Nancy knows that she benefited enormously from an era that saw opportunities expand for women athletes as a result of Title IX. Furthermore, she has a reverent appreciation for those who went before and paved the way, just as girls we teach today have a reverent appreciation for Nancy and all those who continue to push forward the frontier of women and sport.

To give us an update on Title IX and the forces that would seek to limit its impact, I give you with great pleasure Nancy Lieberman, Olympic athlete, acclaimed manager and coach, on-the-air voice for ESPN, and caring and loving mom to son, T.J.

MS. LIEBERMAN: How unbelievable. I get a hug from you today, and I get a hug from Bobby Knight the other day. So some things seem to just work right in my life.

I do have a great life. It is amazing, the fact that in 1966, I was inducted -- no, I'm kidding. With the help of Oprah and plastic surgery, I am here before you today. What a dynamic woman Oprah is, to have her be in South Carolina, in Charleston, and what she's done. Really, she epitomizes strength, vision, kindness, in just everything she's done for people. One of the most unselfish people I have ever seen.

But today is not about Oprah. Today is about us, because there are a lot of powerful people in the room today. See, we should be our kids' heroes, we should be their role models, we should be the people that they aspire to be. Because I know that when I was growing up and I was playing basketball and I was running around the streets of New York pursuing my dreams and pursuing my goals, it was the people in my school, it was the athletic directors, the teachers, the coaches, who had a profound effect on me. I didn't know it at the time, but I walked the way they walked, I talked the way they talked.

We do have the ability to change people's lives, just by being who we are. We don't have to say it. They can just see it. How we handle ourselves on a daily basis is immeasurable in the eyes of kids.

Now, I can't speak for every kid. I can only speak for myself as a kid and I know what sports did for me. I was a young kid in Far Rockaway, New York. I came from a one-parent family. I grew up in a poor household. And I tell people, "Please do not feel sorry for me, because where I grew up and how I grew up changed my life."

My parents were divorced when I was 9 years old. I can remember the times that my brother and I were with my mom and we were taking her purse and shaking it to try and find money to put gas in the car to find my father so he could pay alimony. And I can remember as an 8- or 9-year-old looking at that and thinking, that will never happen to me. This picture will never happen to me in my life because I'm going to take control of my life. And control of my life meant building my confidence and building my self-esteem in making something of myself. My avenue out in New York was sports, and no, we didn't have USA Today and we haven't Title IX and we didn't have ESPN and all these opportunities for women.

But in my heart -- and I have always been a person who follows my gut on things. If I have to think about it, I probably shouldn't be doing it. But I follow my gut on a lot of things. And when I was growing up as a child, I knew that basketball was my ticket, my ticket out. And how fortunate am I? I'm 47 years old, and I was on the cutting edge of Title IX. Title IX gave me the opportunity to make something of myself as a student athlete.

I never knew how I was going to get out of New York. I love New York. But I never really knew how I was going to get out of New York. And I can tell you about the days that I would take the train at night, by myself, as an 11-, 12-, 13-year-old kid, to Harlem because they told me that the best basketball players in the world played in Harlem. Well, Muhammad Ali was my hero and he said he wanted to be the greatest. If I wanted to be the greatest, I had to go to where the best players played. And my mother would look at me and she'd say, "Nancy, what's wrong with you? This is New York. Do you not read the newspapers? Do you not know what goes on in the city? You can't take the train by yourself to Harlem."

And I was as innocent as I'm telling you I was, and I would just look at her and say, "Ma, if you let me take this train, if you let me go play ball, I promise I won't hurt anybody."

And she would just shake her head and say, "You're kidding. Nancy, I'm not talking about you hurting anybody. I'm talking about people hurting you."

I'd say, "Nobody's going to hurt me."

And at the time, I talked like this, because like I was from New York and I was in the city. And as I started broadcasting for ESPN, they said, "That's probably not going to work." So this is $2,000 later. I had to lose the accent. True story. Because my first time on TV, I was like, "Yeah, the ball goes into the centah and he turns, and you know, at the end of the quatah, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that play."

And they said, "No, you need a little work on your enunciation," and so this is the result of that.

But in being around a lot of people who influenced my life, the one thing that I know -- and I say this because again, your job is to go back and either work with your kids on what's been successful, change what hasn't been successful, or give them good solid information. Because as we know, young people get a lot of mixed information, and they pass it on, and that becomes their source of knowledge. So it's our job to give them solid, concrete information. I am of the ilk where you cannot pound these kids and tell them, "You can't do this, you can't do that," because it will turn them off.

I have an 11-year-old kid. I know how I responded when people dealt with me. Every time somebody said I could not do something, it challenged me to prove him or her wrong. And I don't know if that's the right technique or the wrong technique, but I can tell you that when I was growing up and these people kept saying, "Why are you playing sports? What is wrong with your daughter? Why is she hanging out with black people in the park?" it just fueled my confidence and my desire to prove to people that what I was doing was right.

And you know what? Playing sports for me crossed a lot of social barriers, and I didn't even know I was crossing those barriers. When I went into the park in Harlem and these guys were looking at me like, "What are you doing here?" I was like, "What are you doing here? It doesn't have your name on it. I want to play ball as much as you want to play ball."

