It’s old news that the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team won the NCAA championship. We’ve all heard that, in beating Stanford, they’ve notched yet another victory in their streak of 54,673 consecutive wins (actual number: 78).
The NCAA PR squad isn’t about to let go of that storyline. It’s the only thing that’s made women’s basketball relevant in a long time.
ESPN was pleased to report that the game drew a 2.7 TV rating (according to Nielsen), up a very pretty 29% from last year. But context brings down the heavy hammer of reality. The Tuesday night of the game was owned by American Idol, with its 7.8 rating, and UConn’s triumph also fell in line behind Lost (3.8), NCIS (3.4), The Biggest Loser (3.3), and NCIS: LA (2.9).
Ouch. And those were just normal, mid-season episodes of each of those shows. To drive the dagger home, consider that the men’s final between Duke and Butler garnered a 16.0.
While this year’s 2.7 rating for the championship game is indeed up from last year, it’s not a continuation of long-term growth. The overall trend has been down in the last ten years, even in a time when we consider ourselves fairly enlightened and freak out at the suggestion of sexism.
But the real question here isn’t sexism, it’s relevance. Women’s basketball, both in college and in the WNBA is at all-time high in skill level. It’s legit basketball—#2 Stanford, who just lost to UConn in the final, even runs a triangle offense just like the Los Angeles Lakers (and Chicago Bulls of old).
The appeal of the NBA is clear: it’s basketball at the world’s highest level, it’s fast-paced, it’s physical, and it’s got enough colorful personalities for a dozen soap operas. The appeal of men’s basketball is equally apparent: it’s about tradition, alma maters, and rooting for the underdog at all cost.
Watching women’s basketball, for many of us, is like walking into a movie that’s half over. We have no idea what’s going on. We don’t know the players, the teams, or the rivalries. We barely even know what’s good or bad.
Is it unfair for us to compare women’s basketball to men’s? Our hyper-politically-correct society makes us assume that we should see the NBA and WNBA on equal footing, and same for men’s and women’s in college.
But other sports leagues don’t pretend to be top-tier. The Arena Football League knows it will never be anything but the strange nephew of the NFL, and everyone’s okay with that. Major League Soccer has all the trimmings of a big-deal league, but folks in the U.S. know it can’t compare with the NBA or NFL and folks outside the states know it will likely never measure up to Premier League.
I don’t see a women’s basketball league in the United States ever coming to equal its male counterpart in popularity. I don’t think that’s pessimistic, nor do I want the WNBA to fail, but I think it’s something we can agree on, at least in essence.
Instead, it seems much more likely that—should the right players emerge—NBA teams would open their doors to women, and we’d see a co-ed league.
I don’t think it’s likely, mind you. But it sure seems more likely than the WNBA ever drawing the same TV ratings and pulling in the same merchandise sales numbers as the NBA. Or the women’s Huskies ever attracting more viewers than the men’s Blue Devils in a championship game.
The moral: the only way women’s basketball players will ever be fully relevant to mainstream audiences is if they’re in the NBA.
Now, bang down my door with all the reasons why the NBA, or any professional league, will never cross the gender barrier. It makes for locker room weirdness, and the physical contact between players during gametime could create some problems. That’s fine, I agree.
But we can also agree that there’s a large chunk of the broader basketball-watching audience that has little or no interest in watching the WNBA, or women’s college basketball. They’ll give any number of reasons, be they right or wrong: skill level, physicality, lack of dunks.
That said, there are a handful of folks (including some prominent NBA bloggers) who have no interest in college ball for similar reasons. It makes sense, somewhat—watching college basketball does mean having to endure some missed open jump shots.
When it’s both women’s, and college? Two big strikes against.
Even when it’s transcendent. UConn wrapped up a second consecutive perfect season with their win over Stanford. They’ve averaged—averaged!—a 32.7 point margin of victory in this 78-game streak.
It’s amazing. It’s nothing most of us have ever seen before.
The Huskies are ten games shy of the NCAA men’s basketball record for consecutive wins. That distinction belongs to UCLA (duh), coached by John Wooden (duh), and starring Bill Walton (could have been Kareem, right? Nope. Walton.).
They went 88 games in a row, from 1971-1974. That ’74 season marked not only the end of UCLA’s win streak, but also the end of their run of seven championships in a row. Nobody has ever challenged the latter record—while UConn is on the brink of breaking the first, they have seven championships total in their history. Their streak of titles is, well, two now.
UConn’s win streak is obviously the NCAA’s holy grail of relevance. Get ready to hear a lot more about it when the women’s NCAA basketball season starts up again—which I suppose is around the same time the men start up. I’m not sure.
I guess I haven’t been paying attention.
Who needs the NBA or professional sports anyway? Men’s professional basketball like pro football is filled with over paid, sometimes criminal, often predictable in their games, players with few really giving back to the communities out of which they come or in which they live and work.
Give me NCAA College Athletics anyday. I simply won’t watch professional men or women. So if you love College sports, then women’s NCAA basketball is a hell of a lot more interesting than you make it out to be. And I’d fly across the country to see Stanford play Connecticut in Palo Alto next December.
This article makes it sound as if women aren’t allowed in the NBA. They are. There is really no such thing as men’s sports. Women are allowed in every professional league, to my knowledge. Men aren’t allowed in women’s leagues.
Just for some reference, the ratings of women’s basketball is usually comparable to that of the professional hockey. Over the period in the graph above (2001-2009), the Stanley Cup Finals had better ratings only in 2008 and 2009. Hockey is promoted endlessly by ESPN. Every arbitrary game between Columbus & Tampa deserves its own highlight.
How many articles will you read about hockey’s irrelevance?
Actually, Jeff F., here’s one I found on the first page of a google search for “hockey irrelevance”: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/050428-nhl/
It incorrectly identifies a lack of American stars as the reason for hockey’s decline. Sam Orme on this very site recognizes hockey’s irrelevance and suggested the NHL use the now-past Olympic hype to drum up viewers: http://howtowatchsports.com/2010/03/we-got-next-how-the-nhl-can-use-the-olympics-to-repair-their-image/
So, to answer your question “How many articles will you read about hockey’s irrelevance?”: At least two in five minutes. And that’s without looking hard.
I should have been more precise. Obviously, such articles exist. I can find articles about the NFL’s irrelevance as well. My question should about the number of such articles and why this author chose to pick on women’s basketball rather than the NHL, for example. I The first link you feature is from 5 years ago. I’ve seen multiple articles complaining about women’s basketball’s irrelevance during this tournament!
The second article isn’t comparable in my view. It actually seems to imply that the NHL could be a major television attraction with some minor tweaks. This article says that women’s basketball is doomed, and the only viable option would be for women to play in the NBA.
The Olympic hockey game may have been watched by 34.8 million people, but that’s because it involved the US winning a gold medal. Americans will watch nearly anything that involves us winning, particularly if we can cast ourselves as the scrappy underdogs.
That’s an easy one — I wrote about the women’s tournament because it was current. Much like how that hockey article was written when the Olympic hockey game was still fresh.
I guess I’m not sure what your beef is.