South Carolina women's basketball: Three ways to improve the sport
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If you could change something about women’s college basketball to improve the product, what would it be? Coaches have gotten their wish with the addition of units for the NCAA tournament. What other changes could help women’s basketball continue to grow?
One of mine has already happened: get rid of the Pac-12 Network. For years some of the best games in the country went unseen because they were on the Pac-12 Network. If a tree fell on the Pac-12 Network, did it make a sound?
Improve schedules
This is two parts: better competition and changing the distribution of games.
Over the weekend Dawn Staley resorted to posting on social media to beg for opponents to fill out the Gamecocks’ schedule. It’s an annual problem because teams don’t want to play top teams because they might lose. There are also programs like LSU that schedule embarrassingly weak opponents to pad stats. Play games that fans will want to see.
Teams that made the tournament the previous season should be required to play a certain number of their nonconference games against other tournament teams, and power conference teams should have to schedule, say, half of their games against other power conference foes.
I would also adjust the game schedule. No matter how big the games are, women’s basketball is an afterthought in November and December when college football and the NFL dominate. Start conference play at the beginning of December and spread the games out over three months instead of two. Then move some of the nonconference games to open dates in January and February when they will get the attention they deserve.
Improve media coverage
Another two-parter: improve the diversity and quality.
The first part is happening. For some 20 years, ESPN had a virtual monopoly as the only major broadcaster to air or cover games in any significant way. That gave ESPN a disproportionate influence over storylines and exposure. It infamously happened in 2020 when ESPN decided before the season that Oregon was the best team, and nothing that happened on the court was going to change that.
But now ESPN has competition. Fox and NBC broadcast full schedules of women’s basketball. Websites like The Athletic cover women’s basketball full-time, in addition to a number of quality sites devoted specifically to women’s basketball. That diversity has forced ESPN to step up its coverage and for the most part, it has. No longer can it just trot out talking points made by the promotions department. But please, we all want more Andraya Carter and Chiney Ogwumike and less Rebecca Lobo and Holly Rowe.
The second part is perhaps self-serving. Every March, people who don’t cover women’s basketball parachute in. They ask stupid questions that could have been answered with the slightest bit of research, write ignorant stories (like the infamous UCLA/LSU article), and generally get in the way of those trying to tell smart, interesting stories. They do it all while acting like they are fulfilling some sort of noblesse oblige by being there.
Get rid of them. We’ll all be better off.
More advertising
You probably think I’m nuts. Nobody wants more advertising. But did you know that the NCAA says companies are not allowed to advertise in the women’s tournament unless they advertise in the men’s tournament?
It’s yet another case of the NCAA artificially suppressing the women’s tournament. If the rule were changed, the big advertisers like Nike, Amazon, or Walmart would still buy ads. But companies who can’t afford to advertise in the men’s tournament, or specifically want to target women’s basketball could get involved. More money is a good thing, especially in the NIL age when a lot of it would go directly to players.
Those are my changes.
I’d also love to fix the officiating, but you need a magic wand for that to happen. NBA officials are the best in the world at their job and they constantly make mistakes. How can you expect officials four or five rungs below that to be perfect?
What would you like to see change?
