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Sports

Column: Women’s Basketball is light years behind

By Michael Pare
Posted on March 25, 2010, at 3:32 a.m.

The NCAA women’s basketball tournament is in full swing and running one stride behind the schedule of the more heralded men’s tournament. CBS holds the exclusive rights to the men’s games, while ESPN holds the rights to the women’s as well as those of the men’s National Invitational Tournament — often referred to as the “not important” or “Nobody’s Interested Tournament” by basketball fans. 

But the way the madness unfolds on ESPN’s television schedule paints a different story about the interests of its viewers. ESPN, usually reserved for prime content, is being utilized to broadcast men’s NIT games, while women’s games are relegated to ESPN2.  For the message it sends, it might as well be on ESPN 8, “The Ocho.”

As much as women’s basketball tries to succeed as a mainstream sport, it is still unquestionably less significant than even the “not important” games of the men’s postseason.  And, sadly, there is nowhere to go for women from there.  Despite the existence of the WNBA, college remains the apex for women’s basketball — perhaps not in terms of talent, but certainly in terms of recognition. 

Only rarely do players become household names at the college level — Diana Taurasi, Candace Parker — and it is rarer still for them to retain that status after leaving the friendly, more media-saturated confines of the NCAA. It is entirely possible to be a regular consumer of sports media and not see one highlight or hear one score of a WNBA game. The only time they get airtime is during SportsCenter’s occasional glorification of the ever-elusive female dunk in its top plays or until WNBA Finals poke through the media like a weed desperately hoping to survive.

 But like the weed, they are a nuisance to the regular sports fan, arising intermittently and seemingly without provocation on the media landscape to disrupt the normal flow of sports information. ESPN and ABC’s current media deal with the WNBA covers 18 primetime regular season games and 11 postseason games — nowhere near enough content to develop storylines and histories that will help the game grow.  Until they can boost their average ratings above a 0.5, the WNBA will still be a relevant, if not clever, answer to the question: Want to hear a joke?

To trace the problems of women’s basketball from the forced chuckles induced by its mention, we must follow the path of corruption that ends with the weedy emergence of the WNBA Finals down to where it starts — in the root system that is the college game. 

In the past 10 years, the plane on which women’s college basketball teams play has become so incredibly unbalanced that it has caused a shift in the perception of the game’s quality. Ask anyone if they think parity — the lifeblood of sports — is alive and they will tell you that Geno Auriemma and the University of Connecticut women are adding insurance nails to its coffin with every 40-plus point victory they hang on their competition.

In addition to UConn enduring a 74-game winning streak, they have won four of the last 10 national championships — all as the number one overall seed — and appear to have no obstacles on their path to another one this year. 

Certainly their run of dominance has gained some notoriety for the game, but it is a deal they sign with the devil. By allowing UConn to become the face of the college franchise, they welcome — perhaps not the loyalists — but the fringe fans to accept the talent pool in women’s basketball is depleted when it is likely stronger than ever. The top-tier talent simply needs to be spread more evenly like it is in the men’s game.

The University of Connecticut cannot be held accountable and neither can Geno Auriemma for performing exceptionally in a flawed system that begs its participants to overinvest and defy the laws of sports parity. But the fact remains that UConn has removed the competition and thereby the luster that makes sports shine and allows us to see ourselves reflected in them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010, 3:32 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.

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  • Kirk Sinclair

    There are at least two assumptions made towards the end of this piece without supporting evidence. Where is the evidence that dominance in sport is detrimental? There is no evidence from basketball, where UCLA, the Chicago Bulls, the US Dream Team and the initial dominance of Tennessee v. UConn all helped their respective sports. It’s one thing to make an assumption without supporting evidence; it’s quite another to make one for which all the existing evidence seems to weigh against it.

    The recruiting classes of Tennessee and UConn were more lopsided in the late nineties than they are now. UConn did have the good fortune recently of recruiting two #1s in a row, Charles and Moore, but neither were part of a total recruiting class ranked #1. In fact, Charles’s classmates are a woman whose second best offer was from Division III, a woman whose best achievement was MVP of the Philadelphia Catholic League and projected for a mid-major program, and a McDonald All-American that was nevertheless too out of shape to attract much attention from the powerhouses.

