From the court to the classroom, Alabama native Brenda Pitts changed the Tide of the sport industry

Pitts said she was “born playing basketball.” She grew up on a small farm in Huntsville, Alabama and her father was always buying sports equipment for her and her brothers. Though she loved all the sports she played, once she got her hands on a basketball, something was different. When Pitts was in sixth grade, organized basketball became an option for her. 

Her sixth- through 12th-grade teams were YMCA-affiliated as girls’ basketball was not an approved varsity sport by the Alabama High School Athletic Association. Pitts noted that the team didn’t use YMCA facilities; the school bought the uniforms and equipment; and the team practiced at the school with a teacher coaching them. Though an occasional game was played at a YMCA gym, they were mostly played at the school’s gym — often before the boys’ games — with family, friends, faculty and students in attendance. 

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The All American Redheads, an entertainment team that traveled and played across the country, had recruited Pitts out of high school but her mother wouldn’t let her go. Instead, after she graduated high school in 1973, she set her sights on the University of Alabama where she planned to play the alto saxophone in the marching band. She thought her athletic career was over.

“I remember the last game of my senior year in high school. When I walked out of the gym that night, I wasn’t really thinking about not playing basketball again,” she said in a 1978 article in The Huntsville Times. “All of a sudden, I turned around and looked at the gym and thought ‘You’re never gonna play basketball again — that was your last game.’ I cried all the way home.”

Though the team was not officially recognized by the Alabama High School Athletic Association, her high school basketball number was later retired and she was inducted into the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame.

Rising Tide of Title IX

Within her first few months on campus at University of Alabama, Pitts was shooting hoops alone when two women, who she’d later find out were volunteer women’s basketball coaches, approached her. The pair asked her if she’d played basketball, ran her through a few drills and eventually asked her to do an official tryout for the team.

“So, I tried out. The rest is history,” she told The Next. 

Even though it hadn’t been a year since what she thought would be her last game, she was excited to play again. “I was just over the moon. So, I was really excited and relieved in a way that I got to play four more years of organized basketball,” Pitts said.

She was a part of the team for the 1973-74 season, less than two years after Title IX was passed, but before compliance was required. The coaches were faculty and weren’t paid to coach the team. The team traveled to play teams at other universities in their own cars, wearing uniforms they’d purchased themselves. Pitts was 5’9 and, though she was a point guard, she started at center in her first Alabama game because she was the tallest on the team. She was moved out of that spot after a few games because she was, as she described, “horrible at it.” 

Reflecting back on her undergraduate career, Pitts was ashamed that she didn’t know about the women’s basketball team, but understands it was a result of the times. With little to no media coverage, communication from coaches or recruiting, knowledge of organized teams was not always widespread.  When she returned to campus for her sophomore season, everything had changed: Women’s basketball was now a school-sponsored sport.

“We walk[ed]  into campus and, all of a sudden, we’ve got a full women’s athletic department with a women’s athletic director, a full staff, full-time paid coaches, uniforms — we got to have the university vans to go to games,” she said. “…[I]t was an eye opener, how different it was my freshman year compared to my sophomore year.” 

The growth of the program continued with the team getting to fly to a few games, including trips on the university’s 747 by the end of her senior year. In her last three seasons at Alabama, Pitts averaged 9.4 points and 3.6 rebounds per game. She finished second on the team in rebounding as a sophomore, led the team with 1.7 steals per game as a junior and was second on the team in total assists as a senior. 

“[Pitts is] the kind of person we needed to help this program get off the ground. She has seen the program grow from infancy to what it is now,” Alabama’s then-head coach Stephanie Schleuder said in the March 10, 1977 issue of The Sports Page. 

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Professional basketball comes on the radar

During her junior year at Alabama, Pitts heard rumors about a women’s professional league, but she was hesitant to get her hopes up. The rumors she heard about the league that would become the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL) were that it would be a professional league, like the NBA had been for nearly three decades at the time.

