My “Roman empire” is the NCAA Division I basketball tournament: March Madness. I love the competitiveness, the unpredictability and how it’s absolutely impossible to have a perfect bracket. USA Today says there’s a 1 in 9.2 quintillion chance to get a flawless bracket in the men’s tournament — and no one has ever done it.
Despite my enjoyment of these tournaments, there is a history of unfair treatment between the men’s and women’s tournaments.
A glaring difference between the men’s and women’s weight rooms in 2021 sparked the conversation surrounding inequality in the tournaments. The women had a small rack of dumbbells, while the men had a full room with benches, racks and barbell weights. Current TCU player Sedona Prince was one of the people who addressed the differences in a TikTok video.
NBC News shared that NCAA vice president of women’s basketball Lynn Holzman said there was “limited space” where the NCAA tournament was located.
Holzman responded again to the controversy, this time saying the NCAA had originally “intended for women to have access to a full weight room once their teams had reached the third round of the tournament.”
A few months after this incident, The Athletic reported in September of 2021 that the women’s tournament was officially going to be called “March Madness” starting in 2022.
That was just three years ago.
Before the name change, the women’s tournament was called the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). The AIAW held a national championship from 1972 to 1982 and then the NCAA took over the administration of the tournament in 1982.
In recent news, on Jan. 16, CBS News reported that the NCAA will pay Division I women’s basketball teams who play in March Madness. Women’s teams will “now receive ‘performance units’ for every game they play in the NCAA Tournament.”
Though everything is moving towards equality, there is still more to be addressed.
Because of the weight room commotion, the NCAA had the law firm Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP “conduct a comprehensive and thorough external review of gender equity issues in connection with the NCAA, focusing on NCAA championships.”
Kaplan Hecker & Fink gave the NCAA Board of Governors a written report that includes its findings and recommendations.
One of the recommendations was to change the contract with ESPN, which undervalued women’s basketball. The written report read, “An independent analysis performed by expert Ed Desser concludes that the Division I Women’s Basketball Championship alone is worth somewhere between $81 and $112 million annually beginning in 2025.”
Front Office Sports reported that ESPN is parting ways with the MLB after the 2025 season — now is perhaps the time for the sports media giant.
Before the huge growth in viewership in the 2024 women’s March Madness tournament, The Athletic reported that ESPN signed a new media rights deal on Jan. 4, 2024, that included women’s March Madness, worth $65 million annually. This is about 10 times more than the previous deal.
Last year’s national championship game between South Carolina’s Gamecocks and the University of Iowa’s Hawkeyes had more viewers than the men’s national championship. NPR said the women’s championship game averaged about 18.7 million viewers — it peaked at 24 million combined on ESPN and ABC. On the other hand, the men’s game between the UConn Huskies and Purdue Boilermakers averaged 14.82 million viewers on TBS and TNT.
There have been a lot of changes and growth in the women’s tournament within the past few years, and this is only the beginning. Hopefully this upcoming March Madness will build more momentum and more people will realize how well-liked women’s basketball is and why they deserve to be treated equally.
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