Revisiting "Women's College Basketball, Well Worth Watching"

Back in April of 2011 I wrote an article about the excitement generated by Texas A&M’s defeat of Notre Dame in the final Women’s NCAA Basketball Championship game. To my mind the women’s final rivaled the Men’s Championship win by Connecticut over the Butler Bulldogs. I went on to explain how men were missing out by dismissing women’s college basketball as not worth watching. Twelve years on I find that most men who follow sports, college sports in particular, remain too dismissive of women’s athletics at any level. This is especially true of those sports where the contest is as truly competitive and exciting as it is in the corresponding version of the sport played by men. I went to a local sports bar, to watch the LSU-Iowa Woman’s NCAA Championship and the bartender didn’t have the sound on. Now there wasn’t anything more compelling or important being televised in the world of sports so as not to. A number of other men at the bar agreed that it was only women’s sports so why turn off the juke box to listen to that game. I guess to them there was more value to listening to songs they’ve heard forever for the past 40 years. I tried to make the point that this game was, in fact, history in the making as neither Iowa nor LSU had ever made it to the Women’s Championship. All of my efforts were to no avail, my point generally fell on deaf ears. Luckily for me and other interested parties at the bar who had also requested the sound be turned on, the juke box ran out of songs played with five minutes left in the game and the sound was turned on thereafter. Once again, I can’t understand why men don’t give women’s sports the respect it deserves. The LSU-Iowa game was as exciting as any number of the games played by men in this past tournament. Now I’ll be the first to admit that a women’s college football game wouldn’t rise to the level of the men’s game, but when it comes to tennis, basketball, downhill skiing, soccer, ice hockey and golf, among others, the differences in the levels of competition and intensity are insignificant when comparing the games of one gender to the other. All one need do is think back to the last two women’s ice hockey finals in the Winter Olympics, the downhill skiing competitions in those same games or the final match of the last Woman’s World Cup Soccer tournament to see what I mean. One of the most exciting finales to a woman’s competition that I ever witnessed came back in 2011 when the Japanese Women’s Soccer Team won the gold medal in that year’s Women’s World Cup. This victory came within months of a disastrous earthquake and accident at the Fukushima nuclear plant, it was a victory that lifted the spirits of an entire nation. With regard to the LSU-Iowa Woman’s NCAA Championship game, the viewership while lower in absolute numbers than that of the men’s final still represented the most watched women’s title game of all time according to the Advocate, a newspaper out of Baton Rouge, home of Louisiana State University: “LSU’s 102-85 victory over Iowa on Sunday was the most-viewed women’s college basketball game of all time, drawing 9.9 million viewers across all ESPN and ABC platforms, according to a company release. Those numbers topped several of last season’s biggest college football games, including LSU-Alabama (7.58 million), the Big 12 championship (9.41 million), the Pac-12 championship (5.97 million), the ACC championship (3.47 million), the Sugar Bowl (9.14 million) and the Orange Bowl (4.6 million), among others, according to Sports Media Watch. The LSU-Iowa numbers blow away averages for NBA regular-season games (1.6 million last season) and were within shouting distance of the ratings for last year’s NBA Finals.” The growing prominence of the women’s game was best captured in the commentary of Jerry Bembry, Senior Writer and a Video Producer at ESPN who said: ” This year’s Final Four feels different in the sense that it’s the first time that the conversation about the women’s event is more elevated than the men’s. The women are just as intense as men. The women play defense with the same tenacity as the men. The women shoot 3-pointers with the same extended range as the men. And then there’s the trash talk and emotions that maybe exceed what occurs in the men’s college game. New rivalries have put the women’s game among the top trending topics since the tournament began.” Likewise, South Carolina’s Aliyah Boston’s observations on the tournament speak to the changes that are already underway: “You can always think about people making negative comments about women’s basketball, women’s sports in general, but it’s proof that the numbers are going up,” Boston said. “Everyone is excited to watch the women’s game. You can’t really deny that people are interested in watching women’s sports. It’s just really exciting to be part of the generation that’s continuing to help it grow.” At this point I think it’s hard to deny the obvious and that is that women’s sports are on the rise and that the competition is just as good and just as intense in many cases as is that of the men’s game in several sports. It has in fact become too good to ignore, a factor that will drive even more viewership in the future. So, what then is it that is holding so many men back from embracing women’s sports to the same extent that they embrace men’s? Misogyny may explain some of it but I don’t think that is the essence of the issue either; sports enthusiasts love the high they get from watching an intensely competitive contest. Attitudes continue to change and the demise of Trump era misogynistic rhetoric will only hasten more change in this regard be it in society in general or in the world of sports in particular. With regard to college basketball, it may be more a function of sports viewing overload for many. After all, just how much college basketball can you watch with 134 individual games played between the Men and Women’s NCAA tournaments, plus the NIT and division 2 competition, all of it coming only a week after college basketball’s Tournament Week. Moreover, I’m just talking one particular aspect of sports here. There’s a host of other sporting events on at the same time that March Madness is in full swing. The unrelenting pressure of increased women’s athletic competition will eventually reverse the slow pace of accepting women athletes on the same plane as those of men. One must remember that men who began watching men’s sports growing up will naturally be inclined to continue to do so, not because they are misogynists but more due to societal inertia, an inertia that will only have its course changed as the level of competition in women’s sports becomes to compelling to ignore, which it will. Don’t forget that once upon a time, in the late 1960s white college football players in the Deep South were legally prohibited from playing teams that had black players on their squads. This ruling was later modified to only pertain to college football games played within the South and within southern conferences. Eventually teams from the region could compete against integrated teams outside of the old Confederacy or in certain bowl games like the Rose Bowl. In time black players were allowed onto southern college football teams as well, competitive pressures being the driving force behind that change. Today the sport of college football is fully integrated as is the broadcasting and reporting of the sport as well. In 1971, the year I graduated high school, the University of Alabama football team was all white as was that of Ole Miss. Look at those teams today. Thus, it is just a matter of time before women’s sports become just as viewed as that of men’s and the more competitive women’s contests become the faster will be the rate of that change. In a sense we are, all of us who follow sports, watching history in the making whether we like it or not, sound on or not. Steven J. Gulitti New York, N.Y. 10 April 2023 Sources: Women’s College Basketball, Well Worth Watching; https://shadowproof.com/2011/04/05/womens-college-basketball-well-worth-watching/ CNBC: CBS saw 14% decline in viewers for NCAA men’s basketball championship game, while ratings for women’s title match on ESPN grew https://cnb.cx/2OxaH0s ESPN: TV ratings for LSU’s win over Iowa drew an all-time high for women’s college basketball https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/espn-lsu-iowa-drew-all-time-high-womens-basketball-ratings/article_ad131dac-6d5a-5221-bd9e-b503a7136bdb.html Jerry Bembry: ‘The talent is evolving in women’s sports’: Comparing the Final Fours in Dallas and Houston https://andscape.com/features/the-talent-is-evolving-in-womens-sports-comparing-the-final-fours-in-dallas-and-houston/