“You hear those things. And you think, ‘I sure hope so, but we’ll see,’” she said. “Because, as a woman in sports, you’re always suspicious, because you think, ‘yeah, they’re saying that’s gonna happen, but it won’t ever happen, or it’ll take it 25 years to develop.’” 

In high school and her early college years, Pitts wanted to be a basketball coach, so she got her bachelor’s degree in physical education. She graduated in 1977 and lined up her first teaching and coaching position at Randolph School. During her summers, she planned to go back to the University of Alabama to take master’s degree courses. 

Though she started her second full year of teaching in the fall of 1978, she wouldn’t finish it. She went to the principal and told him that she had to try to live out her childhood dream of playing professional basketball and would leave in October. “This is historical, and I just need to go do it,” she remembers thinking. “Even if it fails, I just need to go do it.” 

In the fall of 1978, Pitts was able to make good on her dream to play professional basketball. She packed up and drove from Huntsville, Alabama to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she’d join the Milwaukee Does in the inaugural season of the WBL.  

On her last day of work, the school had an assembly complete with a tribute, a plaque and flowers. “The students were really excited. My team, my basketball players were sad, but also excited and proud that ‘oh my goodness, my coach is really gonna go play pro ball.’ So they had mixed emotions too,” she said.

Pitts was full of emotions as she went to Milwaukee to start her professional career. She was amazed and relieved that women were taken seriously enough to have a professional league. But she was also scared of the unknown. “Are we going to have one game and it’s going to fold? I mean, what’s going to happen?” she remembered thinking. “Who are these people going to be? Where are all these players gonna come from? Where are the coaches gonna come from, what’s going to happen?”

Once she was driving from Huntsville to Milwaukee, Pitts held on to just being happy — happy that the league was really happening. Thoughts of doubt did creep in as she was one year out of college and she wasn’t sure if she’d be good enough. She wanted to be successful, especially after the bragging she’d done as a kid.

“One of the things that people need to understand about those of us who went to play in that very first year, 1978, … [is] how scared we were that you were going to give up a full-time job to go take a chance on something that may or may not work out,” she said. “You’re talking about, these women had to be brave … to be able to do that, give up a job.” 

After making the Does roster, Pitts got goosebumps at the first WBL game. Nearly 8,000 fans were at Milwaukee Arena to witness history.

“I think some of us had a few tears,” Pitts said. “I’m probably one of them, because I’m really sensitive to history and things like that, that to me have a really deep meaning … and it’s like, ‘wow, this is really happening.’ And I am actually really here. It actually got started not only just in my lifetime, but when I can play, when I still have my playing shoes, and I can be here. And it was an incredible moment.”

After Milwaukee’s Joanie Smith made the first basket against the Chicago Hustle, the game was stopped and an announcement was made to mark the occasion. Though the Hustle went on to win 92-87, the exuberant moment of the start of the league is what remains with Pitts. 

“It was exciting, it was joyous. It was tears of joy. I mean, it was just incredible,” she said. “And the players, all of us players, we all bonded, we were like, man, [we] can’t believe we’re here. … Because we all had the same thoughts, it was scary to leave our jobs. And so we developed close bonds, based on all of those emotions and all those feelings during that first year.”

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During the inaugural year of the WBL Pitts played for the Does, but also had stops with the Dayton Rockettes and Minnesota Fillies. She returned to Minnesota ahead of the WBL’s second season after completing her master’s degree in May 1979, though she wouldn’t play in another game for the team, retiring before the regular season started.

