For the full video, click here.

An April 17 CBS News 60 Minutes story (above) described the case of former University of the Pacific women's basketball player Beckett Brennan, who was sexually assaulted in 2008 and eventually stopped playing basketball as a result.

It's a complex case with plenty of issues to discuss in depth and the California Coalition Against Sexual Assault (CALCASA) has an outstanding follow-up interview with Joelle Gomez, Executive Director from the Women’s Center of San Joaquin County. However, one of the things not mentioned in the CALCASA piece or in detail by 60 Minutes is how exactly Brennan's case relates to the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights new guidance document to prevent and respond to sexual harassment, which is part of the federal effort to address this problem that Couric alludes to.

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Click here for more on In The Game & how they're taking a stand for girls on 2011 International Women's Day.

The theme of 2011 International Women's Day is equal access to education, training and science and technology and Kartemquin Films is producing a documentary that almost perfectly honors the role of sports within that theme.

Kartemquin - which produced Hoop Dreams, arguably the best documentary of all-time - is partnering with Girls in the Game, 1World Sports, Women's Sports Foundation, and the National Women's Law Center to launch a 2012 campaign aiming to shine a spotlight on the expanding under-representation of urban and low-income girls of color in U.S. athletics. At the center of that effort, which will coincide with the 40th anniversary of Title IX, is a documentary In The Game by veteran filmmaker Maria Finitzo, who may be most well known for her award-winning 2001 film 5 Girls.

And although the film is framed around Title IX's 40th anniversary, it goes well beyond the standard legislative narrative and looks at the achievements that the WNBA represents and the aspirations of urban high school girls who make daily sacrifices just for an opportunity to play organized sports.

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When three white Los Angeles teachers got suspended last year for encouraging students to celebrate "inappropriate" black role models for Black History month, the ensuing debate focused primarily on the teachers' poor judgment in representing the spirit of the annual celebration.

However, perhaps a broader and more persistent problem was described in an AP Photo of a UCLA protest against that and similar incidents in Southern California mocking black history last year: "Our education is dying and racism is intensifying."

Indeed a relationship between education and racism still exists in the U.S. 85 years after Carter G. Woodson created Black History Month as a means to promote awareness of the influence of black people in our nation's history. And the larger issue is the matter of whether our youth - particularly black youth - fully grasp what that influence is and the struggles of the past to afford them opportunities for social mobility.

Dahleen Glanton wrote an opinion piece in the Chicago Tribune today arguing that indeed a generational knowledge gap that has led to black children growing up with, "no sense of their history and no clear path for their future." The evidence of a knowledge gap about black history extends far beyond that which is described in Glanton's article and could certainly be related to the quality of education in the U.S. that the UCLA protester notes.

Yet there's another way to conceptualize what's humanly at stake for our youth in understanding the economic, political and social impact of black people on the U.S.: how they interact with one another. In a recent conversation with Los Angeles Sparks coach Jennifer Gillom about a project her organization co-sponsored in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King's legacy, interaction - not necessarily the accumulation of information - was her focus.

In fact, Gillom optimisitically perceives an improvement in how youth interact along racial lines today - and her younger players - compared to her playing days.

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Click here to skip to JaVale McGee's Second Dunk In 2011 NBA Slam Dunk Contest (about 3:47)

As former Los Angeles Sparks post Pam McGee was escorted onto the court during the 2011 NBA Slam Dunk Contest to assist her son, Washington Wizards center Javale, with his second dunk, TNT analyst Charles Barkley noted that Pam was among the best women's basketball players ever.

Fellow TNT analyst Reggie Miller agreed and added that this sister Cheryl - McGee's teammate at USC - was the best women's basketball player of all-time. Of course, Miller's comments weren't merely the biased words of an adoring younger brother - that McGee and Miller along with Cynthia Cooper formed among the greatest trios of college basketball players ever is not exactly controversial (and if you had never watched them play, as I hadn't prior to Saturday, I strongly recommend watching the 1983 Championship Game where they defeated Kim Mulkey and the Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters, complete with a breakdown from James).

