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The lawyer who oversees an investigation into gender inequalities at NCAA championship events insisted on Monday that she would act independently of the college sports executives who hired her last month.
The lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan, has a reputation as an innovator in the legal field – she, for example, litigated a seminal case against a federal law that excluded same-sex couples in their definition of marriage. But some of the leading figures in women’s basketball have expressed doubts about their nomination by the NCAA, which has spent the past few weeks responding to the public furor over the disparities between men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
“We have a reputation for calling them as we see them,” Kaplan said in an interview on Monday, when he described his company’s inquiry as “completely independent”.
Mark Emmert, the president of the NCAA, said last week that neither he nor the association had any previous history with Kaplan or his company, Kaplan Hecker & Fink. But so far he has resisted requests, mainly from the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, for a review led by a commission or a lawyer selected by someone outside the NCAA leadership.
“I have my lawyer in my back pocket and I know he will do whatever it takes to make me feel good,” Dawn Staley, a South Carolina women’s basketball coach, told Emmert during a videoconference last week. “And I’m not saying that’s the case, but whoever is paying the flutist, most likely will give you what you want to hear.”
Emmert replied that he had confidence in Kaplan’s company, but that he understood that there was “a perception problem”. He did not announce specific measures to try to alleviate these concerns.
In Monday’s interview, Kaplan declined to detail his financial deal with the NCAA, but said the association, which has spent tens of millions of dollars on lawyers in recent years, had not limited his firm’s fees. She said the company is in the beginning of its investigation phase and asked current and former athletes and coaches to contact the investigators, who she said will conduct interviews and city hall meetings in the coming weeks. She said that some former coaches have already spoken to people involved in the review.
“The NCAA itself admits that there was clearly a mistake,” said Kaplan. But, she added, she wanted to review whether the disparities in basketball tournaments were “just a symptom of a broader problem, which may not even be intentional”.
“It could be,” she said, “just decades-old assumptions about how things work.”
Kaplan said he expects his investigation to be effectively conducted in two phases: the first, which has already begun, will focus on women’s basketball, while the second will examine other championships in other NCAA-sanctioned sports. She said she hoped the review would be completed by the end of the summer, but left open the possibility that her investigation into other sports could take longer.
Their findings and recommendations are expected to be made public.
The NCAA has repeatedly apologized for deficiencies in its women’s tournament in Texas, as a weight room with little stock compared to the training facilities that were made available for men’s competitions. But women’s basketball officials said the problems of the past few weeks are part of an enduring history of men’s basketball, which is the lifeblood of the NCAA, being favored over the sport.