The NCAA’s shell game is the real women’s basketball scandal

[punchjur]

Great opinion piece by a great sports-columnist:
"The NCAA’s shell game is the real women’s basketball scandal," by Sally Jenkins, as published in The Washington Post on March 25, 2021 at https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/03/25/ncaa-women-basketball-tournament-revenue/

 

[hoopsdiva]

A very good (but very aggravating) read.

 

[UcMiami]

Sally on a roll!!

 

[Plebe]

A very good (but very aggravating) read.

My respect for Sally Jennings went up a notch. I already knew her as an excellent writer, though she always struck my casually distant perception as a bit too much on the wrong side of history in the Pat-Geno wars.

But this op piece is exquisite. She pulls no punches and her phrase turns are surgical.

 

[drweo]

Insightful, revealing, frustrating, but, we know, part of the overall pattern in USA women's sports. Witness the USNT (soccer) fight with the entity that controls the $$$ in their sport. "Oh, the women's games dont generate a profit" "oh, our books are not public," "oh, the financials are really complicated"----and on and on and on ad nauseum.
Systemic sexism.

 

[msf22b]

WaPo is on a real roll covering woman's sports in general and Woman's BB
in particular...
Covered the situ in Atlanta ownership fully.

Good on them.

 

[AgStatesman]

Insightful, revealing, frustrating, but, we know, part of the overall pattern in USA women's sports. Witness the USNT (soccer) fight with the entity that controls the $$$ in their sport. "Oh, the women's games dont generate a profit" "oh, our books are not public," "oh, the financials are really complicated"----and on and on and on ad nauseum.
Systemic sexism.

Shouldn't the disparities in revenue generation be fair game to be a part of the discussion? Why is the NBA obligated to take a loss every single year to fund the WNBA? Why is the men's tournament generating a BILLION dollars a year while the women split 35 million among 24 separate NCAA sports off limits in the discussion?

 

[VaConnFan11]

I'm in the accounting side of business. When someone tells you "the financials are really complicated", they are hiding something.

 

[Artifact]

NCAA 'financial' problems reflects also their 'referee' problems !

 

[DefenseBB]

So, is it wrong if I happen to walking by Mark Emmert and just punch him squarely in the face and call him an unprintable name while he picks up his teeth like chicklets from the ground?

 

[darkstar1]

I am unable to read the article without subscribing to the paper.

 

[UcMiami]

So, is it wrong it I happen to walking by Mark Emmert and just punch him squarely in the face and call him an unprintable name while he picks up his teeth like chicklets from the ground?

Yes, you are.
But you also have to get in the line of people waiting for that chance. By the time it is your turn, he may be in a wheel chair and you might be using a walker and trying to remember your own name.

 

[j66kicker]

So Emmert has "...vowed to get to the bottom of the NCAA's 'blunders' on the basketball tournaments...". Yup, he has now hired a New York law firm to do an "independent" gender equity review of all the NCAA's championships in all 3 divisions and all sports. This should be good...

NCAA hires law firm for gender-equity review after men's, women's tournament disparities

The NCAA has hired a law firm to conduct an independent gender-equity review of its championships across all divisions and sports after criticism of disparities between the men's and women's basketball tournaments.

www.espn.com

BTW the article starts out, "After facing criticism for recently publicized...". This "After..." phrase could be applied to anything Mark Emmert ever did (or Roger Goodell, for that matter)

 

[LCConnFan]

What's even more disconcerting is that our University posted nothing about it on their website (unless I missed a tiny 'snippet'). And still no word from our AD, Dave! Always worried about speaking about the obvious, so that we can appear 'neutral' and "politically correct"! Shame on UCONN!

 

[JRRRJ]

Shouldn't the disparities in revenue generation be fair game to be a part of the discussion? Why is the NBA obligated to take a loss every single year to fund the WNBA? Why is the men's tournament generating a BILLION dollars a year while the women split 35 million among 24 separate NCAA sports off limits in the discussion?