And it's funny, because at first blush it would look like here's a little white girl and here are these black kids and they have nothing in common. We had everything in common. We wanted to win, we planted to play ball, we needed teammates, and I was your girl. And if we wanted to win, or I wanted to win, we had to learn how to trust, we had to learn how to share, we had to learn how to respect, all because of that little basketball. And it changed a lot my thoughts on what I wanted to do and how I wanted to be when I was growing up.

Today, in this room, if I pick four of you right now and said, "You're going to be my basketball team," and we've never played basketball with each other, I would have to trust you. I would have to trust that you would make me better. You would have to trust that I would make you better and that we could be successful. Even though you come from different areas, everybody in this room right here today is here for a reason. You want to be better. You want to bring something positive back to your communities or to your schools. That's the beauty of this right here. We are a team. We're a team. Yes, Liza, you can play on my team, but you're going to be a role player.

In life, we're all role players. We might think we're stars, but in the big picture we're role players, and we have to do our job to make people better.

When I talk to kids, when I'm coaching, the first thing I'll say to a player is simple. "Do you make you better? Or do you make people around you better?"

It's a simple question. If you make you better, you probably don't play for me. If you make people around you better, I want you as part of my team, no matter what it is. Baseball, football, basketball, I want you on my team. If it's business, I would like you on my team, because we have to take each other up to different levels.

Now, since we're honest with each other, if my friend Charles Barkley was here and he hasn't played golf here in the south, in Charleston, has he? He hasn't played the courses here, has he? No? It's a distinct possibility that he could tear up a course or two. Okay? I have never seen anybody with a hitch on the way down. It's pretty ugly. Okay? Jordan won't play with him anymore. That's how bad it's gotten.

But you know, you want to be around people that lift you up. And I really believe, especially with young people, the difference between a good day and a bad day is what? It's your attitude and belief. It's right here. If you think you're going to have a bad day, you're going to have a bad day. If you think you're going to have a good day, you're going to have a good day. You can practice success every single day of your life by how you project your attitude, how you handle the bumps in the road. It's not going to be perfect every day. We know that. But I also feel that if you have a plan for success, that's the way to go.

Our society is so based on goals, achieving those goals. How do we go about it? But we limit ourselves. Sometimes we are a society that flat-out limits ourselves. Sometimes we're like sheep. You know how sheep kind of -- anybody knit or anything? I don't, but you know how sheep kind of move in a pack, and they're really happy every day, and they don't get away from each other, and everybody's good. We're all right here.

You know what? I challenge you, I challenge the kids at your school to break away from the pack, to go places where maybe you're not so comfortable, to challenge yourself to be better as administrators, as principals, as parents, as friends, on a daily basis. Don't be comfortable with what you do, because if you're comfortable, what it promotes is mediocrity. Kids do that all the time, get comfortable. Players get comfortable.

I think that if you will find that next level -- and it's hard -- and I'll tell you, most of you in the room I'm assuming know who Lou Holtz is, the football coach. He works at ESPN as an analyst, Lou Holtz tells this great story about challenging yourself and not limiting yourself.

Bruce and I have spoken a lot, but we just met each other today for the first time. Let's say I said to my new friend Bruce here, "Bruce, I'm going to blindfold you and I'm going to put this board on the floor, okay? And I'm going to put it on just some cement blocks and it's going to be a foot off the ground. And before I blindfold you, I'm going to ask you to walk across this piece of wood. It's three feet by two feet."

And being a confident guy, a musician, who's been involved in athletics, he'd go, "Nancy, no problem, I can walk across this board because I think I can make it. So he walks across."

I say, "Bruce, that was fantastic. You were an athlete." Then I say to him, "I would like you to do the same thing. The only difference is, I want to put a blindfold on you. The piece of wood is the same height off the ground. It's on the same cement blocks. The only difference is: I want to blindfold you."

And the first thing he might think is: Failure. Oh, my gosh, what happens if I fall? It's the same height, it's the same width, it's the same length, but we would think negatively.

We can't think negatively. We have to think positively about what we do each and every day, or how we interact with each other. We limit ourselves because sometimes we're afraid of those challenges at the next level. As an athlete, as a coach, you really are preparing people to look beyond what they're capable of doing, to push them to levels that they didn't think they were capable of doing. When I trained Martina Navratilova in the early 1980s, Martina's goal in life was to win points and be the greatest shot maker that tennis ever had.

And I said, "Well, okay, that's fine. That's not a bad goal. But let me ask you a question. You might make two or three spectacular shots during the course of a match, and Chris Evert might beat you. Don't you want to be the greatest tennis player that ever lived, the greatest competitor instead of shot maker? Shot-making is short-term. Greatness is long-term."

In 1975, I was 15 years old, just turning 15, and I had tried out for this USA team. And there was an article in the Long Island Press that said, "Try out for the USA basketball team."

So I told my mom I was going to play ball one afternoon, and we went to Queens College. There was this tryout and I couldn't believe it! There were like 250 girls playing basketball. It validated that I wasn't crazy, because all these people -- "Ms. Lieberman, why is your daughter playing basketball? What's wrong with her?"

