I tend to agree with the OP. I am old enough to remember men’s basketball from the era before the players so completely outgrew the dimensions of the court, when it was, frankly, a much more interesting and attractive game than it is today. It is for that very reason that I find the women’s game, and particularly the women’s college game, so appealing…in addition to which, as both parent and grandparent to folks of the female persuasion, I am heavily attracted to better gender distribution in amateur athletics.
Having said all that, any realist must confront the thin-ice environment upon which college athletics for women is based. Given that football is the only entity that floats the boat for virtually all AD’s budgets, there exist only a very limited number of programs that are willing to devote meaningful resources to WCBB and who demonstrate any ongoing commitment to achieving elite status. Additionally, the available talent pool, or the pool of athletically-inclined young women, is dwarfed by similar pools on the men’s side, one more reason why most women’s teams play in ¾ empty arenas. Therefore, any program that drops out of that elite category is a real blow to the game that we all love…even if it’s, God forbid, named Tennessee.
I well-understand the historical basis for all the Tenn-hatred that exists on our Board, though, frankly, in my eyes, it’s just a reflection of a now bygone era that no longer merits the energy that some devote to it…but that’s just me. Much more fun, in my opinion, to now hate ND! But I don’t think we can realistically hope, in today’s fiscal environment, for the emergence of dozens of women’s programs that will commit sufficiently to WCBB, or to women’s athletics in general, to have the same kinds of intense regional rivalries and packed arenas that we see in the men’s game. UCLA, in the post-Wooden era, could suffer a decline, but a MULTITUDE of other programs were out there to pick up the slack. I think that the most we can realistically hope for is the continued existence of a more limited number of national-profile women’s programs that, if only by tradition alone, will not abandon the commitment to women they have made. U Tenn is one of those, and so I agree that what we’ve witnessed really does qualify as a blow to our fragile game.