But never known to avoid controversy, leave it to Barkley to step in and challenge Reggie.

"You do know I think Teresa Edwards is the best women's basketball player ever don't you?" Barkley said in the video above, clearly baiting a response from Reggie rather than making his normally authoritative statement. "My favorite women's player of all-time is Teresa Edwards."

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From The Lavender Sisters on The Big Ten Network.

While perusing Ohio State's website for statistics the other day, I saw the video above in which center Jantel Lavender discusses how she thinks about being a feminine athlete at about the 4:00 mark in a voice over while getting her nails done.

"I know when it's time to get down and dirty and I know when it's time to be girly and prissy - I enjoy the finer things of being a girl," Lavender said. "You never have to be too much of one thing - I don't think you have to be too 'manly' or anything just to be a great basketball player. I really take pride in that and I really want to be a feminine basketball player."

The question is what exactly does it mean to be a feminine basketball player?

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I was talking to my sister a few weeks ago after we went to a women's basketball game at USF, her alma mater, and the matter of her soccer "career" came up.

We were something of a "soccer family" in that all three of us played soccer growing up.

And she was good.

She started out playing forward on one of the local club teams and made scoring hat tricks look routine. I joked with her that after blowing by her opponents to score goals, she would run back down the field with a sort of blank stare of surprise like, "I don't understand what the big deal is - isn't scoring goals what you're supposed to do?"

She eventually ascended to the Olympic Development Program tryouts and I watched a scrimmage or two she played in, but at that point the outcome didn't matter: I was proud to see her make it that far. And my brother and I often took the credit - the strength of her left leg was clearly the result of spending years trying to fend us off in play fights.

But the more important memory actually came at a pick-up game.

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Today, I'm blogging in a different voice, and with a different tone.  Today, I am a parent, a former middle school travel basketball coach, and the former director of the same program.  It's in that role I blog today for the National Women's Law Center's Rally for Girls' Sports Day.  You see, I have a 15 year old daughter.  She loved basketball from early on.  I coached her when she was little...probably from the time she was 6 or 7, up through the time she was around 13.

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Action is Greater Than Apathy from GreaterThanAids.org (Twitter: @GreaterThanAids)

If you visited the Greater Than Aids website on World AIDS Day yesterday to check out the PSA that Minnesota Lynx guard Candice Wiggins was in, you might have noticed that five of the links on the "Get Involved" page focus on HIV/AIDS in the African diaspora, including four specifically targeting African-Americans.

If you missed World AIDS Day yesterday, there is a separate National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day coming up in February 2011 that will definitely give more attention to the specific matter of AIDS in black communities.

And although AIDS has become a worldwide epidemic, there's good reason for the heavy emphasis on one racial sub-group of the millions infected.

As documented by journalist Jacob Levenson in his 2004 book The Secret Epidemic, there's a strong argument that silence about the spreading disease among black clergy, politicians, and members of the LGBT community has contributed to a rapid increase of AIDS in black communities to the point where some have now declaring it a "black disease".

While The Secret Epidemic draws upon the personal accounts of four individuals and epidemiological statistics to establish this point about AIDS becoming a black crisis, Minnesota Lynx guard Candice Wiggins doesn't need a 320 page book to understand the significance of speaking out about the HIV/AIDS epidemic - as many WNBA fans are well aware, Wiggins lost her father - Alan Wiggins - to AIDS before she really even got to know him.

"The reason I feel so empowered about it is my family," Wiggins said during an interview with Swish Appeal yesterday on World AIDS Day 2010. "They were the only ones who kind of allowed me to understand the significance of my dad and how I could kind of see the person and my family's name in a way that we could turn around all the negativity."

And as exhausting as it might seem to continue discussing such a personal matter publicly, continuing to talk about it is as much of a personal journey as it is a public cause for Wiggins.

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