Staley, USC add to legacy with game in Paris against Notre Dame. ‘It’s a big deal’

Dawn Staley is no stranger to history; she makes it all the time.

When then-USC athletics director Eric Hyman introduced Dawn Staley as the new women’s basketball coach in the spring of 2008, he rattled off a list of her career accomplishments. It took him four and a half minutes.

Since then, she’s led the South Carolina program to the following firsts:

▪ An undefeated regular season, No. 1 rankings, NCAA Final Fours and national championships;

▪ No. 1 recruiting classes, SEC and National Players of the Year, and WNBA No. 1 Draft picks;

▪ SEC regular-season and tournament titles.

She also fought for equal pay, signing a seven-year, $22.4 million contract extension in 2021 that made her the highest paid Black head coach and one of the highest paid coaches period in women’s basketball.

The Gamecocks’ season opener versus the Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Monday (1 p.m., ESPN) is the latest piece of history she’s contributed to her beloved sport: Participating in the first college basketball game played on international soil.

“It’s another addition to the checklist of reasons why she is a trailblazer and paving the way and doing things that we haven’t seen before,” ESPN’s Andraya Carter told The State.

South Carolina’s 2023-24 opener is a powerful cocktail of special circumstances. Of course, it’s the first NCAA regular season game played in Europe. But what makes the event even more significant is its star-studded cast: Two teams with national championship pedigrees and two iconic Black women in Staley and Notre Dame’s Niele Ivey at the helm.

To Debbie Antonelli, Hall of Famer and women’s college basketball analyst for ESPN, USC’s participation in this event enhances Staley’s already undeniable legacy.

“She’s done everything,” Antonelli told The State. “There’s not one thing missing on her resume. When you think about, ‘There’s a bucket-list item or something I’d like to do.’

“To be the first college product to go overseas and play on the women’s side? That’s crazy. In Paris? That’s crazy to think that can happen. But the organizers of the event picked the two right programs. Dawn Staley and South Carolina, Niele Ivey and Notre Dame. I mean, Dawn is an incredible basketball brand. Notre Dame is an international brand. It’s perfect.”

A basketball life for Staley

Staley led the University of Virginia to three straight NCAA Final Fours as a tenacious point guard. She played for the Richmond Rage in the now-defunct ABL — the professional women’s basketball league that preceded the WNBA (which Staley starred in for eight years). She won gold as an athlete in three Olympics (1996, 2000, 2004), serving as the United States’ flag bearer in 2004, and coached in multiple others (2008, 2016, 2020). Now, she’s brought women’s college hoops to the international stage.

While Halle Georges Carpentier Arena is less than a third of the size of Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, there’s no question that Paris is a bigger stage. A top-10 non-conference matchup (No. 6 South Carolina vs. No. 10 Notre Dame) would be challenging if played in the United State, so imagine how much harder it could be to be played in a time zone six hours ahead of your own.

Then, add the fact that both teams have suffered tremendous offseason roster losses — the Gamecocks adjusting to life without their class of 2019 stalwarts (Aliyah Boston, Victoria Saxton, Brea Beal, Zia Cooke and Laeticia Amihere), and Notre Dame grappling with the injury of star guard Olivia Miles.

For Staley and Ivey to take this game on shows their commitment to challenging their teams.

“A lot of coaches, and a lot of teams prefer to start the season slow,” Elle Duncan, “SportsCenter” anchor and women’s basketball host for “College GameDay,” told The State. “You want to build momentum. You want to build confidence. … It’s not just that this is going to be an incredible game. This is not an exhibition game. This is a real game with two incredible opponents who have aspirations of being in the Final Four. We’re gonna get a really early peek and indication on level setting both of these programs.”

The brains behind the historic matchup

Complete Sports Management founder and president Lea Miller-Tooley spent two-and-a-half years tinkering with the idea of putting on an international women’s college basketball game, she told The State.

A former scholarship tennis player at Wake Forest and Georgia Tech, Miller-Tooley founded CSM in 2010 and has since created the men’s and women’s Battle 4 Atlantis basketball tournament, helped establish the Bahamas Bowl in college football and taken college basketball programs around the world on foreign tours.

Those foreign tours have become more popular over the last decade or so. Carter said she remembered traveling to Italy for a foreign tour when she played at Tennessee from 2012-16. But a regular season opener, which counts toward both teams’ records, is different.

When planning this event, Miller-Tooley picked Paris because it’s one of her favorite cities and the first one she visited outside the United States as a child.

She knew bringing in two perennial programs would enhance the event’s profile. South Carolina’s winning reputation speaks for itself, Miller-Tooley said, and Notre Dame playing in the same city as the Notre Dame Cathedral sounded poetic. So she pitched it to Staley and Ivey, who both loved the idea.

