The Final Frontier
Pssst! Want a tip on the last undiscovered territory in college basketball? It's the women's Division I NCAA basketball championship tournament.
Sure it's no secret, but it's no American Idol either. The women's game has been nipping at the heels of the cultural consciousness for about ten years now, but hasn't quite grabbed the meaty flesh of its full attention.
This gives the women's tourney something the men's tournament doesn't have -- potential. As yet undiscovered by mainstream America, the women's tournament has scalability, while the men's tourney has been doomed to shark jumpage ever since ESPN lost the contract to broadcast the opening rounds back in the 90s.
The 25th annual women's tournament tips off Saturday with games in Chicago, Denver, Nashville, and Tucson.
Women's basketball clipart from Jam'n Art.
Proving our point about the second-tier status afforded the women's game, the first wave of women's tournament games start at 8:00 AM PST (as opposed to 9:30 AM for the first men's games of the opening round), and the women have been sloughed off to ESPN2 behind the men's NIT on ESPN and the men's NCAA on CBS. Certainly the BassCenter and Bass Tech good ol' boy fishin' shows leading into coverage of the women's tourney on the Deuce Saturday morning will help bring a lot of new fans to the women's game, as will the extensive advertising being done in support of the women. Has anybody seen even a single promo for the women's tournament? Or a cross-marketing TV commercial? Or sixteen hours a day of bracket analysis by the talking heads on every cable sports channel?
TV executives and other powers that be will argue that the women's game doesn't receive as much attention, because it doesn't generate the ratings that the men's game does. This of course is a circular argument, because as the master says, "you have to keep repeating things over and over and over again . . . to kind of catapult the propaganda." If there is no publicity for the women's game, how can its popularity increase? Closer inspection reveals that even this specious argument doesn't fly--as of the 2005 tournament, the 2004 women's final between UConn and Tennessee was the highest-ranked collegiate basketball game ever, for men or women, in ESPN history.
Maybe the women's game doesn't get the same attention as the men's game because the women's game is primarily played below the rim, or maybe the tinge of lesbianism loosely associated with the women's game has scared off gutless advertisers and moralizing fans wary of the wrath of God.
Whatever the public relations challenges, for many basketball purists, the soul of the game can be found in women's basketball. And for those looking for the soul of the game, there aren't many other options. The men's tournament is a bloated commercialism-obsessed caricature of itself, and there is no way the public attention span can absorb anything below Division I. So there sits the women's tournament, patiently waiting for it's much deserved close-up.
For bracket-playing thrill-seekers, the women's tournament offers the challenge of the unknown. In fact, part of the allure of the playing a women's tournament office pool is the women's position on the fringe of public awareness. There are occasional mentions of big games on SportsCenter or maybe a few televised games during the tournament, but for the most part, the women's game is like a tantalizing rumor that can't quite be verified. Which makes picking the women's games tougher, thereby adding to the allure.
Of course, the women's game is still a top-heavy sport (uh, no pun intended), with a small cadre of powerhouse favorites and a cast of thousands. Parity is improving, but it hasn't reached the level of the men's game. Maybe this is one of the reasons the women's game isn't as popular.
The women's tournament also doesn't quite have the storied past of the men's tournament in terms of upsets. The game has largely been dominated by a few teams like Tennessee, Louisiana Tech, Stanford, and UConn over the last 15 years--in fact, Tennessee and La Tech have played in all 25 women's NCAA tournaments--and hasn't had that huge breakthrough underdog win that shows the rest of the smaller programs in the country that anything is possible.
That means the chance for the killer upset is still out there. If you missed calling NC State in '83, Syracuse in '03, or Villanova in '85, you've got a second chance at greatness in the women's tournament.
We'd be hella surprised if it happens this year though.
Looking at the women's field, there are plenty of great matchups, but ultimately, we see more of the same. North Carolina, Duke, UConn, and Tennessee (funny how the same programs are the powers in both the men's and women's games) are one through four in the RPI rankings, but for some reason the NCAA has placed the Tarheels and Vols in the same bracket and the Blue Devils and Huskies in the same bracket. We've got NC over Tennessee, but UConn surprising Duke.
Elsewhere, we're not convinced that Ohio State is as strong as their number one seed, but we do like defending champion Baylor to ride its championship experience back to the Final Four. In the San Antonio bracket, local standard-bearer Stanford and Oklahoma lurk, but LSU looks tough with 6-6 center Sylvia Fowles and possible repeat consensus national player of the year, forward Seimone Augustus.
That gives us a Final Four of North Carolina, UConn, Baylor, and LSU, with Heels and Tigers in the final. It's hard to believe that a number one seed can be an upset pick, but we're going with the LSU Tigers to take this year's women's title.
To quote another master of analysis and perception though, "who knows?!?"
Exactly. That's why the women's tournament may be even more fun to follow than its more popular big brother.