And I kept saying, "There's nothing wrong with me, I just want to compete."

So we go through this tryout. I end up being one of six players from the tryout that New York sent to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the USA national team. We're playing the Russians.

About four days into tryouts, I had my ribs broken and they were sending me back to New York. And I'm in the car, and if I had to pinpoint a moment in my personal career, this was one of those moments that changed my life, really an epiphany for me. I'm sitting in the back of the car. The head coach of the team is a woman by the name of Alberta Cox. I'm in the backseat, and Alberta is from somewhere in the south, and she's just talking to me like this and she goes, "Now, honey, you work hard in Far Rockaway, because we're going to need you in 1980."

Now, I wasn't that smart or anything and I talked like this, and I said, "Coach, you know, I'm not like really good in school and stuff, but I know '76 comes before '80."

And she just looked at me and she said, "Well, honey, yes, we know there's a '76 Olympics, but we're going to need you in 1980."

And I said, "Well, I hate to break the news to you, Coach, but I'm going to be on that '76 team, so you're just going to have to get used to me. Okay?"

And she just looked at me, and I'm in the car and I'm thinking, how dare the coach of the US National Team tell me what I can't be? This woman should be telling me what I can be. She should be fueling every bit of motivation and focus. She should be encouraging me and here she's telling me that I can't make it? The nights that I spent in Far Rockaway working on my left hand, shooting jump shots, running sprints -- every time I was tired, not motivated, didn't want to do it anymore, I thought of, "Honey." Right in my mind, in my subconscious, there was Alberta Cox, telling me what I can't be. And it gave me motivation and passion and focus and desire to keep doing what I was doing.

And a phenomenal thing happened in July of 1976. There was this 17-year-old girl, just turned 18, and we got up on this podium, and I bent over, and this man put this silver medal around my neck, and I could have cried, when they were playing the National Anthem, and I had chills. And I was so excited. My teammate said, "What are you so excited about?"

I said, "I got to go back to the Olympic Village, because I've got to make a collect call."

You know Pat Summit, the coach of Tennessee? She was my teammate. Ann Meyers, Hall of Famer, was my teammate. The great coach of LSU, who just passed away, Sue Gunter, was my assistant coach. Billie Moore is a Hall of Famer. She was my coach. I was the youngest player on the team. I'm still the youngest Olympic basketball player, male or female, in history. And I had just turned 18, and all my teammates were 23, 25.

I ran to the Olympic Village and I got on the pay phone, and I'm, like, "Collect call to Alberta Cox. Yes, yes. Hurry, please. No, there's other people that need the phone."

And I called her, and I said, "Coach, thank you so much." I said, "You did accept the charges, right?" And I just said, "Thank you."

She goes, "Why?"

I said, "Thank you for allowing me to be where I am today."

And we have become friends. You know, we really have been friends over the years. But I thanked her for giving me the impetus to have focus and desire and to understand what goal-setting is all about.

Our girls need this. I'm telling you, the more you can get your young girls involved in sports, they don't have to be Olympic athletes. They don't have to get a scholarship to Tennessee or to UConn. They just need to participate in sports, because it will help their confidence, their self-esteem, and their decision-making. I know we don't like to hear this, but there's drugs and alcohol out there, there are teenage pregnancies that change the lives of young women's futures. To say to a kid, "You better not get pregnant," you think they're going to listen to you? You think they're going to listen to me? No.

We can't approach it like that. We have to talk to them as adults. It's a different time, a different society. There's a different way of communicating messages. They know a lot more than we did with the Internet and all the stuff that goes on. And we have to talk to them.

When I'm out there with women in high school and their parents in Texas -- I have 25,000 families in Dallas that have come through my basketball camps over the last 23 years. I'm not just a basketball player. I'm their friend. I'm a mentor. I relate to the parents, thank God, and I communicate with the kids. A lot of times when the parents can't, they'll call me and say, "Can you talk to so-and-so?"

I value and so appreciate my position. It's a blessing, to be quite honest. I'm glad it's me, because I'm old enough to hopefully give some wisdom, impart some wisdom, but young enough to connect to some of the kids out there. Especially with my young one out there, it helps me stay in the loop with these kids.

But I learned this when I was on the First Lady's Sports Drug Awareness Program, and I was working with DEA agents. And I have to relate this story to you. Parents would come in, and let's say they found drugs in their kid's room or paraphernalia. The parents would be punishing these children, and the kids would not respond to it.

And the DEA agents said that they had done a study. Can you imagine, Bruce, if you came home one night and you were loaded? Karen wouldn't say to you, "Go to your room and don't come out -- and you better not drink again, because I'm telling you, young man" -- see? When is the last time someone called you young? "And I'm telling you, young man, you better not do that again."

Kids don't want to hear that. She would say to you, "Honey, what's wrong? Are you okay? Do you want to talk about it?"

