I used to be in seventh grade when sports writing first made me feel deeply. UConn was coming off a 39-0 season and winning its third national title in eight years, and I eagerly awaited the delivery of Sports Illustrated.
When it arrived, Maryland's Juan Dixon graced the quilt, however the magazine's cover within the April 8, 2002 issue read: “UConn's AMAZING WOMEN, P. 44.”
I immediately flipped past “Faces in the Crowd,” where you possibly can reliably see female athletes featured within the magazine in 2002, and flipped through the feature detailing the lives of the close-knit UConn seniors: Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams. How they lived together off campus. Weekly family meals are cooked. Competed over card games and bet on who would cry first on senior night. …I ate it up.
These details stuck with me years later because as a women's college basketball fan within the Nineties and 2000s, there wasn't much to study essentially the most exciting teams and players. You rarely forget anything. Facts simply existed in your brain (sometimes for the subsequent 20 years).
After re-reading the UConn story, I turned to the back cover to take a look at the column I at all times read – “Life of Reilly.”
The headline? “No contact with my feminine side.”
“Do you think it’s difficult to coach in the Final Four? “Do you think it’s difficult to deal with 280-pound seniors, rookies with agents, and athletic directors with pockets full of pink panties?” Columnist Rick Reilly began. “Please. Try coaching seventh grade girls. After working with boys for 11 years, I helped coach my daughter Rae's school basketball team this winter. I learned something about seventh grade girls: They usually are in the toilet.”
These few pages about UConn's dedicated, elite women were sandwiched by a three-word headline on the cover and 800 words better suited to bad movies or lazy literature on the back. It was disappointing and frustrating. The worst part was that it was expected even for me as a seventh grader.
For much of sports history, female athletes (and their fans) have had to accept ups and downs and move forward, knowing that the downs were all too often intentional – a lack of investment, institutional support or attention. Later, these lows became artificial reasons to continue to suppress and hold back the sport. It's the women's sports Catch-22.
The “Caitlin Clark Effect” also hit the WNBA this summer, with teams across the league — not just the Fever — drawing record viewership and huge TV ratings. As the women's college season began this week, interest continues even without the stars who took the women's college game to new heights.
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Paige Bueckers vs. JuJu Watkins: How UConn and USC stars will keep women's basketball in the spotlight
For the first time in program history, defending champion South Carolina's season ticket packages sold out. UConn sold out its season tickets for the first time since 2004. LSU and Iowa, without Angel Reese and Clark respectively, were sold out. Texas, Notre Dame and Tennessee are also reporting huge increases.
Five months before the national title game, tickets to the Final Four are sold out and the resale market is booming. Nosebleeds for the national championship game cost nearly $200, while a courtside seat costs nearly $3,000.
For the primary time since 2004/05, our season tickets for the Gampel Pavilion are SOLD OUT!
Limited season tickets are still available for XL Center games ➡️ https://t.co/SLhPATBr4S pic.twitter.com/QGyhYGh81F
— UConn Women's Basketball (@UConnWBB) October 2, 2024
No one in women's basketball has won as much as Dawn Staley – Final Fours as a player, national titles as a coach, Olympic gold as a player, Olympic gold as a coach. Their office in South Carolina is stuffed with memorabilia. But for all her special accomplishments, this special moment in women's college basketball feels very different to her. “It feels like we have the freedom to just explore where this game can go,” she said. “We have no boundaries and that’s why you see talent, you see coaching, you see fan support, you see spectators – you see all those things.”
Staley speaks often and openly about how the ladies's game has been intentionally held back by so many for therefore long. First, by excluding women in sports before Title IX. Then by the NCAA, which prioritized men's college basketball. Also from television media partners who refused to point out the sport to as many as possible (after which used this lack of viewers as a reason to not broadcast it on major networks), and in print media coverage who refused to jot down about women's sports (after which often claimed that nobody had examine it).
Then got here last season. A yr during which the ladies's national title game drew nearly 4 million more viewers than the boys's title game, just three years after the Kaplan Report revealed that the NCAA intentionally under-rated the sport and underpaid its media partners.
“This,” Staley said after a pause, gesturing along with his hands at all the things that had passed previously yr. “I never thought it would come to a time where I could be a part of it.”
Anyone who has followed women's basketball will share each cautious optimism and anticipation for this season. Will this finally be the turning point? Will the forces that held up the sport be permanently eliminated?
Tara VanDerveer has seen all of it, including what she thought was the turning point. In 1985, their first season in Columbus, 22,000 people attended the Iowa vs. Ohio State game. However, it turned out to be an outlier. Over the course of a profession that began together with her driving the team bus and doing laundry as an assistant coach and ending last season at Stanford with three title rings and 1,216 profession wins, she experienced those starts and stops, times when a moment could have turned could gain momentum if there was investment, support and enthusiasm.
“We had to build on this and not make it an isolated incident,” VanDerveer said. “We keep our eye on the ball and let the game continue to grow. More young girls playing. Great high school tournaments, enthusiasm for the college game. People are excited about the WNBA.”
VanDerveer says that's what it appears like today.
Clark took the sport to a brand new level last season. This yr, USC's JuJu Watkins, UConn's Paige Bueckers and the Gamecocks – who’ve a 39-game winning streak – are poised to proceed the momentum. NIL completely modified the best way female basketball players are marketed (and empowered) and gained latest fans. The transfer portal opened up the space for players and democratized the sport's increasing parity. Look around and also you'll see as much as 10 teams that appear able to reaching the Final Four. Gone are the times when a UConn or Tennessee could win a lot that they were accused of being bad for the game.
Less than per week into the season, we've already seen the highest five teams pushed to the brink. The talented stars in women's basketball? They draw. But the parity that has never been higher and the true belief that anything can occur on any given night? This is charming.
What we're seeing is long overdue, and it still appears like it's just starting.
For a long time, women's college basketball deserved higher than playing second fiddle to the NCAA's orbit. It needed to be detached in order that the moments may very well be put together into something greater and higher. It deserved greater than three words on the front page and a condescending column on the back. It deserves full distribution. So please, decision makers and stakeholders, don’t screw this up.
A brand new generation of seventh graders is watching.
image credit : www.nytimes.com