Opinion : The new F-word in collegiate basketball

Iowa State University women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly, according to an article in last week’s ESPN The Magazine, is a homophobe because he used the F-word.

No, Coach Fennelly did not use the three-letter F-word that some people – including many homosexuals – use to describe individuals who prefer others of their own gender.

And no, he did not use the more traditionally understood F-word, the one with four letters.

He did not even – as Chicago White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen once did when a reporter made him mad – use both of those F-words in a single phrase.

But Fennelly used another F-word, and because of that, ESPN The Magazine has labeled him a “homophobe” and said that such “homophobia is polluting the recruiting trail.”

Fennelly said “family.”

The article written by Luke Cyphers and Kate Fagan – and it’s a long one – repeatedly asserts that that using the word “family” to describe a college basketball atmosphere college recruits -- at least the way Fennelly and others use that F-word -- is homophobic. The writers, by the way, used the H-word nine times in the story and once in the headline.

Fennelly defended the F-word he uses.

“If using the word 'family' is viewed as negative recruiting, then we're guilty, because we say that. I don't think it's negative. Maybe I'm the only one in America who thinks that's ridiculous to say,” the ISU coach told ESPN for that story.

Fennelly has not been accused of saying one bad thing about homosexuals or lesbians. Not one. In fact, a homosexual couple who read that article wrote a reply defending him.

But because he tells his recruits that he wants a family-oriented atmosphere where the coaches have their kids close by when they can, ESPN calls him a “homophobe.”

He’s not the only coach that ESPN labeled that way, for that reason.

Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma told ESPN magazine that if people are demanding that college coaches stop using the six-letter F-word, they have “lost their grip on reality."

I agree.

ESPN The Magazine does not.

The article called Geno Auriemma a homophobe, too. In fact, in a lengthy article that does not include one single allegation of any of the coaches named making any slurs against gays or lesbians, the word homophobia or homophobic is used nine times. At least one of those is used in reference to Coach Auriemma.

The coach with the most consecutive wins in college history say they’ve lost their grip on reality.

I think he understates.

If a coach who has never been accused of defaming anyone because of his or her sexual identity is called a homophobe because he uses the word “family,” the person using the H-word is the one with the problem.