- [Narrator] For 12 consecutive years,
Tennessee versus Connecticut women's basketball
ranked among the best matchups in all of sports,
and then it stopped.
Why? Beef.
(bright jaunty music)
People knew Pat Summitt as a basketball legend
before they even knew who Geno Auriemma was.
That order of ascent is important here.
The University of Connecticut hired Auriemma
to coach their women's basketball team in 1985.
He was in his early 30s
and he didn't have much high-level experience.
At that time, Summitt was already a titan.
As a player, she'd been a college All-American
and a medalist in multiple international tournaments,
including the 1976 Olympics.
Even before that playing career concluded, she became coach
of the University of Tennessee women's basketball program.
By '85, Summitt had built the program
into a contender almost from scratch,
advocated for resources, landed important recruits,
led the Lady Volunteers to an SEC title,
and coached in multiple final fours
and a final in the newly formed NCAA women's tournament.
She was also fresh off coaching the US
to an Olympic gold medal at the '84 games.
Pat was an icon. Tennessee was on a path to glory.
Geno was a relative nobody,
and UConn wasn't on anyone's radar.
Jump ahead 10 years and Pat's legend had only grown.
Tennessee had three NCAA championships.
Her '94-'95 Lady Vols were poised once again
to contend for a title with a roster
that included multiple soon to be All-Americans,
but now the same was also true of UConn.
Over the course of that decade,
Geno turned one massive recruiting win into more and more.
Geno and the Huskies went from nobodies
to tournament regulars with some deep runs on their resume.
The '94-'95 team looked like Connecticut's best ever.
At last, Geno was somebody enough
to warrant attention from Pat.
Summitt knew of Auriemma from his days as an assistant
and saw some of herself in him.
They had plenty in common as fiery obsessive coaches.
Their public personas, however, were quite distinct.
They said so themselves in books published many years later.
In Pat's memoir from 2013, she described herself
as trying to be decorous
and leaving her competitiveness on the court.
In Geno's 2006 book,
he said Pat got preferential treatment,
and was untouchable simply by virtue of being Pat.
Back to Pat's book.
"Geno was a smart-ass," "foul mouthed," and "combative."
Geno, "Yeah, I probably talk too much.
I've got a chip on my shoulder
because I don't have Pat's acclaim."
And on that note,
let's not leave out the obvious difference.
Geno was a man coaching the women's game,
and he felt adversity because of that status.
Pat was never particularly moved by Geno's complaints.
Entering that '94-'95 season
when Geno's up and coming Huskies
wanted a big name opponent to come visit Storrs
and play an ESPN televised game on MLK Day,
Pat said, "Yeah, let's go. Put us on the schedule.
Tennessee at UConn will be great TV
and it'll be great for the game."
Thus began a rivalry for the ages.
The basketball was unbelievable.
The new kids on the block, UConn, won that MLK Day matchup,
then beat Tennessee again in a game changing '95 NCAA final.
Huge statement performances.
But the Lady Vols got revenge
in each of the next two NCAA tournaments,
ultimately winning three consecutive titles from '96 to '98.
In the early 2000s, UConn swung back big time,
establishing themselves as not merely the defiant newcomer,
but the actual team to beat.
All the matchups were intense,
all of them featured superstar players,
and all of them drew millions of eyes.
Through those early years
of so much competition and attention,
the relationship between the two coaches
remained fine, cordial.
Summitt and Auriemma weren't close friends,
but they respected one another in public.
Behind the scenes, they did what they could
to help each other and help the women's game.
Their paths crossed more and more.
The better UConn played,
the more Pat found Geno recruiting the same elite prospects
that used to prioritize her program, and her program alone.
Naturally, this stoked a personal rivalry.
Summitt famously kept two pet fish named Pat and Geno
and joked about Pat eating Geno.
When Pat went on a book tour
following Tennessee's three-peat,
Geno sent her flowers with a note of congratulations,
but also playful ill wishes.
