Aunt Bea is very unhappy over the lack of interest in the UConn women

Women's basketball sucks.

UConn's streak isn't a testament to how great of a team it is, but more of an indictment of how little competition there is in NCAA Division I women's hoops.

 

Well, they need several games each season in which it's conceivable the No. 1 team might lose. Right now, they don't even have that.

UT is ranked 6th. If they played, UConn would be a 25-point favorite. Probably more, since Geno would take great pleasure in RUTS.

 

I mean, she's a very nice person.

But she went to Northwestern and roots for Michigan teams. Take a stand, lady.

 

Back in my college newspaper columnist days, I was in the same boat as Christine Brennan. I thought other athletes at my school were getting snubbed while shitheads on the men's basketball and football teams got all the love. I wrote a few columns mentioning the outrage.

I grew out of that fast just by applying common sense--the readers dictate the coverage, not the other way around. You can't cram content down the readers' throat about the Texas rowing team and expect the regattas to be sold out events.

Brennan says this: "For decades now, those of us in the sports media have argued about which comes first: interest or coverage."

To me, the only people who are still arguing that are the ones who don't want to believe the obvious. The interest comes first, the coverage follows. Period.

By the way, 89 straight is impressive for a college team, as Brennan writes, but the North Carolina women's soccer team won 92 in a row between 1990 and 1994. Isn't that better?

 

No, because Christine Brennan didn't tell us so.

 

If the storytelling is compelling enough, I don't think interest has to precede coverage.

If Joe Posnanski wrote 5,000 words on the UConn women's basketball team, I'd probably read every one of them because of my fanboish love for his writing.*

Brennan just doesn't try to make it compelling, though. We're just supposed to love a sport without any compelling storyline, without a tradition woven into the cultural fabric and that lacks skilled players in the name of some contorted version of male-to-female reparations. Tennis is the great bubble-popper of Brennan's theory. Women's tennis is a great sport and it is followed because female tennis players are GREAT. They are worth watching.

*The man makes me care about the Kansas City Royals. I now get angry when I see Yuniesky Betancourt's name.

 

I don't feel like going back and looking up scores, but I would bet good money that fewer than 20 of the 87 consecutive wins have been by single digits. I wouldn't be too surprised if it was fewer than 10.

So basically, 70 or more of the 87 wins have essentially been walkovers.

 

Precisely.

On the mothership is College Football Final and Pool.

On the deuce is NHRA.

God, I hope Ohio St. wins.

 

In 2008-09, none of the wins were by single digits. Notre Dame and Rutgers each lost by 10.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%9309_Connecticut_Huskies_women%27s_basketball_team

In 09-10, there was just one game in single digits, when UConn beat Stanford in the title game by 6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%9310_Connecticut_Huskies_women%27s_basketball_team

And there was the one-point win over Baylor this year.

For a grand total of 2 games.


EDIT: Mile High beat me to it.

 

Careful - you're gonna lose your SJ privileges with that last sentence.

 

Exactly right. I can watch women's tennis and be awed by the skill level, knowing that never in a million years could I play that well. But you watch women's hoops and you see a level of play that appears no higher than what I competed at in high school. That's why women's tennis is more enjoyable for sports fans to watch (aside from the physical appearance reasons that sometimes get cited). And it's why they need no help from the Christine Brennans when it comes to media coverage, they EARN it with their play.