Kids need that. They need that interaction, that stimulation. They need to know that what they're thinking is important. We sometimes, as older people, force our opinions; we don't hear. We really need to hear what these kids are saying and feeling, and then we can give them our thoughts and our opinions. I know because I'm around them all the time, and I joke about my golfing buddy, Charles Barclay. Charles says he's not a role model. Charles knows he's a tremendous role model. The guys that I hang around on a daily basis -- I'm always in NBA locker rooms and dealing with people on a constant basis. We are role models. We have to be there for these kids. It's imperative that we're there and we're helping them.

One of the greatest ways, and it takes me right back to my roots, is sports. Get them involved. Get them playing. Get them participating. You women in the room, how many women played sports growing up? That's good. Okay, how many women played team sports growing up? That is huge. Because you know what one of the biggest problems with us is? I'm taking the guys out of this for a minute. It's women. I can say this. We divide and conquer. We're really good at that. We're professionals. For example, if Karen and I -- where's Karen? She's outside? Are you guys okay? It's the drinking?

If Karen and I disagree with each other on something or I didn't like something -- and ladies, you know what I'm saying is true -- we don't actually tell each other that we're mad at each other. Okay? I tell five of my friends. And Karen tells five of her friends. So we now effectively have divided our team or our office. We divide and conquer. We've gotten our side. We've drawn a line in the sand, and now we hurt productivity, we hurt our growth; we can't empower each other to be better. It doesn't happen here; right? Promise? But is it true? This happens. We kill each other, which is why I admire the guys.

And I will tell you this story. I played in a men's league for two years. In the USBL, Michael Adams was an NBA All Star who played for the Washington Wizards. We're in practice one day and these two 6'9" guys, Ron Spivey and Andre Patterson, in the middle of a half court drill, just stop, they turn around, and Andre punches Ron Spivey in the face, and Ron is gone. I was like, "Oh, my gosh. I have to order pay-per-view for stuff like that."

And Michael Adams is pulling me away. I'm like, "No, no, that was a great punch. Ali was my hero."

He says, "You are silly. Let's get out of here."

I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. This is going to kill our team." We were in first place.

And he goes, "Oh, no, no, they'll have a beer later and be fine."

I'm like, "They will?"

As God is my witness, those two had a beer that night at the hotel, they shook hands, and they were fine.

And so I'm not advocating, women, that we hit each other, okay? Be clear on that. I'm not saying that. But if we have a problem, talk to each other. "Karen, I don't like the way you tell people behind my back that my hair's not colored correctly," or whatever the problem is.

Talk to each other. We don't communicate. We say we want to communicate; we drive these guys crazy because we say they don't communicate. We don't communicate. To be better, we must do that. We cannot scratch each other's eyes out. If I have something that's good that's working with my kids and my school, call your friend and say, "You know what? I have this great program that's really working in my school with my girls. You should try it."

I have guys who share information all the time, and nobody is territorial. "Well, I have a really great program, oh, you don't? Oh, okay."

We can't be like that. In basketball, we steal knowledge from each other all time. You think Mike Krzyzewski has drawn every play they run? No. He's taken it, you kind of nurture it, you tweak it to your liking, and then you run it with your talent.

It's an amazing process. But it can really work. It doesn't matter if it's athletics, if it's business, if it's just what we do naturally in our daily walk of life. When I talk about respect, I was at the 2000 Final Four in Indianapolis, and I'm in this Conseco suite, and there's Rupert Murdoch, there's Donald Trump, and there's Warren Buffet. You guys know who those men are? I feel so bad for them.

We're in this room, and the room is just packed. And I walk in, and I'm with some people, because I was doing some TV. All of a sudden, all these really important, really rich people came over to me. And some people are like, "What are they with her for?"

And you know what? They're asking me who's going to win the tournament, how many teams Cleaves is going to play, can Tommy Izzo's team do it? Does Billy Donovan have good guard play? What about the rebounding, Nancy, and what about the point spread?

Now, in a perfect world, why are Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, and Warren Buffet talking with me? It seems a little unbalanced, like my days in Harlem? And you know what? We were right here. Because they respected my knowledge. They wanted to know what I knew, which made us equals. It changed the level of the playing field.

Ladies, I would encourage you to know something about sports. Sports are a $4 billion industry in our society. $4 billion. I'm not saying you have to know every statistic, but if you're from Detroit, know that the Pistons are a basketball team. It would help on the respect factor with people that you talk to. It's not just something that works in your engines. Okay?

I'm not trying to be funny or demeaning, but I'm just saying, it helps. Encourage the young girls at your schools to participate. Teamwork is a beautiful thing. Accountability is a beautiful thing. Being on time for practice with 11 other women is a wonderful thing when we're talking about putting other people first. Right? If we can give them a solid foundation for working together, it will apply to everything they do in their life. It will really help them. And I know this, because I'm living and breathing those moments.

I shouldn't be your speaker today. I could have been a casualty of my environment. I could have given up when there was nothing to be had. I mean, I could have been that poor kid in New York, you know, just living in my environment. I'm so blessed each and every day to do what I do. I love it. I did the Texas-Kansas State men's game for ESPN last Wednesday night. I have been doing men's basketball for years. I do NBA basketball. I do a men's game on Thursday. I must have had 60 e-mails from people who said, "Oh, my gosh, it was really good to hear a woman doing TV. You knew what you were talking about."