The coaches, I mean,
the fish didn't send each other flowers as far as I know.
This was all in good fun.
It wasn't beef, but it turns out fun and beef
sit on the same spectrum with a slippery slope between them.
As UConn grew just as successful as Tennessee,
and then more so, so grew the chip on Geno's shoulder.
Geno's little jokey jokes started silly,
and then they got a little sharper.
Auriemma used the identical names
of two legendary Philadelphia cheesesteak spots
to poke fun at Pat and her program.
Okay. He kept saying Tennessee's colors were annoying,
and their fight song sucked.
Okay. In 2001, Geno got asked about Xavier
upsetting Tennessee in the NCAA tournament,
and he said he didn't give two rips about Tennessee.
He was tired of hearing and talking about them.
Ah. In 2002, Geno was one of several to wonder
if the NCAA deliberately designed brackets
so the final rounds wouldn't be full of teams
with male coaches.
A notion Pat called ridiculous. Hmm.
Later in the tournament,
a question about his relationship with Pat
triggered a Sue Bird coughing fit,
and then Geno admitting competitiveness
got in the way of friendship,
and this is just the public stuff.
In private, Pat claimed Geno wrote
a pretty nasty note about the Xavier loss
that someone then faxed to her.
Pat also said that around this time Geno shouted at her
when they were dining in the same restaurant.
In 2002, after UConn beat Tennessee in the final four,
Pat requested an audience with the Huskies
to congratulate them and tell them how special they were.
Geno thought Pat's speech was odd.
It seemed to him like a publicity stunt
or a competitive tactic.
This stuff isn't as playful.
Around 2003, while Connecticut
was in the midst of their own three-peat,
Geno's jocular nature pushed Pat to her limit.
A mutual friend had something to do with it.
Villanova coach Harry Perretta
was a longtime pal and conference rival of Geno's.
Around this time,
Perretta got pretty close with Summitt too.
Pat described it as a friendship.
Geno fixated on Perretta giving Summitt tips
to improve her offense.
Either way, the Pat and Harry relationship
became tight enough
that before Tennessee and Villanova played each other
in the '03 NCAA tournament,
Summitt hosted Perretta's team for a cookout at her house
and gave Perretta an orange tie as a gift,
then absolutely crushed his team.
But yeah, that was an unusually chummy display
in the middle of competition, and it drove Geno nuts.
His jokes turned quite bitter.
Geno said Harry left him for the Evil Empire,
appropriating the "Star Wars" reference
people use to describe the mighty New York Yankees.
He said he'd been left for an older woman.
He was sick of hearing about Pat and Harry.
He imagined them hanging out in a hot tub
the way he and Harry used to.
Jokes or not, Pat was not laughing.
Summitt called Auriemma jealous and paranoid,
and later wrote that she found the jokes off color.
Things clearly weren't cordial anymore,
but Pat and Geno kept crossing paths,
kept getting asked about each other.
How could they not?
Their teams were the best in the country
and met in consecutive NCAA finals.
Before the '04 final,
reporters poked at that wobbly relationship
asking the two coaches the same strange hypothetical.
- [Reporter] What if you're driving
down a dark highway in Tennessee, car broken down.
It's Geno. Do you drive by, do you stop?
- [Narrator] Pat tried to take the question seriously
and gave as earnest an answer as she could.
- Well, I stop and ask if I can help him.
- [Narrator] Geno ridiculed the question,
but then took the bait and gave the spicy answer
everyone wanted to hear
- (laughs) I'd walk.
- [Narrator] It was stuff like this that made say publicly
that the relationship was on ice and that was Geno's fault.
- I don't have his cell number. We don't talk.
We speak before and after the games. That's it.
But that's the relationship
that Geno worked very hard to create.
- [Narrator] By the time UConn won that '04 final,
the Huskies clearly held the edge in the rivalry
with eight victories in the last nine meetings
spanning several years
of regular season and tournament play.
