Why There’s No Women’s March Madness
The NCAA comes under fire for inequities in its basketball tournaments
Sports Biblio Reader, 3.28.21
Also in This Issue: Pro Wrestling’s Finest Down and Dirty Chronicle; Remembering Elgin Baylor; Howard Schnellenberger and Bobby Brown; Randy Johnson’s Deadliest Fastball; How the Hollywood Stars Changed Baseball; The Giants in San Francisco; Mookie Betts, Fashion Plate; Intrigue in Valdosta; Super League Rugby at 25; Dick Stockton Retires
Women’s college basketball returned to national network television for the first time in more than 25 years on Saturday, and with a bang.
Top-ranked Connecticut dazzled its way to a 92-72 win over Iowa in the Sweet 16 in a game that more than lived up to its billing, featuring respective freshman hotshots Paige Bueckers (UConn) and Caitlin Clark (Iowa).
The second half of ABC’s doubleheader was even better, as 2019 national champion Baylor held off upstart Michigan in overtime.
The night fare was just as compelling, as Indiana knocked off North Carolina State, the top seed in the tournament, to reach the Elite 8 for the first time. So did Arizona, which upset Texas A & M.
You might call all this madness, as in March Madness, the NCAA’s compelling and lucrative branding slogan for its men’s Division I tournament going on at the same time.
Except if you watched any of the action from the women’s bubble in San Antonio, you saw no such reference. Instead, the words “WOMEN’S BASKETBALL” were emblazoned in large block print at center court.
How cutting edge. It’s as if the flailing ponytails offered no clues.
March Madness has no presence on the distaff side of the game, as it turns out, because the NCAA has never seen fit to create one, despite registering a trademark for that phrase for both men’s and women’s tournaments in the early 1990s.
That’s what The Wall Street Journal reported this week, after a tumultuous start to this year’s tournaments in which stark disparities between the men’s and women’s events were revealed.
It started with weight rooms and training table fare, the former revealed by Oregon women’s player Sedona Prince. After a social media furor, she returned to her Tik-Tok page to reveal an expansive and fully staffed weight room.
We’re not sure if the grub has improved, but what were initially symbolic matters have ripped the veneer off an NCAA establishment caught up in, at the very least, casual indifference.
The men’s tournament is the bread-winner for the heaping NCAA enterprise, and women’s coaches and players aren’t calling for identical resources. The New York Times reported Saturday that the men’s tournament has a budget that’s $14 million more than the women’s, which doesn’t sound terribly out of line.
Given the unusual circumstances of this year’s COVID-customized events—the women are playing all games in and near San Antonio, while the men have done the same in Indiana—I was willing to give the NCAA something of a break.
But I covered the women’s game for more than 25 years, and didn’t know that the March Madness trademark for the women’s tournament has been gathering dust for just as long.
In some halting, bumbling responses, NCAA president Mark Emmert didn’t give a good reason why. Was it an oversight? A concern about diluting the March Madness “brand?” The WSJ report said those overseeing the women’s tournament wanted to use the brand in recent years, but were reportedly rebuffed elsewhere in the NCAA.
How hard or expensive can it be to use the same logo on courts, in publicity and other promotional materials for a women’s tournament that in recent years has been offered some buzzer-beaters for the ages?
In 2017, Morgan William’s overtime jumper for Mississippi State in the Women’s Final Four semifinals snuffed out UConn’s 111-game winning streak. I was sitting right behind the Mississippi State bench, and the euphoria surrounding me—including Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott not far away—was unlike anything I experienced in my sportswriting days.
In 2018, Arike Ogunbowale of Notre Dame drained long 3s in the Final Four to beat UConn and Mississippi State, respectively, to win the NCAA championship for the Fighting Irish.
These are the moments to seal up, not just for posterity, but as selling points for a sport that has as much competitive balance as ever.
But that March Madness trademark has been unused throughout the whole UConn dynasty, which was marked by the first of its record 11 NCAA championships in 1995, the last time the women were on network TV.
Since then, ESPN has embraced the game, almost to the extent that the NCAA has seemed satisfied to let the cable giant market the women’s tournament. It’s been eight years since the NCAA commissioned a white paper to propose sweeping changes to how the event is presented.
But after some rules and other cosmetic changes, that report too has been ignored.