People have to hear us to believe us. They have to see what we can do. You know, I talk about Muhammad Ali, because I love Muhammad Ali. And I have said this to him. As a matter of fact, Christmas Day, we spoke. His wife, Lonnie, would fill in the blanks on the phone, because sometimes itís hard for him to communicate.

We met when I was 21 years old. And my mother was in a room, my Jewish little mother was in a room with him in New York, and she goes, "Mr. Muhammad, I just want you to know that my daughter's the greatest basketball player."

And he goes, "I'm the greatest. I'm the greatest of all time."

And my mother, who is a little naive, goes, "Oh, Mr. Muhammad, don't worry. My daughter's good."

So Sugar Ray Leonard was in the room with us, because we were Olympic teammates, and Ali looks over at Sugar Ray and goes, "What's with the kid?"

And Ray goes, "She's great."

And Ali goes like this, (gesturing). He goes, "Come over here."

And like I was like, "What?" You know, "How are you?"

He says, "So they say you're the greatest."

I said, "Well, you know, you're my hero."

And he goes, "Isn't it amazing? A black heavyweight champion of the world and a white little Jewish kid. We can be the greatest, can't we?"

And I said, "Yeah, we can." And I said -- and this is how I talked at the time -- "You know, I don't know how that happened, but, like, you're more important to me than, like, my father was, because my dad wasn't there, and you helped me do what I have done. And you know, like, I never thought I'd get a chance to say thank you to you for changing my life and changing my vision and helping me with my passion."

And he goes, "I love you, too."

And I said, "Thank you. I love you."

And we've been friends ever since. And Christmas Day, I called him just to remind him that I loved him, for everything that he's done for me as an athlete. And it just shows you that if you trust, if you believe, if you're willing to give and not always take, that things that don't look like they meet up can meet up. Because there's no way a little white kid from New York should be friends with the black heavyweight champion of the world. And we've connected on all levels, and as we've gotten older, there has been just a deeper appreciation. And it's helped me so much, and I share that with my son every day. Every day.

With that, I challenge you to go back to your schools and make those connections with your kids. They're vital. They need you. I have been telling you stories about me because that makes me happy, and it's been a part of who I am and what I am. These kids need us. They need you. They need you to be there, and I know you are, on a constant basis, but like I said, the information they get is coming from all different areas and all different sources. And the good people that we have -- like I would hate for somebody in this room to retire, resign, move on, without really touching somebody's life.

Bruce wanted me to make mention of this. You know, I did the game yesterday and Marcia Sharp, the women's basketball coach at Texas Tech, is resigning, and she just got tired and burnt out, and I look at this woman, whom I really admire, and I'm sad that she's leaving. She's only 53, but she got to the point where she got burned out and she's ready to move on. And she won a national championship, her team has been to 18 NCAA tournaments, eight Elite 8s. She's done everything a coach can do. She's a Hall of Fame coach.

And the first thing I did when I heard Marcia was resigning -- because it's impossible; she shouldn't resign; she's young, she's at the top of her game. So I picked up the phone, I called Bob Knight. I said, "Coach, you didn't have anything to do with her resigning, did you?"

And he goes, "No, I promise."

I said, "You better be honest with me, Bobby. You didn't have anything to do with Marcia resigning?"

This is a true story. We were on the phone the other day. He goes, "No, no. She just got tired. She wanted to resign."

I said, "All right. Well, I believe you."

And then he said, "Well, would you be interested in the job?"

And I said, "Interested in the job? And fight with you every day? And the worst part would be your wife, Karen, would be siding with me."

And he goes, "You know, you're probably right. You're probably right. So maybe you shouldn't apply for this job."

We need you if you're good. We need you. We need your energy, we need your focus, we lead your love, and we need your passion. You wouldn't have made this trip without that.

So what I'd like to do now is open it up to question and answer. And I know it sounds like I have told you 45 minutes of what an egomaniac I am, because I told you about Ali and being great and this and that.

When I took the job in Detroit, my little boy, T.J., was laying in bed with me one day. He was about five years old, and we were watching Sports Center. And on Sports Center, Dan Patrick came on, and it was the day that Michael Jordan retired. We're laying in bed and Dan says, "It's a sad day in sports because Michael Jordan, the greatest player who ever played basketball, is retiring."

And T.J. is lying right here and he lifts his head and says, "Mommy, you told me you were the greatest player in basketball."

And my husband Tim goes, "What do you tell him when I'm not here?"

And I said, "Tim, I told T.J. that it's sad because Michael's retiring and Dan wants to make Michael feel good about his contribution to sports," and T.J. goes, "But Mommy, you are the greatest?"

And I say, "Yes, as far as you know.

You know, sports make makes you confident. Hopefully sports give you a little bit of a personality. It's humbling, also. It really is. There's a lot of good and bad, but it's given me so much that I could never give my sport back what it's given me, honestly. I have had so many incredible moments.

With that, Q and A? All right. I just want to coach for a minute. If you have a question, go like this. Let me see everybody go like this. No. Okay, I can tell I'm going to have to work with you. All right, everybody just put your arm up. One hand. Okay. Even the slow white people in the back, you need to do this. You need to put your hand up. Okay.