Because the womens sports split $500,000,000 between them, not $35MM

 

[warbler1055]

Mark Emmert was a UConn employee at one time. He left under unfriendly terms if I recall correctly. He was despised by many including Calhoun and Auriemma who refused to shake hand with him when presenting the NC trophy. It's not only that Emmert who cooks the books but the NCAA representatives who put him there. To say that the women BB program does not generate any revenue is almost insane and beyond belief. But apparently the NCAA believe it.

 

[DefenseBB]

Mark Emmert was a UConn employee at one time. He left under unfriendly terms if I recall correctly. He was despised by many including Calhoun and Auriemma who refused to shake hand with him when presenting the NC trophy. It's not only that Emmert who cooks the books but the NCAA representatives who put him there. To say that the women BB program does not generate any revenue is almost insane and beyond belief. But apparently the NCAA believe it. wants the rest of the world to believe it!

There, I fixed it for you...

 

[huskeynut]

What's even more disconcerting is that our University posted nothing about it on their website (unless I missed a tiny 'snippet'). And still no word from our AD, Dave! Always worried about speaking about the obvious, so that we can appear 'neutral' and "politically correct"! Shame on UCONN!

The college/ university presidents are the NCAA. They are the rules makers.

Emmert is a puppet.

 

[MSGRET]

I am unable to read the article without subscribing to the paper.

Rignt click on the blue story line and select Open link in Private Window and you can read it.

 

[HuskyNan]

I am unable to read the article without subscribing to the paper.

I got a one year subscription for $29. The Post has to pay the writers and they aren’t selling many papers any more. The online stuff needs to cost something in order to continue with quality coverage.

 

[Sifaka]

Shouldn't the disparities in revenue generation be fair game to be a part of the discussion? Why is the NBA obligated to take a loss every single year to fund the WNBA? Why is the men's tournament generating a BILLION dollars a year while the women split 35 million among 24 separate NCAA sports off limits in the discussion?

Sure, let's look at the financials. What? The NCAA won't make them available?
So, in the total absence of a detailed Income Statement, an independent WCBB Balance Sheet, or anything beyond a single—not necessarily only—revenue line, and no cost itemization whatsoever, we should assume a loss-making operation?
That, dear friends, is not the way GAAP works. As our accounting colleague noted above, "complicated" often equates to "bogus".

Are the women's events hit with overhead charges that help pay for men's wrestling and rowing?

There is every reason to believe that men's March Madness generates lots more revenue than the Women's tournament. There is no reason to believe, and no data to support the assumption, that WCBB is a loss-maker.

While we are discussing all these arcane financial details, let's also note that the NCAA charter and mission statement make no reference whatsoever to it being a business or profit seeking entity.

 

[VidNick]

This story sounds good and may be right, but there needs to be more information. Example: AT&T other prominent Companies advertise during women's games. How much do they pay per minute? How much per minute in men's games? Nadal-Federer Wimbledon Final? Makes a big difference. Every woman playing professional tennis can thank the William's sisters for their equal share of prize money: people wanted to see them play, giving them leverage against those controlling the purse strings. Right now college basketball's marquee attraction is Uconn when they play a team that can compete with them, which is far an few between. Add an occasional matchup in a big game involving teams with somewhat of a National following, such as Notre Dame. Or the star player that has attracted National headlines, such as Ionescu last year.

I was surprised when I saw the Uconn women do not make money. If they can not make money, how can other teams?

 

[VidNick]

I got a one year subscription

I subscribe also. It is a good 'newspaper'.

 

[Papa33]

Great opinion piece by a great sports-columnist:
"The NCAA’s shell game is the real women’s basketball scandal," by Sally Jenkins, as published in The Washington Post on March 25, 2021 at https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/03/25/ncaa-women-basketball-tournament-revenue/

Way back when (1965) when I started coaching basketball, it was at an all-male private secondary school. Because we took post-grad high-schoolers, we had some pretty decent teams. But then I moved on to a private school in New Haven, CT. that had been strictly boys for 315 years, but had very recently merged with a olde "girls school," and supporting a girls' program of sports teams took a bit of time and a large adjustment of attitudes to give them some respect (and good/experienced coaches). I was asked, somewhat apologetically, if it would 'OK" for me to coach the girls' basketball team, as if that was a step down. I decided that I would coach the girls exactly as I had the boys: it's still basketball, right?