On one hand, Geno felt like no matter
how much his team dominated,
he'd be treated like the annoying bad guy
while Pat got lionized.
On the other hand, he valued the rivalry.
He knew how much playing Tennessee every year
proved UConn's status.
So when Pat got fed up
and threatened to cancel their annual matchup,
Geno backed off a bit and reiterated his respect.
The period after the '04 final
has been described as something of a truce.
A year or two passed without major public fireworks,
just competition.
On the court the Huskies and Volunteers
didn't meet in March Madness,
but Pat got back to winning the regular season matchup.
On the recruiting front, Geno won a major battle
when high school superstar Maya Moore chose to attend UConn
after strongly considering Tennessee.
What happened next took place behind the scenes
and wasn't fully understood until later.
Summitt detected something off
about UConn's pursuit of Moore,
and she felt it was part of a pattern
of fishy recruiting practices.
Through Tennessee and Southeastern Conference administration
Summitt made her concerns known.
According to her book,
UConn dismissed those concerns repeatedly.
Because UConn ignored her concerns
and because of the negativity between her and Geno,
Pat had had enough of the Huskies.
Any game between them
wouldn't be played in the right spirit,
so it wouldn't be played at all.
Summitt canceled the series. Tennessee versus UConn was over.
Geno called Pat. The conversation did not go well.
Pat accused Geno of cheating,
and Geno said he hoped they'd meet again
in the NCAA tournament so he could kick Pat's ass.
The coaches never played each other again.
When one of the best highest profile rivalries in sports
suddenly drops off the schedule, people get confused.
Nevertheless, Summitt declined to explain her reasoning.
Geno however, would not let Pat's seismic decision
go unexplained.
"She should come out and say, she hates my guts.
She should just say I'm a dope and a smart-ass.
She accused us of cheating,
but doesn't have the courage to say it publicly."
Geno called Pat passive aggressive.
For years to come, he wanted nothing to do with her.
In 2008, "Outside the Lines" and ESPN's, Shelley Smith
reported that Geno was right about at least one thing.
Summitt had accused him of cheating.
Smith used the Freedom of Information Act
to make details of Tennessee's complaint public knowledge.
Of all those accusations, only the Maya Moore thing,
which sort of implicated ESPN itself
got the NCAA's attention,
and even that infraction drew basically no penalty.
So the sides of the beef were clear now.
On Pat's side, Geno ruined the rivalry
by being rude and disrespectful and breaking NCAA rules.
On Geno's side, Pat ruined the rivalry by being haughty,
and passive aggressive, and nitpicking NCAA rules.
The relationship remained icy for years.
They hardly spoke to each other
and only occasionally spoke about each other.
If Geno thought Pat was on her high horse,
well, she wasn't coming down.
This headline is from 2010.
Tennessee and UConn remained powerhouses,
but they took turns.
Their matchups stayed off the regular season schedule
and the bracket did not give us a tournament rematch.
Peace would come off the court,
though in the saddest of circumstances.
In 2011, Summitt was diagnosed
with early-onset Alzheimer's disease.
She passed away in 2016.
Auriemma got word of Pat's diagnosis
even before it was made public
and immediately reached out
to make peace and support the cause.
This meant a lot to Pat.
In describing their relationship,
Auriemma had once quoted the saying
familiarity breeds contempt,
and added that he and Pat had become too familiar.
Maybe that's inevitable
when two coaches compete for decades
at the very pinnacle of college basketball.
But before competition created beef
and before beef suspended a great rivalry,
that same familiarity engendered respect
and something approaching friendship.
Snapping out of competition and into real life
brought all that back.
As Pat put it before she passed,
the anger and suspicion dissipated.
She and Geno restored their original bond,
and in Pat's memory, a legendary rivalry came back as well.
(gentle music)
(bright music)