Now, if you're going to be enthusiastic as administrators and principals, you have to be able to raise the roof, so let me see two hands up, please. Right here. Let me hear some noise. It's okay. We can work with you. Questions.

MR. COWEN: Nancy, one of the things that's frustrating to me as the head of an independent school that only has teenagers is that we put a great emphasis on sportsmanship in athletic competition, and as you go up the line into college and professional sports, I think that emphasis point, which is critically important, gets lost. Why is that? Why can't the role models on the college and professional levels and the leaders of athletics at those levels put more emphasis on sportsmanship as opposed to just winning?

MS. LIEBERMAN: What's your name?

MR. COWEN: Peter Cowen.

MS. LIEBERMAN: Peter, I tend to agree with, you because this is where I'm going to end up sounding old school. When I was growing up, or when a lot of you were growing up playing, we played for the love of the game. We just played. We didn't need uniforms, didn't have to pay $1,200 to play or get in these leagues. We just went and played pickup games. We played because we wanted to play.

At the next level, first of all -- and ESPN is part and parcel to this, or Fox, or the TV networks -- we're putting high school games on TV. There is so much pressure on coaches, on the players, that they can't even enjoy their adolescence in competition.

At the collegiate level, when a guy steps up to the foul line and he misses the foul shot, it might cost his school a million dollars, come NCAA tournament time. So what happens is, you're talking about sportsmanship. Now people think that, well, so-and-so's cheating. Well, I have to cheat. Well, so-and-so is a little bit edgy.

And one begets the other and it ruins sports. What happened with Indiana and Detroit a year ago is abominable. It cannot happen in sports. And we take liberties that should not happen. And I know from talking to Commissioner Stern or talking to Miles Brand, who's the president of the NCAA, they're doing the best they can to put some sort of rules or restrictions or when Antonio Davis went into the stands at a Knicks game a month ago because he thought somebody was harassing his wife. You can't do that. You cannot go in the stands.

You know, I think sports should be spirited, but we are losing sportsmanship at every level, and it's so much of our society and it's so tied to a lot of the music and the words and the stuff that they're hearing that the kids think it's okay. You and I see it as not having sportsmanship. They don't see it. They see it as being cool. That's the biggest difference. And to convince them of what we see -- it's tough.

When I was coaching in Detroit, Chuck Daly, whom I'm assuming most of you know, who's the coach of the Pistons when they won the championships -- Chuck said to me, "Nancy, I'm a 68-year-old white guy."

I said, "Yeah, I noticed."

And he says, "Go into your locker room and listen to your players' music."

And I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, do I have to? Do I have to listen to that crap? I don't want to."

He goes, "Nancy, you're asking these kids to buy into your philosophy and to see things your way. Why can't you be open-minded enough to listen to what they have? It's a two-way street."

And I never really thought of it like that, to be quite honest. And I did. And I have been very open to listening to the information that kids are getting today. It's scary. Do I have an answer for you? No, I don't. Do I agree with you? Yes.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: Nancy, as a father of a grown daughter, who identified herself as very athletic in high school, you were one of the trailblazers with Martina and Chris and many others. Billie Jean King. So thank you for that, and for your influence on my daughter and on my ability to parent her.

I'm from Brooklyn, New York, by the way, and we have lots of kids from Rockaway at our school, which went co-ed and had girls in '77. The girls' basketball team will be in the championship next week.

My question is about coaching and one of the areas we struggle with administratively is whether women should coach our girls, a philosophy that I personally hold but don't always practice. And so I'm just curious about your thinking about women's coaching and, in particular, the advantages and pros and cons of males coaching girls in particular. Or do you really feel strongly that most of our young women should be coached by adult women?

MS. LIEBERMAN: Thank you. Congratulations and good luck on the championship coming up.

I'm a big believer in people, and the best person for the job gets the job, whether it's male or female. If you have a qualified woman who knows her stuff, who is good, yeah, I'm an advocate of women being able to coach women, because I see it all the time. If they're not qualified, and you just put a woman in that position, I'm not for that, either. I'm not for quotas or anything like that. I'm for the best people to get the best job if they're deserving of it. So I have seen Anne Donovan win the WBA championship. I have seen Pat Summit in her illustrious career. There are incredible female coaches and there are incredible male coaches now in the WNBA, as well.

The problem is that in women's sports, sometimes you have one shot at it. If I coach in the WNBA, the other thing I can do is coach college basketball or coach high school women's basketball. I'm not going from the WNBA to the NBA, because there are no women assistants in the NBA. There's maybe one in college basketball right now, so our jobs are limited. Our opportunities are limited. Now, a guy can be coaching men's basketball and have a horrible record and still get a job at another level. He can go either on the men's side or the women's side. So they have got options.

So I'm an advocate of women, like I said, if they are good enough, getting that opportunity. I mean, Rick Barnes and Bobby Knight, guys like that, have asked me if I wanted to coach college basketball, be an assistant. Avery Johnson -- those guys have asked me if I would be interested maybe in being part of the Maverick staff, which would be unprecedented because we don't have those opportunities. But I do think we have to move very qualified women across the board at high school, college and at the pro level.