First of all, some parents were concerned that I was holding my players to the same demanding standards as their male counterparts. For some parents, that offended their sense of their daughters' femininity and fragility. I recall a father whose son played in a football game in the rain with no objections, but wanted the school to cancel his daughter's field hockey game that same afternoon.

Early on, I insisted that at least my "girls" would also work as hard as the boys, and would share the same (somewhat inadequate) facilities equally: I.e., alternate early and late practices of the same length. Same transportation to games; same level of support in equipment and uniforms.

Ultimately, the school's administration (which I later joined as athletic director) acted with enough wisdom to ensure the educational benefits of athletics HAD to be sex-blind and equivalent. For them, the concept of the scholar-athlete was more than a mere advertising slogan. We took it seriously. Alas, the big universities and the NCAA are in love with the $$$$.

P.S. I wonder at the huge salaries of university coaches, even Geno's. But at least he appears to understand that he has to offer his players more than X's and O's, that what they "learn" both on and off the court also makes them better citizens of the world. For that, I admire him and his "coaching."

 

[VidNick]

let's look at the financials...GAAP

The financials would be interesting. The breakout of Revenues and Expenses would require a great deal of detail. GAAP Fund Accounting is in order I believe, which has specific rules. What I suspect is at the end of the day, most college sports are loss leaders, carried by College football and to a lesser degree a few other sports, such as men's basketball. The head of the NCAA makes $2.7M and Geno makes $2.3M, I believe. No reason for the writer to complain about that.

 

[UcMiami]

Because the womens sports split $500,000,000 between them, not $35MM

Um - The $.5B media number for the ESPN contract is allocated across 23 men's and women's sports - basically everything except Men's Basketball. So they can claim that the expenses they incur for all the sports other than women's basketball need to be subtracted from that $.5B ESPN is paying. That makes it much easier to say the women's basketball expenses are a negative number.

Of course ESPN might pay a little money to have rights to men's wrestling or gymnastics or ..., but 90+% of their production is for and profit is from the WCBB tournament.

Mixing the WCBB income and expense together with all the other sports creates the narative that they want to perpetuate.

 

[MSGRET]

The financials would be interesting. The breakout of Revenues and Expenses would require a great deal of detail. GAAP Fund Accounting is in order I believe, which has specific rules. What I suspect is at the end of the day, most college sports are loss leaders, carried by College football and to a lesser degree a few other sports, such as men's basketball. The head of the NCAA makes $2.7M and Geno makes $2.3M, I believe. No reason for the writer to complain about that.

I believe that Geno has a income from the University (State) of $400,000.00 a year and the remaining 1.9 million is from boosters and outside contracts like his SNY show.

 

[VidNick]

Mixing the WCBB income and expense together with all the other sports creates the narative that they want to perpetuate.

For what purpose would they want to do this to WCBB?

 

[VidNick]

I believe that Geno has a income from the University (State) of $400,000.00 a year and the remaining 1.9 million is from boosters and outside contracts like his SNY show.

Geno is the highest paid employee in the State: See CT's Highest Paid State Employees
If $2M is 'side' money, why is it reported this way? Do the people at the Uconn Health Center also have side deals?

 

[Fairfield Fan]

Great opinion piece by a great sports-columnist:
"The NCAA’s shell game is the real women’s basketball scandal," by Sally Jenkins, as published in The Washington Post on March 25, 2021 at https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/03/25/ncaa-women-basketball-tournament-revenue/

Thought so. And on top of that, there is absolutely no way that Connecticut WCBB loses money. No way. Pull there threads and you'll find that UConn women contribute a great deal of cash. You watch.