“I wasn’t having as much fun as I thought I was gonna have,” she said. “…I got disappointed in all of the mismanaging of everything. I mean, it was great. The players were great. Some of the coaches were questionable. … So you also gotta remember that the coaches that came were taking major risks as well because you as a team, you had to try to go out and find an actual basketball coach. And if you couldn’t find anybody who was willing to give up their job, you just kind of had to get who you could get to have a warm body in there. … Most of them had been high school coaches, or maybe a small college basketball coach, who was willing to leave their job and take a risk in this, and this is a big risk that you’re taking to do this. So, some of that was, it starts to get to you, sometimes your paycheck wouldn’t show up for a week, an extra week or so. … I wasn’t a starter, so to go from being a superstar starter to being just an extra point guard on the team, that was a little bit ‘eh’ — so I don’t know, I just kind of, it wasn’t as fun for me.” 

The head coach of the Fillies, Terry Kunze, brought Pitts into his office and asked what was going on with her because she didn’t seem 100% invested. “I looked at him and I — at that very moment, it hit me. And I said to him, ‘You know what? I’m not. You’re right. I’m not happy. I’m not enjoying this,’” she said. “And he [said], we need to make a decision. You’re either here or you’re not and I went back in like the next day and said, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna retire.’ So, I did.” 

Giving back to the game

While Pitts was working on her master’s degree, her department chair asked her to cover a class for him. She tried to refuse but he said he had to go to a conference and needed her help — he’d give her his lecture notes and she would lead the class.

“I taught that class and I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, I actually taught a class. And I didn’t have to stop the class … I actually taught for 100% of the time,” she said. It was that class that made her realize she was interested in teaching at the college level. 

While thinking about that possibility, she talked to one of her professors and he mentioned there was a new sport administration program being developed. “He told me that with my sports career that teaching in sport administration would probably be a good idea for me,” Pitts said. “And he also told me that he was going to be developing a degree at Bama and wanted me to come and help him.”

Though she had mixed emotions — having enjoyed her time as a coach — Pitts took long hikes, runs and bike rides to contemplate what was going to bring her more joy.

“I finally hit on the idea of you know what, one of the things that you like about coaching is that you can have — you’re a mentor for your kids, and you can help them make decisions in life,” she said. “I’m like, well, teachers do that too. And then I thought, oh, wait, these students are going to be working in the sport business industry, making all these decisions about sports, especially about girls or women in sports … And if I could have some influence in their thinking about how they look at girls and women in sport, and what kind of decisions they’re making, then I can influence thousands and thousands and thousands who are going to go into the industry and make better decisions — especially when it comes to girls’ and women’s sports — than [I was] before, [than] even having high school basketball players. 

“And I thought, that sounds like a lot of fun plus, who wouldn’t want to have a job where you have to eat, sleep and drink sports 24/7, 365, and then go into a classroom and talk about it? …  I thought of my students as my players on a basketball team. I’m the coach. They’re my players. And I’m going to coach them about how to do this. Because as a coach, you are a teacher, you’re teaching them. … So it’s kind of like the skills were the same.”

She was offered a full assistantship at Alabama and once again quit her high school teaching and coaching job, this time at Bob Jones High School, to pursue her Doctor of Education degree. 

Pitts’ doctoral dissertation tied together her new path in academia and her time in the WBL. She had taken a WBL ball with her when she left Minnesota and she carried it around campus with her. When she’d go to the gym to play pickup games, she would insist they use her basketball. Pitts decided to do her dissertation study on the effects of the smaller, women’s sized basketball on the skill performance of female basketball players. She tested both high school and college players, with each skill test performing better with the women’s sized basketball. 

The Women’s Basketball Coaches Association used Pitts’ study, as well as another conducted in California as part of their decision-making process when considering adopting the women’s size basketball as the standard ball in college basketball. High schools would later adopt the ball as well. 

Pitts’ first faculty position was at the University of Louisville in the fall of 1984. Louisville was looking for someone to develop its first degree in sport administration and when she arrived there were no courses, no degrees, no students and no textbooks because the field was brand new. With no textbooks written yet, Pitts and other pioneers in the field wrote them. Her first textbook, Fundamentals of Sport Marketing, was published in 1996.

