As one who started following WCBB from the early '80s (but only in March when everything was set for the tournament), I think there is a bit of revisionist remembrance about how the sport developed. Obviously there was nothing even remotely like the detailed year-round coverage we have now, but WCBB did leave a memorable mark in the early '80s, though it did not necessarily grow strongly for the next decade partly due to a simple fact -- no dominating "name" team that could give the sport an ID that general sports fans around the country could latch on to. But the NC game was far more accessible back then. I see three stages in the development in the NCAA area that would bring about a time where Riley could be the household name among at least WCBB teams by the time she propelled her team to a championship.
1. Lady Trojans, Lady Techsters, and the Horns (1982-86). Nothing put WCBB on the map for media coverage like Chery Miller's USC crew with Cynthia Cooper, Rhonda Windham, and the McGee twins on the way to consecutive NCs. They looked and kind of played like what you would expect a guy's team of the old UCLA teams to play like, and Miller had a certain brashness that was very media friendly. The Lady Techsters as the first NCAA champions with Kim Mulkey as the star were also a great story and would continue to be a force for almost two decades after their first NC win in 1982, but their reach as a small school in a small league would have its limits. The Horns had three great years that finally culminated in that magic perfect season in 1986 under Jody Conradt, and they were a big school though they didn't seem to carry the same media presence as the cool USC team had.
2. That Vols - Cardinal Era (1987-94). Following the Horns' perfect season, eight years followed when no team would win consecutive championships to solidify a claim to a dominating dynastic team. UTenn won three NCs and made two other and their fan support started developing to rabid proportions, and Stanford would claim two titles. The Lady Techsters got a second title, Swopes led Texas Tech to an NC, and UNC would win a nail-biter over LA Tech. There was definitely some growth as the NC game continued to be shown on network TV and the audience was far greater for the event than at any time after ESPN exclusively picked it up in 1996. But overall, the sport was missing that one key drawing factor, a media-grabbing rivalry.
3. Huskies and Vols and the Big Jump (1995-2004). Nothing like a knockdown, drag-out, oft-bitter rivalry between a team from the Northeast and the South with very different personalities to get the media juices flowing. With lots of marquee players and the two top teams staking their claims to be the best with not only consecutive championships but three-peats, there was definitely some elite name identity in the sport that still allowed some room for a team from Indiana (like Riley's 2001 Irish squad or the 1999 Boilermakers) to occasionally break through for a title. One huge drawback that lasts till this day was that almost as soon as the era started the NC game was taken away from network TV, though you can say that ESPN thus became more invested in the sport. That does allow the trogs though to claim that WCBB goes largely unwatched compared to the men's game because of the 7:1 or 6:1 disparity in viewers, where at one time like back in 1995 it was a less dour 3:1 or so, but again the differences between free viewership and paid cable viewership are big.