    Stanford, Duke, Tennessee, Rutgers and UConn all recruit at a comparable level in recent times, with the first four often having higher ranked classes than the latter. One suspects this will no longer be the case for Rutgers, as their McDonald All-Americans are jumping ship. One program with a higher percentage of McDonald All-Americans goes down the tubes while another one with comparable talent rises up again. Rises up again, because just two years ago Tennessee was winning back-to-back championships. Is it better for women’s basketball when teams emulate Rutgers when they gain an edge in talent, or like UConn?

    Next year, the odds on favorite will be Stanford, precisely because their talent next year will surpass that of UConn’s. This make’s UConn’s “dominance” of talent in comparison to UCLA’s a rather short blip. Maybe that’s the problem with women’s college basketball, there has yet to be a team that has dominated as completely for as long as UCLA, a dominance that drew keen interest in the sport at the time.

  • Leonard Kendall

    UConn was not the overall Number 1 seed in 2004. They were not even a #1 seed.

  • Perry King

    Debby Downer on depressants here. All the negatives are played up while none of the big advances are noted, which many other articles have played up. Note that Tennessee has helped to provide at least some competition over the last few years, and there are many other teams such as Stanford that make a game of it with the Huskies. Also note that the Huskies have not won their last 4 titles as the overall top seed. In 2004, they weren’t even a 1-seed.

    The status of WCBB is not much brighter than the gloom and doom portrayal given here. Watch some games, there’s great excitement.

  • Wally East

    Light years is a measure of distance, not time.

    Connecticut won the 2004 title as a two seed.

    The column is a little overwrought. “Path of corruption”? What’s corrupt?

    The team that’s doing the winning isn’t “enduring” a winning streak. It’s enjoying it.

  • RealFan

    Do any of these writers who write this crap about women’s basketball even been to a game? I’m really getting sick and tired of everyone talking about how UCONN’s streak is bad for the game, but no one questioned whether John Wooden’s streak or any other dominating streak in the men’s game was ever bad for the game. Wake up writers, you are the only ones that are “bad” for the sport of women’s basketball by continuing to write the garbage you do to make it seem like you have an opinion. Need some knowledge, come here let me coach you.

  • Kristin

    Michael -

    I hope that you’re a freshman and not a senior. Clearly, you have a lot to learn in terms of sports history and sports business. Perhaps you should read up on those two things before taking the path of least resistance by joining the archaic, pathetic, and now dying breed of male sports journalist who like to predict the demise of women’s basketball in order to make themselves feel better about their manhood.

  • Title XIX

    Yo, yo, yo, check this out. Mikey Mikes be on to something here. We’re talking about 2004. Two-thousand-and-four! Not two-thousand-and-eight… no, no, not two-thousand-and-eight. Two-thousand-and-four. Women’s college basketball is a bad product. The WNBA is a horrible product. If the NCAA had any foresight (and/or balls) they’d do something to increase parity.

    The comparisons to UCLA need to cease. Not only was that a totally different era, but it also a singular sustained effort. UConn has dominated womens basketball (along with a few ) for a long, long time. College basketball is a veritable oligarchy and a terrible product.

    O’Doyle rules.

  • Mark Harris

    This article implies there is some inherent negative to the women’s game that will never be overcome. Actually, consider how far the women’s game has come since the 1970s, when many colleges and high schools did not even have women’s basketball programs. So why focus on the negative? John Wooden himself said a few years ago that he thought the higher level Division 1 women’s teams played the best game of basketball in the country. He was referring to the greater emphasis on the team aspect of the women’s game. Women’s basketball is a great sport, a fact recognized by its many fans, both male and female. It would help if the media gave it its due.

  • Jun

    here, here!
    bravo

  • Jun

    ha, ha, ha

    O’Doyle rules.