“These decisions were very easy to make,” Miller-Tooley told The State. “None of this was rocket science. It just all made sense.”

Next up: pitching the event to ESPN — the lead network for collegiate and professional women’s basketball. The media company enthusiastically agreed.

“This (game) is so significant because, No. 1, it’s never been done before,” Miller-Tooley said. “No. 2, we’re launching history with women. And No. 3, the significance is the timing. Where we are in history, where we are with the movement and women’s college basketball, and showcasing the beauty that this sport is. The timing could not be better.”

The growing power of women’s basketball

According to SkullSparks — an organization that helps college sports brands recruit talent and create digital strategy — South Carolina (No. 3) and Notre Dame (No. 7) were among the most-followed women’s basketball teams on social media as of June 2022. Between Instagram, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, the Gamecocks generated over 2.7 million interactions last year (second behind only UConn), an increase of 40% from the year before. Notre Dame generated over 960,000 interactions (12th in the country), an increase of 43%.

USC has led the NCAA in regular season attendance every year for the last nine years. Demand for tickets is so high that South Carolina launched a campaign to sell 16,000 season tickets in honor of Staley’s 16th season as head coach. And the Gamecocks Final Four game against the Iowa Hawkeyes last year attracted 5.6 million viewers — ESPN’s third-most viewed women’s college basketball game ever and a 74% increase from the 2022 late-night window.

“I think it’s a big deal,” Staley said of the Paris trip. “I do because for the longest we’ve had to watch the NBA go over there and play games. We have to watch the NFL, they go over to Europe to play games. And yet, the only time that women are playing this is during an international competition, like a World Cup or the Olympic Games.

“Here we’re doing something a little bit different. We’re starting the women’s basketball season off. So I know we’re the first, but we won’t be the last because other teams should want to experience it. Win, lose or draw. They should want to experience what we’re about to venture into.”

Paying the price for an international brand

It’s unclear whether South Carolina will profit financially for its part in the season-opener. The university’s contract with CSM stipulates that the agency will obtain all proceeds from ticket sales, own the game’s broadcasting rights and be granted an “exclusive, royalty-free transferable worldwide license” to use the names, logos, images, graphics and trademarks associated with the Gamecocks.

South Carolina also paid CMS a $150,000 contribution “toward the event,” though the contract did not specify what services that fee would cover. South Carolina is responsible for its own airfare to Paris (coordinated by CMS) and helping CMS cover the costs of promoting the game.

Miller-Tolley confirmed CSM owns and will run game operations, coordinating details among all constituents, which include South Carolina, Notre Dame, the city of Paris, the U.S. Embassy, sponsors, hotels, transportation, coaches, local ambassadors and passport offices. She declined, however, to speak on any potential profit sharing between CSM and the two schools.

Regardless, this game marks yet another huge investment by South Carolina in Staley’s program.

Public schools that earned top-four seeds in the 2023 NCAA March Madness tournament spent an average of $6.7 million on women’s basketball in the 2022 fiscal year, On3 reported in March. The State reported this summer that USC spent more than $9.5 million on women’s basketball of its $144.8 million athletics budget. As a comparison, national champion LSU spent $8.3 million of its $192.8 million total athletics budget on women’s hoops.

The Paris trip will not come out of the athletic department’s annual budget, though. The budget was finalized too far in advance. Instead, the money came from an “enhancement fund,” meaning an auxiliary fund supported by boosters to address costs that fall outside USC budget.

Trip to Paris will feature more than a game

Staley played basketball overseas on teams in Brazil, France, Italy and Spain during her career. As a USA Basketball athlete, she competed in Greece, Australia, Russia and Germany. Back then, Staley said, she was so “tunnel vision” that she spent all her energy on basketball and didn’t take the time to enjoy visiting those places. She wants more for her players out of this Paris trip.

“I want them to enjoy the trip,” Staley said. “I want it to be educational for them. I want it to be fun for them. I want them to experience life.”

The team will spend four days in Paris before Monday’s contest, which is plenty of time for sightseeing and uniquely Parisian experiences. They have a welcome dinner scheduled at Kith, an Eiffel Tower lunch with the mayor and a riverboat cruise dinner scheduled to fill the off time. Freshman MiLaysia Fulwiley told reporters Tuesday she’s excited to shop in the fashion capital of the world.

“They’ll get a good run of what Paris is all about to bank in some memories, and hopefully make it truly memorable,” Staley said. “I hope they will utilize their phones and take pictures and create a Paris album on their phones that they can share with their families.”