Pat Summitt: Is She the Most Revered Collegiate Coach in History?

Comparing athletes across sports is next to impossible. How do you compare a great basketball player with a great football player or baseball player?

You might be willing to give it a try, but it's entirely subjective. A similar thing can be said about coaches.

So, for the sake of that, I am not comparing Pat Summitt to Knute Rockne, Bear Bryant, Joe Paterno or any of the other great coaches in other sports.

What I am doing is comparing her to some of the other great basketball coaches, both men and women.

Before I get going, if you haven't heard, Summitt released this video today, detailing the early stages of her fight against dementia.

Summitt is a fantastic coach. Still, her level of reverence will always be held back by the fact that she's a women's coach.

Don't get me wrong, I am not bashing women's basketball, but it's certainly not as popular as the men's game is.

Additionally, while her win total is immense, it's hard to ignore the criticism that she coaches a game that doesn't have anywhere near the depth in fields that her male counterparts have had.

Still, statistics aren't the only things considered when we're talking about reverence.

Before looking at some of the men's coaches, we also need to look at UConn's Geno Auriemma, who has been a contemporary of Summitt's and has enjoyed similar success.

No basketball coach is as revered as John Wooden.

With ten championships and four undefeated seasons, Wooden has two nearly unbreakable records in the men's game.

Summitt has eight championships and one perfect season. Auriemma has four perfect seasons at UConn. No other coach in either gender has more than one.

Wooden set a standard we'll never see again. He won 10 championships in 12 years and was the coach during an 88-game winning streak.

I don't like predicting the future too often, but we will never see a coach as revered as Wooden.

Summitt will also fall short of Mike Krzyzewski and Dean Smith in the eyes of most people. They coached high profile programs in years where the game's depth was expanding.

Still, they were both consistent winners (Krzyzewski still is), winning nearly all of their games, as well as multiple championships.

Bob Knight may be better known than Summitt, but he's also attached with controversy.

Although the controversy is different, similar comments can be made about Adolph Rupp, and coaches much older than him have faded in relevance. That tends to happen, although the advances in technology will go a long way in limiting that in the future.

Summitt will fall behind Wooden, Smith, and Krzyzewski in the world of basketball, that’s undeniable.

That takes nothing away from her. She’s a fantastic coach and will be viewed as such for a long time.

Summitt is also one of the most important people in the history of women’s sports, and that can’t be overstated.

In terms of how she’s revered and how she’ll be remembered when her career is over, Summitt is one of the top five or ten coaches in the sport’s history. When she started coaching, that was unfathomable for a women’s coach.