NCAA Still Believes in Glass Ceilings
Women’s basketball is on the rise, but when will the NCAA take notice?
When I saw the pictures circulating Twitter, I really hoped they weren’t true, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised.
A massive weight room, filled with countless squat racks, dumbbells, plates and barbells, was ready for the contestants of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) men’s basketball programs. The men’s swag bags were packed with books, sweatshirts, deodorants, snacks––all christened with the March Madness slogan “The Dance.” The floor of every court during every men’s game graced with the infamous “March Madness” logo.
In stark contrast, the facilities allocated for the women’s division of the tournament looked like the home gym brought about by an ill-conceived New Year’s resolution. A small rack of dumbbells and a few yoga mats sat in the corner of the women’s “weight room.” In their swag bags were three toiletry items, a hat, a shirt and a towel. Their merchandise, their advertisements, even their courts were labeled with “NCAA Women’s Basketball” as if to serve as a reminder that these women do, in fact, play basketball in college.
2021 NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament gym (left) and Men's Basketball Tournament gym (right)
This secondhand consideration and longstanding lip service given to female athletes goes deeper than the surface however. Weight rooms can easily be revamped, and swag bags can be repackaged, but there are other core concerns that clearly need solving.
Ever since the tournament’s inception in 1982, women have received far less national attention and respect than their male counterparts. That balance in large part has to do with the way the college athletics’ governing body distributes its earnings from the tournament.
Based on the results of the tournament, the NCAA doles out money to winning men’s conferences using a simple unit system. Every game appearance up through the first three rounds of the tournament earns a team’s conference one “unit.” This year, the payment for each unit won was $337,141. If a team reaches the Final Four, they could collect an additional $1.1 million per game for their conference.
The women’s conferences don’t exactly reap the same benefits.
A women’s team could have the record for the most NCAA Division 1 titles (11) — including four in a row from 2013-2016, like University of Connecticut––and walk away penniless.
Women’s March Madness games aren’t factored into the NCAA’s overall compensation plan, and many think that’s because the women do not bring in the same revenue. Considering the men’s tournament is literally a billion-dollar business, that argument checks out. Nonetheless, the men’s tournament is given the green light to maximize revenue, while the women’s tournament is constantly told to pump the breaks.
The women’s tournament is only given 15.9% of their bundled, 14-year contract with ESPN, which in 2019 earned them $6.1 million. Stack these numbers up with the $917.8 million profit on the men’s side and your jaw drops.
These disparities are more disheartening now than ever before because there is a market for college women’s basketball––yet the NCAA continues to undervalue its potential.
For the first time, all the games in the women’s tournament were televised on ESPN––and viewership in every round skyrocketed. Sweet Sixteen viewers were up 67% from 2019, with the Final Four and the championship each garnering 14% and 9% increases.
While the men’s championship match-up saw nearly four times the amount of viewership than the women’s, the thrilling 54-53 victory for Stanford over Arizona was far more engaging than the Baylor blowout. It was the most-watched women’s championship game since 2014 with 4.1 million viewers. It’s almost as if you make women’s sports more accessible, people will watch. What a concept!
If this year’s Women’s March Madness didn’t sell you, I don’t know what will. The game is thrilling, it’s dynamic, it’s emotional––it’s great basketball. It’s time for the NCAA to recognize this game is a bona fide profit rather than leaving their female athletes feeling lucky that they even have an opportunity to play at all.
“I think there’s enough room, whether it’s on television, whether it’s arenas, for both—and for both to be great,” said Stanford’s head coach Tara VanDerveer. “And we do have a bigger area to grow because we started so far behind.”
Social justice norms are changing across most institutions, including sports. Activism brought on by the #MeToo, LGBTQ and Black Lives Matter movements now encourage a new wave of change unlike ever before. Of course it’s important to hold the NCAA accountable and demand equality with every ounce of public outcry and every inch of Twitter space available. But now it’s time to take those actions a bit further, and create real progress.
That progress starts with how the public, media and NCAA officials gender sports. Oftentimes, we preface “women” before saying a sport’s name to indicate that it’s a women’s sport, but we normally don’t do so with men’s sports. In this case, it’s labeled as “March Madness” for men but “Women’s March Madness” for the women.
If we challenge each other to specify which sport we are talking about, men’s or women’s, and if sports media outlets can preface sports with the proper adjective in headlines and in broadcast booths, we can begin to remove men’s sports as the default in both casual conversation and the public eye.
Another solution is increased media coverage. In February, four of the top sports media Instagram accounts, including SportsCenter, ESPN, Sports Illustrated and Bleacher Report, featured just an average of 6% of their posts about women’s sports. Since those weight room images blazoned the web, there’s been an uptick of postings across these sites. That should continue beyond The Dance’s final buzzer.
While I wish I hadn’t seen those photos plastered all over social media, I’m glad they sparked a conversation for gender equity. I’m glad that millions of viewers not only turned their heads in response to the jarring images but also tuned into these rip-roaring women’s games. I’m glad this sport is growing at such a rapid rate. Look out NCAA, you might actually have a women’s product worth investing in.