Growing the Women’s Basketball Game

By UConnCat

On May 31st, the Washington Post published an article by Sally Jenkins on the state of women’s basketball, both college and the WNBA. It seems that what may have prompted this story is the white paper Val Ackerman wrote at the behest of the NCAA to provide an assessment of the state of intercollegiate women’s basketball and to make recommendations on growing/improving the game.

Jenkins starts off identifying some of what she perceives as problems with the women’s game, including a recitation of statistics on (scoring, shooting %s, and fouls called at are near all-time lows).

To explain the declining offense, Jenkins puts most of the blame on “poor quality cheaply-paid officiating.”

Jenkins also talks about management incompetence that has allowed women’s programs and tournaments to lose money (high costs, poor ticket sales). According to Jenkins, Ackerman writes that Title IX has been used as a shield and perhaps stifled innovation in growing the game (“What is our due under Title IX?”)

Among Ackerman’s recommendations (according to Jenkins):

Upgrading officiating

Bring business mind-set to ticket sales and television

Exploring (“dramatic”) rule changes to make the game more exciting and faster-paced (no mention of what those are)

Explore putting the men’s and women’s FF in the same city at different arenas

Again, I hope Ackerman’s white paper is made public as I’d love to read it.

I’m glad Jenkins wrote this article. Agree with her or not, it needs to be written and we need to continue to talk about ways to grow the game. I do have one minor quibble, however. I realize she’s Pat Summitt’s favorite ghost writer, but when talking about the state of the game she writes this: “How did a game Pat Summitt strove so hard to elevate to elegance become so bruising and even unsightly, with declining scoring and falling shooting percentages?”

When exactly were the elegant years of Lady Vol basketball? I missed them.

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