Forbes: Lets Talk about What's Wrong with WBB

[Wbbfan1]

Great Read;

Let's Talk About What's Truly Wrong With Women's College Basketball

Lack of Media Coverage in Women's Sports in General is what's wrong with Women's Sports. That and not enough Women will attend Women Sporting Events.

 

[MSGRET]

Great find,

The Las Vegas Review-Journal didn't have anything on the Women's Tournament, but had two pages about the men's. While the sports books here have all types of odds and lines that you can bet on the men's tourney, they have nothing on the women's.

 

[hoopsdiva]

Great Read;

Let's Talk About What's Truly Wrong With Women's College Basketball

Lack of Media Coverage in Women's Sports in General is what's wrong with Women's Sports. That and not enough Women will attend Women Sporting Events.

Great article.

 

[JavaMan]

Fantastic piece!

Why, oh why, has it taken so long for... oh wait, I know... money. Silly me.

Kudos to Mr. Berri.

​

 

[Lurker]

Nice to read a thoughtful and data-based article that challenges the simple minded assertions that, at least to some, must seem to be so intuitively obvious, although they are completely false. And the sad part is that all the great stories that could and should be told about the women's athletes and teams are never heard. How about a story about the hard work required to achieve the beauty of 38 assists.

 

[BigBird]

This, almost to the word, is what many of us have been saying here for some time.

 

[Roger G]

It is an illuminating article in several respects. I would not have thought that 40% of athletes are female. I'm not sure how they arrive at that figure, though. The point about competitive balance was very interesting also. It certainly seemed common sense to me that balance was necessary and I have argued as much. Great find!

 

[CMC'72]

Great Read;

Thank you! A man who writes with intelligence and historical facts rather than hysterical ideas. Excellent find! Kudos to you both.

 

[RockyMTblue2]

Great Read;

Let's Talk About What's Truly Wrong With Women's College Basketball

Lack of Media Coverage in Women's Sports in General is what's wrong with Women's Sports. That and not enough Women will attend Women Sporting Events.

Hardly original or new ideas.

 

[Deadrody]

Yeah, I hate to break it to anyone that is under some misconception, but there is no grand conspiracy to keep women's basketball out of the media.

We all love UConn, we love UConn women's basketball, and a good number of people here probably love everything about women's basketball. Problem is, there aren't enough to drive enough traffic to make women's basketball a profitable topic to write about. And, if there were, they'd be writing about it. This is very definition of a free market. Nobody is stopping them from writing about it.

 

[Sakibomb25]

Great read. The problem is the writers who write about the anti-UConn angle have never really covered women's basketball before, so they take the "easiest" angle there is, without doing much research on the topic. It's called lazy and disinterested reporting. THAT'S what is killing the sport, not UConn playing great basketball.

 

[Bigboote]

I like this one:

• And last November, I noted that major internet sites are more likely to cover animals than they are to cover women's sports.

 

[tomcat]

No, it's not new material, but it's not a matter of what the story says, but who says it. Coming from someone who actually studies the sport and economics and in fact seems to be an expert at those things, what he says has credibility far beyond the opinion of a newspaper columnist or internet basketball guru. As a result, this becomes an important story.

 

[shizam]

Great Read;

Let's Talk About What's Truly Wrong With Women's College Basketball

Lack of Media Coverage in Women's Sports in General is what's wrong with Women's Sports. That and not enough Women will attend Women Sporting Events.

The problem WBB has is the quality of play isn’t consistent enough. As a former L’ville fan I really tried but the amount of crummy games to get to a good one was tiring. I fade in and out through the season usually by 3/4 into the season chucking it because Walz couldn’t get his team to play good offensive team ball. He didn’t have enough or the right kind of players who had chemistry. This year they are better like today was great. I follow WBB but too many games stink.

 

[cohenzone]

Very good article. And pretty much reflects what I said in the thread about a negative column on UConn dominance. I used the Tiger Woods example that dominance actually attracts attention. That women’s hoops is a relatively small niche sport and the attention UConn gets actually expands the niche.

Having predominantly male reporters might be an issue. And we live in a sensanalist society , so women’s hoops gets compared the crazy athleticism in men’s hoops and for too many people that translates into dunkathon excitement.

Obviously not every team is UConn, and UConn ball is pretty similar to the Bob Cousy/Bill Russell Celtics with great passing and team play and fans used to value that. And nobody complained that the game wasn’t a high flying circus act.

 

[GregP]

I probably missed this article, but just in case I did not:

Let's Talk About What's Truly Wrong With Women's College Basketball

 

[drweo]

Great analysis.

Another example to illustrate his thinking: Watch the ESPN "Bottom Line" and see how much coverage women's sports receives. ESPN as a whole does a lot better presenting women's sports than any other network I know about. But on its own bottom line, most if not all the time, you have to wait through several presentations of men's college basketball scores, including individual scoring and injuries, plus the scores of NBA games, game times for NBA games two or more hours in the future, and again individual players' game status, not to mention NHL scores etc., earth shaking news of the upcoming MLB season, and NFL players' contracts. Then, finally, way over on the right of the screen, you see, "NCAAW." Wait, wait, through all of the above, and you're just about to maybe see the score you want to see when....they cut to "The Lead," which might include a news item but also might include some of the above material repeated. Then they cut to a commercial and when the Bottom Line returns, "NCAAW" is nowhere to be seen!

Heavy sigh....

 

[JordyG]

So the topic of whether UConn is good or bad for basketball, especially in light of the near 100 point victory for UConn against St. Francis, was brought up during a segment called "Buy Or Sell" on ESPN's Around The Horn. The question was posed to 4 talking heads, do you Buy Or Sell what UConn did to St. Francis. The announcer mention before approaching the panel that if it were Tiger Woods they were talking about the panel would "spontaneously combust". Tim Cowlishaw said the issue isn't UConn but the other teams they face. Get better players, up your game etc. Pablo S. Torre said people are "selling" UConn's victory because they don't appreciate greatness, and that all sports need a measuring stick. Bill Plaschke said the argument is filled with gender bias. That no one said a thing when Alabama won a game this year by the score of 66-3, nor did anyone say Alabama is bad for football. He said Alabama has won 10 championships in 12 years and no one bats an eye. Woody Paige said it's wonderful for basketball. No one complained about UCLA's dynasty when players stuck around for 4 years.

So people, it ain't all bad out there. Some people get it.

 

[Sonny44]

Here's one thing that's wrong; a tournament of 64 teams at least 54 of which have no business being there. What if football did the same? First round: Alabama squeaks by Northeast Biloxi Community College 123 - 0.
Yes, I know its all about the $$$$$$$$$$$

 

[ThisJustIn]

Some of the action steps are not in our control. Some are. Spend $100 and subscribe to a paper that covers the women's game and praise them.

Also, teams/conferences to a SUCKY job of aggregating anything that's written about wbb and getting it out to a targeted audience. Wrote about this for the WBCA in 08.: MEDIA COVERAGE AND THE ALTERNATIVES: Paper, Pods, Streams and Blogs

 

[StarMan]

Worth reading -- and it isn't about that recent UConn win.

Let's Talk About What's Truly Wrong With Women's College Basketball

 

[hoopingcrane]

Worth reading -- and it isn't about that recent UConn win.

Let's Talk About What's Truly Wrong With Women's College Basketball

Shades of Shan! Or was it Sham?

 

[CTyankee]

Worth reading -- and it isn't about that recent UConn win.

Fabulous read... I sent it to all my football crazy friends who have no use for watching a UConn game...