When you hear the word “equitable” bandied about in women’s sports circles, that’s because it’s long been part of Title IX parlance. The NCAA isn’t subject to that federal sex equity law, to which colleges and universities receiving federal funding must comply.
This isn’t the NCAA of the 1970s, which worked with football coaches to actively fight Title IX before sponsoring women’s sports in the early 1980s.
The NCAA has worked diligently since then, despite the criticisms we’re hearing this week, to provide leadership opportunities for women in administration, coaching and as athletes.
But it’s also an organization that’s been under siege in recent years due to legal challenges from athletes over compensation cases.
That was before COVID-19, which prompted cancellation of March Madness last year, a devastating financial hit.
Staging a men’s tournament was an absolute must for the NCAA this year, but for the moment is fighting a flailing PR battle after being blindsighted.
The truth is that the women’s tournament loses money even with the ESPN rights, nearly $3 million in 2019, the biggest money drain for the NCAA in any sport.
That’s led to inertia about what to do about a high-expense (due to Title IX), low-revenue sport whose top coaches make, at the very least, mid-six-figure salaries.
The potential to do better has been there for a long, long time, and endearing storylines abound. As Sally Jenkins writes in The Washington Post, the business prospects for selling and marketing the women’s tournament are promising, but she accuses the NCAA and Emmert of playing a shell game:
“The NCAA spends a gazillion dollars on all kinds of elected expenses, including his $2.7 million compensation, and then claims the women generate ‘no net revenue?’ This is not real accounting. It’s a murder of the English language in hopes of buying time for the wheelmen to start the getaway car.”
UConn coach Geno Auriemma has long said that lowered expectations for the women’s game has had a damaging effect, and renewed those concerns this week:
“If you hire a guy to coach the men’s team and in four-five years that guy doesn’t go to the NCAA Tournament, it doesn’t matter what it cost, they’re going to fire that guy. If you hire a woman’s coach and all you expect from that woman is graduate all your players, make sure everybody stays out of trouble and, oh yeah, try to win more games than you lose … how much are you really going to invest in that program?”
Bueckers is a bonafide star on the court and in the ever-important realm of social media, where college athletes may soon be able to cash in on their popularity like other Tik-Tok and Instagram influencers.
As sportswriter Steve Rushin, the husband of ex-UConn great and ESPN analyst Rebecca Lobo has rounded up, there’s been plenty of support from NBA stars.
But in three decades of covering a variety of women’s sports—including soccer as the U.S. women’s team became a phenomenon—the biggest challenge is getting more than hardcore fans to take a continuing interest.
So much of the women’s sports establishment has railed against the media for a lack of exposure, but my response has always been this: Is your athletic director, conference and NCAA doing everything they can to promote their own product?
We all know what the answer has been.
I get in trouble with the diversity and equity activists when I say that women’s sports are niche sports. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, and with making them stronger niche sports.
There’s a good case to be made that the NCAA hasn’t even begun to seriously chip away at trying to make progress in a meaningful way, and hiring a law firm to do an “independent review” of the inequities is a classic NCAA CYA move.
When feeling the heat, always hire more lawyers.
Making the hidebound, bureaucratic NCAA the villain is like plucking low-hanging fruit. But at the very least, Emmert et all should dust off that March Madness trademark for next year’s women’s tournament. The players this year are more than doing their part to enhance what’s been a marketable product.
What’s needed above all is a serious effort to get enough people to care, both at NCAA headquarters and more sports fans at-large.
A Few Good Reads
Starting off this week’s compilation with ‘rasslin’ and why not? In 1971, young photographer Geoff Winningham spent eight months capturing professional wrestling exploits in a Houston arena that led to the publication of a book, “Friday Night in the Coliseum.” While he admits the production quality doesn’t hold up well now, he’s satisfied with the gritty realism those photos conveyed of a then-emerging spectacle:
“Don’t give me art. Give me something real. I didn’t want to be seen as an artist. I wanted to be seen as a photographer. I didn’t want to make photographs that were poetically resonant. I wanted to make photographs of the real world.”
