Instead of commanding network coverage in primetime like the men’s championship, the women’s was relegated to cable last night, which guaranteed only a fraction of the viewership. TV executives wonder why they can’t get better ratings for the fledgling women’s professional league – the WNBA. Well, it might have something to do with the way they keep dissing women’s college Basketball in this fashion.
Moreover, what does this disparate coverage say to female college athletes, as well as to young girls, who we encourage to have the same interest in sports as young boys…? Frankly, it says that chauvinism, sexism, and discrimination against women in sports not only still exist but are blithely tolerated.
Sorry girls….
(“NCAA Women’s Championship,” The iPINIONS Journal, April 8, 2009)
I won’t stop beating this dead horse until (male) TV executives stop their sexist practice of airing the men’s championship on network TV, while relegating the women’s to cable. And let me hasten to note that they’d be compelled to do so if more women showed more active interest in watching women’s Basketball….
That said, the media made much ado on Monday night about the Duke Blue Devils winning their fifth men’s championship since 1991.
Well, last night the UConn Huskies won their third consecutive women’s championship, defeating the Notre Dame Fighting Irish 63-53. It wasn’t pretty, but neither was the men’s championship game. After all, both Duke and Notre Dame won with final scores in the 60s, which is around the number of points some NBA teams score in the first half of their games.
Still, this was UConn’s tenth championship since 1995. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Duke!
I don’t usually comment on coaches because the media give them far too much of the credit their players deserve, and schools/corporate sponsors give them far too much of the money their players earn.
But I feel obliged to make an exception for Geno Auriemma, UConn’s head coach for the past thirty years.
All of UConn’s championships have come under head coach Geno Auriemma. Auriemma’s 10 titles are tied with former UCLA men’s coach John Wooden for the most all-time by a college coach.
Connecticut has never lost a championship game in its history.
(Sports Illustrated, April 7, 2015)
Except that what I find most interesting about Auriemma is not the way he coaches women’s Basketball, but the way he advocates for it:
I just know there wouldn’t be this many people in the room if we were chasing a women’s record. The reason everybody is having a heart attack the last four or five days is a bunch of women are threatening to break a men’s record, and everybody is all up in arms about it…
If we were breaking a women’s record, everybody would go, ‘Aren’t those girls nice, let’s give them two paragraphs in USA Today, you know, give them one line on the bottom of ESPN and then let’s send them back where they belong, in the kitchen.’
(ESPN December 20, 2010)
You probably were never aware of that insightful rant. Or, for the matter, this more recent one about the men’s game:
I think the game is a joke… As a spectator, forget that I’m a coach, as a spectator, watching it, it’s a joke… Every coach will tell you that there’s 90 million reasons for it.
(Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2015)
As it happened, ESPN featured a profile of Auriemma last night, during which an interviewer asked him to expound on everything from climate change to race relations. I found what he said about the latter particularly worthy of comment. Because, after venting righteous frustration with all of the national conversations on race, which have done so little to improve race relations, Auriemma explained the persistence of racism in America by looking right into the camera and declaiming, with pontifical sincerity, that:
America must have the most ignorant people in the world.
Is it any wonder so many women have enjoyed playing their level best for Auriemma over the years? This man clearly has no patience for any kind of bullshit.
Congratulations UConn!
Related commentaries:
NCAA women’s…
March Madness…