“Those of us who were writing the first books were also writing the first principles, fundamentals and definitions of all of our terms, courses and curricula,” Pitts said. “It was kinda scary — knowing that you are inventing words and phrases and their definitions for an entire academic field of study.” 

When Pitts was hired by Louisville, it was one of only a few positions of its kind. Twelve years later when she moved on to her next position as an associate professor at Florida State, Louisville had bachelor’s and master’s programs and was about to start a doctoral program.

Pitts found it more fulfilling and interesting to teach at the college level because instead of mentoring her high school athletes and teaching them life skills, she was teaching her college students how many job areas there are in the sport industry. “I knew these people were going to be working in my industry. And I wanted them to go out there fully loaded … not only just the content from the textbooks but let’s talk about values and ethics, about taking care of the industry and being diversity-minded and not only minded but championing diversity and looking out for everyone in the industry.”

In addition to her roles at Louisville and Florida State, Pitts spent 16 years at Georgia State and also consulted for a wide variety of organizations, including the NCAA, Louisville Women’s Soccer Association, Federation of Gay Games, Tallahassee Soccer Association, Women’s Final Four, Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta’s 2006 Gay Games Bid Committee and Los Angeles’ 2006 and 2010 Gay Games Bid Committees. In addition, Pitts taught a sport marketing course in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia and was the associate director of the International Women’s Sports Exchange Program for two summers.  

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Over the years, Pitts’ favorite areas of research changed. She first wrote papers on the women’s basketball (the piece of equipment), before moving onto “the history of advertising and marketing, in the sport business industry.” This helped her transition into the research area of marketing and sponsorships, including on the LGBTQ+ sport community and the Gay Games. More recently, she wrote articles using the content analysis methodology to spotlight the disparity between the number of published articles in journals on girls and women in sports compared to boys and men. 

“My point of doing that was to point out to everyone, professors out there, y’all need to do better,” she said. “Because you’d like to say in the first chapter of your books that the sport business industry is the biggest and most diverse in the world. And yet, when you look at everything you write about, it’s only — you only like to study the NFL or the NBA. So, where is the diversity?”

Now that she’s enjoying retirement, Pitts focuses on doing what makes her smile every day. She still does some work including finishing book contracts, reviewing articles for journals and writing external letters of review, but she spends most of her time jetskiing, walking her dogs, golfing, reading novels and sipping her morning coffee at a leisurely pace. While she still goes to conferences, it’s more of a social occasion. She also travels and goes to sports and other events she didn’t have the time to go to while she was still working. 

Women’s basketball and her time in the WBL impacted Pitts in many ways, but most of all she gets to say she was a part of history.

“Nobody can take that away from me. I actually was one of the very first women to get to make women’s professional basketball happen,” she said. “It has to start somewhere. And that’s where it started. And I can say I’m one of those pioneers who got to start it, who were there in the very beginning. And since then … not a year goes by that somebody somewhere doesn’t mention to me well, what was it like when you played in the WBL? Or my students would say, ‘Dr. Pitts, I just found out that you played in the WBL. Wow.’ So they would always get so excited to know — to find out that they now know somebody who actually was one of the players.”

Pitts used to display a WBL basketball in her office which would start conversations about what it was and her experience with it. Though she’s done a few interviews and been written about a few times in the nearly 46 years since that first WBL game, she remains humble and feels grateful to have been at the right place in the right time to have been a part of the league. 

“[It] truly is an honor to have done it,” she said. “And I think about it, every now and then. I still have my basketballs. When I did my dissertation, Wilson Sporting Goods sent me four dozen basketballs so that I could have them to use for my study. And over the years, I’ve given them away, or people steal them from me, … but I still have about five or six of them. And they have the WBL logo on them. I’m looking at one right now … so it’s a constant reminder that wow, I actually did that, I actually was there. … I’m sure the league would have started without me. But it took all of us to be there, it took enough of us, you had to have enough of us, to be there to get it going. So we got to do that. So it’s truly an honor to think that wow, I actually, I actually got to do that.”