Jay Bilas blasts NCAA president Mark Emmert for slow response to tournament inequalities

"It's a shocking failure in leadership," Jay Bilas said.

The difference between how the NCAA handled the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments this year is staggering.

From the initial weight rooms to the quality of the food provided in their bubbles to the swag bags and even the COVID-19 tests, the women’s teams, playing in San Antonio, have received appallingly unequal and subpar treatment compared with the men’s teams, which are playing in Indianapolis.

While some of these issues are being corrected, the problem is that the NCAA thought any of this was acceptable in the first place.

But ESPN college basketball analyst Jay Bilas took his criticism a step further. A vocal advocate for the rights of college athletes, Bilas blasted both the NCAA’s initial setup differences for the men’s and women’s teams and NCAA president Mark Emmert’s slow response after photos and videos highlighting the massive differences went viral this week.

Bilas called Emmert’s reaction “a shocking failure in leadership,” as NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt and NCAA vice president of women’s basketball Lynn Holzman apologized and tried to justify the amenities and treatments provided to the women’s teams.

"It's a shocking failure in leadership." @JayBilas shared his thoughts on the NCAA's response to the disparities between the men's and women's tournament facilities. @CollegeGameDay pic.twitter.com/6BtLwMViBD

— ESPN (@espn) March 20, 2021

On ESPN’s College GameDay on Saturday, Bilas said:

“The NCAA men’s and women’s tournament are all under the same umbrella, and whatever was ordered for the men and was there for the men, should have been there for the women. That seems beyond reasonable discussion. What I found extraordinarily troubling was the response that we saw to when this was pointed out. And this is a question of leadership.

“Mark Emmert, the president of the NCAA, was nowhere to be found when this issue was being discussed. He let Lynn Holzman, the vice president of women’s basketball, step forward and take all of the flack on this. And you could tell from the emotional response of Lynn Holzman how devastating this was to her. The only leadership that I saw from upper management, the executive team at the NCAA, was from Dan Gavitt, who stepped forward after Lynn Holzman spoke and said, ‘This is on me. We apologize, and we will fix this.’

“And I can tell you, that’s the first thing that should have happened with Mark Emmert. He should have been out front and should have said, ‘This is unacceptable. It is on me. I’m the president of the organization. I am the responsible leader here, and we apologize profoundly, and we will fix this.’ But that’s not what happened. He was nowhere to be found, didn’t speak for over 24 hours after this.”

USA TODAY was one of three news outlets to speak with Emmert on Friday, and he reportedly blamed some of the inequalities on a lack of collaboration between the men’s and women’s committees.

As to the differences in COVID-19 tests, the NCAA is using PCR tests for the men’s teams and antigen tests for the women’s teams. About the tests, Emmert said, via USA TODAY:

“I’m not a medical expert so not going to get into a debate about PCR and antigen. All the health experts said the protocol that we’re using in all of our venues and all of our championships has no different at all in terms of our ability to mitigate risk.”