LSU AFFAIR LEAVES QUESTIONS.

Byline: RAMONA SHELBURNE 

So Tennessee and Rutgers will play for the NCAA women's basketball national championship tonight in Cleveland, meaning that for the first time in almost a month, the story in women's basketball won't involve L'affaire de Pokey.

You've heard all the tawdry details by now. On March 7, LSU women's basketball coach Pokey Chatman abruptly resigned because of an alleged inappropriate sexual relationship with aformer player.

The only people who have been able to forget about it and act normally since March7 are her former players, who somehow focused their energy, tuned out all the awkward questions and radioactive rumors and advanced to their fourth straight Final Four.

The rest of us, and I'm mostly speaking about the national media, have had absolutely no idea what to do. It was like being thrown into that old Seinfeld episode for three weeks, where every article needed to be prefaced with a disclaimer saying: "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

Should you use the word "lesbian?" Do you need to? Is it a sexual-orientation story? Or a coach-dating-a-player story?

There have been several long discussions about the Pokey Chatman issue the past few weeks on a popular industry message board and there is absolutely no consensus on how to handle the story except to say that it's something we need to spend a lot more time figuring out.

It's not something very many people are willing to do. It's awkward, sometimes even dangerous -- just ask Tim Hardaway. But it's important.

So let's hope when all the dust settles on L'affaire de Pokey, it's the discussion we'll remember and not all the salacious details.

When it comes to sexual orientation in sports stories, you get a lot of unreturned phone calls, careful answers and awkward pauses.

It's a bit different in women's sports. It's no secret there are gays in women's sports. Female athletes can lead openly homosexual lifestyle without fear. It's accepted. It's just not talked about.

Here's how it works:

You know what programs are lesbian-friendly and which are not.

That's not to say certain programs are anti-lesbian, more that most of the girls on the team are straight and if you were a lesbian, you'd be in the minority.

From 1998-2001, I played softball for Stanford. We were a straight team. There were one or two girls in the fouryears I played who were gay. To my knowledge, they never felt discriminated against, but I can't imagine it was all that comfortable for them when the rest of the team was talking about their boyfriends, etc.

There were other programs that had a reputation of being lesbian-friendly. Everyone knew which programs those were. You'd hear rumors of players dating other players or assistant coaches dating each other.

If you were straight -- and here's our first Seinfeld "Not that there's anything wrong with that" moment -- it might be a little uncomfortable to play in one of those programs.

Here's what I find funny about the whole thing though.

No, misunderstood is a better word.

As a straight player, I don't think it would be uncomfortable to play in a lesbian-friendly program on that point alone. It would be uncomfortable to play in a program where players dated each other or assistant coaches dated each other. I don't think I need to explain why.

So here we are, back to LSU, where a coach resigned for an alleged inappropriate relationship with a former player.

Ask yourself why you care?

Be honest. Do you care because it's a lesbian thing? Or do you care because it's a coach-player relationship?

There have been plenty of coach-player relationships in the past.

They just happened between male coaches and female athletes. Women's soccer stars Brandi Chastain, Danielle Fotopoulos and Julie Foudy all married their former college coaches. So did Marion Jones and Jackie Joyner-Kersee.

The salient question, I think, is whether those relationships began while those players were being coached by their future husbands. In one or two of these cases, there have been whispers that they were, but nothing definite.

That should be the salient question in the Pokey Chatman case, too.

If this alleged inappropriate relationship with the former player happened while the player was still on the team, that's an abuse of power issue, not to mention an incredibly uncomfortable culture for the rest of the team.

An article in the gay magazine, The Advocate, states that neither the school nor the NCAA has any explicit policies banning sexual relationships between coaches and players or even professors/faculty and students.

Still, LSU spokesman Charles Zewe said in a statement, "It's absolutely preposterous to suggest that the university should condone relationships between professors, deans, or whomever and students just because there isn't a written policy."

I don't think anyone would disagree with him. It's the same reason managers are discouraged from dating employees who work under them.

That's what the story is. Why people care is another issue. But at least we're talking about it.

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box

Photo:

(1) The NCAA women's Final Four has been overshadowed by the resignation of LSU coach Pokey Chatman.

Elsa/Getty Images

(2) PARKER

Box:

NCAA WOMEN'S TOURNAMENT

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