MS. BOWERS: Title IX opened the door for a lot of women to have access to sports. I think those of us in the large urban centers are seeing governmental support for physical education programs waning in this country. Where at the public policy level are we going to find the national support for athletics that kids need in order to prosper in the way you have described in programs? Who's doing that, and how can we support that?

MS. LIEBERMAN: That's a great question. I think first and foremost, we have to maintain Title IX, and that's been taken on as a project on the Hill by some people who would like to do away with Title IX. And Title IX, as I'm sure everybody knows, is about proportionality. When Title IX was instituted back in the 1970s, it wasn't about athletics. Title IX was started for education, to give young women teachers educational opportunities so they could teach the masses at university and high school levels. And then it evolved into athletics.

I'm a Title IX baby. It changed my life. I wouldn't be here in front of you today without Title IX and having the opportunity to go to college. Public funding, state funding, athletics is very important, and I know we lose that in some of the high schools, where we don't have enough programs to get the kids interactive and involved. In individual communities, you have to fight for what you believe in. You have to rally parents, you have to rally administrators, and you have to rally your councilmen and women.

Every February, I go on the Hill in Washington and I meet with our constituents, and we talk about the power of Title IX, the power of education, the power of physical education, and what it means not only to young women, but also to children in keeping them healthy and strong. It's going to be a never-ending battle. It's something that we're going to have to do and stay convicted to. I have been doing this for 20 years.

Billie Jean started a foundation with the vision of helping girls and women in sports, and not only with health and awareness, but with education. So it's a process. It's like cancer. You have to keep working towards finding a cure. We won't stop.

MR. GALBRAITH: A lot of our students, female and male, are being recruited and are going to go through the recruiting process. Can you take us through that? Can you give us a little short course in what we can look for, what we should help them avoid, what are the strengths and weaknesses? Is there cheating going on? And counsel them, et cetera, et cetera.

MS. LIEBERMAN: It's America. There's cheating going on all the time, unfortunately.

Yes, recruiting is a business. I guess we should cut through all the pleasantries here. It's business. We're in the business of sports. Okay? Old Dominion offered me an athletic scholarship in 1976 because I could play basketball, not because I was really cute or smart. I could play basketball. It's business. They're giving me educational opportunities for my athletic ability. I was keenly aware of that.

Talking about recruiting, it's a business and if you look at it and you're emotional, "Oh, my gosh, they were really nice to me and everybody was really cool with me," that's their job. They're recruiting you. So they're not going to show you the ugly. They're going to show you the best of what they have to offer, whether it's campus or students or the life on campus or academic, academia, and athletics.

If you're being recruited as administrators, you might put together some sort of a questionnaire for the school. When I do TV, it doesn't matter if I'm doing a game with Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, or Mike Krzyzewski. I send a questionnaire a week before the game. I want to know what you run, who your players are, your strengths, your weaknesses, give me anecdotes. I want to know background on your kids. Do they go better left? Do they go better right? Because it's my job to be informed when I go on TV.

And some coaches say, "Oh, I don't want to fill out the questionnaire."

I say, "Fine. I don't want to do your game. There's two teams. The more I get from you, the more I put on TV. I'm here for you. The less you give me, the more time and information the other guy gets on TV."

So as administrators, I would have a form and I would have some really important questions about each of the different areas at the school, whether it's the arts, whether it's science, whether it's their business program, the ratio in the classroom, professional to students. I would do it systematically. They want to know about the student. Is this a good student? Does she attend class? Does she not? What is she strong in? I think that's the way you have to approach it. It's business and I would give them the proposal. This is what I want to know. That's exactly how I would do it.

SPEAKER FROM THE FLOOR: First, thank you. I'm also a product of Title IX, and I share your passion with that.

You see growing concerns on the men's and women's side about the scrupulous nature -- I'd like to know how much of the millions and the billions are going to AAU programs, and the idea of the necessary evil of what appears in some ways to be the jump shot of basketball in terms of what's going on there. We see some signs that the NCAA is starting to clamp down in the AAU world. Would you comment on that?

MS. LIEBERMAN: Oh, gosh. That's a whole other day here in Charleston. AAU has its merits. It gives the kids exposure, it puts them in a position for coaches to showcase the talent if you're a young kid who maybe hasn't been seen. It does give you access you to those avenues.

The other side of AAU has become a business. These people get paid to get kids and funnel kids to schools. Some AAU coaches are not technically under contract to schools, but it is very clear that the majority of their children will go to a certain school. We're running into that. Some kids go to Adidas camp, some kids go to Nike camp, some go to Reebok camps. Schools are now identified as Nike schools, Reebok schools, Adidas schools. It is amazing.

Michael Jordan and I have had this conversation many times because he'd like to see them go to Jordan schools. And he says that in jest, but that's what it's come down to. It goes back to what we were talking about. When LeBraun was in high school, ESPN televised two or three of his games.