Winningham’s book was the recent subject of a 50th anniversary retrospective at Rice University, and Dancer Press recently published three different limited-edition versions with expanded photos. Many of them are shown on Winningham’s website, illustrating the theatrical flamboyance in the stands as well as inside the ring;
It’s been 20 years since Randy Johnson threw a seemingly routine fastball during a spring training game, when it fatally clobbered a dove. Zach Buchanan of The Athletic compiled an oral history of the event, but Johnson declined to be interviewed;
Fresh off leading the Los Angeles Dodgers to their first World Series title since 1988, National League MVP runner-up Mookie Betts showed off some pricey threads for GQ;
From Thom Karmik of the Baseball History Daily blog, Baseball and Evolution, circa 1887, when the San Francisco Chronicle published a story exploring the then-relatively new theory of natural selection with rules changes in a game that was quickly becoming a pastime;
After 55 years in sportscasting, Dick Stockton has announced his retirement and is putting together material for what figures to be a memoir of very versatile career, fueled by reading eight New York City newspapers a day as a boy;
San Francisco Giants announcer John Miller will be featured in an upcoming segment of “The Sounds of Baseball” on the MLB Network;
The college admissions scandal that swept up some university sports programs is the subject of the Netflix documentary “Operation Varsity Blues,” starting Matthew Modine, but some reviews have been underwhelming;
In the south Georgia town of Valdosta, high school football is a way of life. But the Valdosta Wildcats have seen better years and their controversial coach has caused a firestorm with allegations that he suggested that SEC powers Alabama and Georgia paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to high school recruits;
It’s been 25 years since the professional Super League rugby circuit took shape in northern England, but at The Critic, Anthony Broxton says the vision of its founders remains as elusive ever; at The Guardian, Aaron Bower argues that this anniversary season is critical for other reasons, especially with the Rugby World Cup slated for England in the fall;
Before he became a Basketball Hall of Fame coach of the San Antonio Spurs, Gregg Popovich endured a most humble beginning, going 2-22 in his first season at the college level for Pomona-Pitzer.
Sports Book News
As spring training winds down, Tom Hoffarth, a friend of this newsletter, continues his pre- and early-season baseball book review binge, most recently examining Dan Taylor’s newly published “Lights, Camera, Fastball.” It’s a history of the Hollywood Stars, a Pacific Coast League institution. Before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, the celebrity-besotted team excelled during the Hollywood’s golden age. Taylor talks about his book on the Baseball by the Book podcast;
Up the California coast, the Giants’ history in San Francisco is the subject of “The Giants and Their City,” by Lincoln Mitchell, and specifically the instances where it looked like they may pack up and move elsewhere; review at the U.S. Sport History blog.
Passings
Elgin Baylor, 86, was a transformative player in the history of the NBA for the Los Angeles Lakers the 1950s and 1960s, then becoming an executive with the Clippers. While his game was explosive, his temperament was understated, and in his own dignified way took a memorable stand on racial issues.
Baylor has long been considered among the most underrated players in NBA history, and at the Boston Globe, Bob Ryan’s remembrance places his legacy into full context:
“He was starting to fall through the cracks of basketball history, which is alternately amusing and sad. The simple truth is that Elgin Baylor was the most influential basketball player of the past 60 years. He took a game that had been horizontal, and only a wee bit vertical, and made it both diagonal and a whole lot more vertical.
“There will be a lot of statistical talk surrounding Elgin Baylor, all well-warranted. But numbers do not define him. His legacy can be seen in just about every professional, collegiate, and high school basketball game played anywhere. There is basketball B.E., Before Elgin, and A.E., After Elgin.”
Howard Schnellenberger, 87, transformed the University of Miami into a college football powerhouse in the 1980s, leading the program’s first national championship and later revived the University of Louisville. A player for Bear Bryant at Kentucky, Schnellenberger never stayed in his coaching jobs for long, and finished up at Florida Atlantic, close to where he forged his reputation;
Bobby Brown, 96, enjoyed two successful careers, first in playing on five World Series championship teams for the New York Yankees, then as a cardiologist. He spanned the Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle eras in eight seasons, and later became American League President. The only surviving member of those 1949-53 Bronx Bombers teams is Art Schallock;
Stan Albeck, 89, was a college and basketball and NBA coach, including one year with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, and is in the Bradley University Sports Hall of Fame.
For further reading:
“Elgin Baylor: The Man Who Changed Basketball,” by Bijan Bayne
“Passing the Torch,” Howard Schnellenberger with Ron Smith
The Sports Biblio Reader e-mail newsletter is delivered on Sunday. You can subscribe here and search recent archives. The full archives for Sports Biblio Digest can be found here. This is issue No. 237, published March 28, 2021.
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