In a perfect world, I don't think we should be telecasting high school basketball games. But what does it do? It brings in money. And if it brings in money, it's viable and we want it because in TV, we're all about time spent viewing. Time spent viewing. Every time we go to C-SPAN, we have meetings; the first thing they talk about is time spent viewing. How do we keep you with the clicker in your hand watching us? Oh, Lebron James. Yes. He's on, so we can keep you there for LeBraun James, and we have TV tricks to keep you from surfing, okay?

So it's a problem. And now with AAU, it's so big, it is such a colossal business of funneling athletes. The NCAA is trying, but it's almost like a lump. You know, sometimes you can find them, and sometimes you can't, because they're very creative. It's a business all unto itself and it's not going away anytime soon, unfortunately.

MS. BRIZENDINE: Nancy, I have a question for you, too. The advent of the three-season athlete is fading from our schools. We often talk a lot about it with concern, and you weigh that against the tension of every student having their own educational history, and the one-season sport. When you talk to the students, they think it's grand and great, and the more volleyball they can play, the better, and they're not interested in softball. Just your thoughts on that.

MS. LIEBERMAN: I was that seasonal athlete. I played baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and stickball. I mean, I was just a gym rat. I'd always be in the park playing, but I played all those different sports. It is changing, I know.

Remember how kids used to take tennis lessons, private tennis lessons? Now in team sports, we have over 100 children taking private basketball lessons from me on a weekly basis. It's amazing the money that parents will pay because they want Sally to have more opportunities than Jane or Michael than T.J. It is amazing to me. They can hardly put food on the table, but by golly, they have their Jordans on and they're going to be there at 5:00 with Nancy.

We are losing the seasonal athlete because they're getting to this mentality, "Oh, my gosh. There's so much out there." And how can you blame them? There is a lot out there. I want my kid T.J. to get a scholarship. I want him to be a great athlete. I mean, if I had my druthers, I'd like to see him be successful. And you start the mentality of, do you want to be great at one thing or okay at a lot of things?

People are starting to focus at a younger age because there's more out there. It's like the lottery. Scholarships are plentiful. Parents don't want to pay $200,000 to send their kids to school if somebody can get a collegiate scholarship. I'm one of those parents. But again, we all handle things differently.

I won't coach my little boy. Deion Sanders is my best friend, and Deion won't coach his son Bucky. So I work with Bucky on basketball, and Deion takes T.J. and works with him on football, which is a really neat trade-off. And our families do everything. Deion and I talk three days a week, "What are we going to do this week with the kids?" And it's kind of a cool thing that we exchange ideas on how we want to parent, and what we want to do, but we all want to make them play a lot of sports. He played baseball and football and he says he plays basketball. Well, so does Michael Irving. He says he plays basketball, too, but they're frauds.

MS. LEE: It's almost time to let you go, Nancy, but can you tell us a little about your foudation?

MS. LIEBERMAN: Yes. Thank you for allowing me to do this. Because of my background growing up, people helped me. It was really wonderful how people rallied around, helped me, and sent me to camps and things when I was little. I always promised myself that if anything good ever happened to me as an athlete where I obtained some level of status, that I would do something for children.

So I go to schools all over the country, whether it's New York or Dallas, and over the last 18 years I have established a scholarship program. We give scholarships to children, either local kids or fly kids to Dallas, and we'll give them educational components. We've given now over 7,000 scholarships through my camps in Dallas, Detroit, and in Phoenix. And it's wonderful. We'll take them to the book depository in Dallas where President Kennedy was shot, and we educate them, we talk to them. For the young girls, we give them stuff on Title IX, little pamphlets, like I talked about, dealing with drug awareness or staying in school.

But we use basketball as a hook. That's my hook to get these kids to pay attention. It's like you're wearing a medal and they're, "Oh, my gosh, she must be good." They might not have ever seen me play, which is fine, because that's really not what moves me. But we have really changed a lot of children's lives.

Since I'm a New Yorker, when we had 9/11, we flew children in who had lost parents from 9/11. The kids in camp next to those children would have never known that they were victims, because they weren't victims the week in Dallas. They were kids and the media didn't know they were there, nobody knew they were there. We just had fun, we laughed, we went to movies, and we played hoops. So we try to make it fun for them.

We did that with kids from Hurricane Katrina. We just try to make them smile and laugh and enjoy themselves. So I have had this minority scholarship program for 18 years. I'm really proud of it and we don't seek out publicity, and we just do what we do. We help kids.

MS. LEE: Thank you. I feel that you would have been looking at an athlete if I'd ever had a coach like Nancy. Thank you so much. It was wonderful.

MR. GALBRAITH: We thank you very much. The reason that we knew about the foundation was that when Nancy told me what her fee was, she told me that a lot of it was going to the foundation. And she probably wouldn't say that, but I will, and we respect that very much.

We are in recess until tomorrow morning. The walking tour is at 1:45. It says in your program to meet under the chandelier in the lobby. That's where that will start. And the Ghost Tour has a room to go to, because the tour leader wants to talk to you first and make sure that your hearts are strong enough to go on that tour.

Council meeting is a luncheon today for old and new Council members. I'll see you in the morning, unless there are any questions for the board. Thank you.