Poll: NIT men or NCAA women?

It's amazing to see such a vast difference in coverage of women's basketball, say from the Hartford Courant (almost 3 full pages of NCAAs) compared to oh, The Columbia (SC) State (a couple of grafs in a roundup).

Knowing your market and your demographics seem to be the answer to your question HH. If you're covering the UConns, Tenn., Baylors of the world - then by all means, women's NCAA should take the cake. But if you're out in the middle of Bumf^%k and the closest college is Air Force, Clemson or Syracuse - then, well, your decision is made already.

 

Way to be a cliché, son. Did you think of that all by yourself? Or did you get it from listening to Jim Rome?

 

Ms. Slappy's 80-year-old mom loves the NBA, but hates women's basketball.
So by not covering the women's tourney, how is she left out, No Fat?

More thinking like that and you could be a Title IX enforcer, saying that if 55 percent of a student body is female then 55 percent of the athletes must be too -- even if 95 percent of the 55 percent could give a shit about playing sports.

 

Like everything else, base it on the interests of your readers at the time of the event, not some pre-determined dogma as far as what should or shouldn't be covered.

If you know your area, it just isn't that hard to gage interest in an event. At my stop, the women's team draws well, so we'd travel with them in the postseason. Additionally, a NIT bid would be a big deal here for our men's team, so that would get big play.

Other places, like Michigan, which barely cracked 5,000 for its NIT home game? Not so much.

 

Clearly, you cover what's important to your area.

More thinking like yours, Slappy, and this industry will never expand beyond its traditional, shrinking base.

 

NoTalent, your way of thinking is more in the line of the guys in the glass offices with too much time on their hands. They grab at straws because they think they have to do something different in order to justify their paycheck.

They play NCAA women's softball for a national title, too. It's not going to get the coverage the College World Series would, either.

 

In this case, we aren't talking about the men's NCAA championship, are we? We are talking about the NIT.

 

Truthfully, I've never listened to Jim Rome and have only seen his ESPN show once or twice. But go ahead, avoid the issue by critiquing someone's choice of words.

 

Well, we have crunched the budget numbers and I held up a convenience store this morning, and we have found a way to handle travel for both the NIT and women's Sweet 16.

 

I'm not avoiding any issue. I think the attitude you displayed in that post--of which your choice of language is an important indicator--is the type of clichéd, frat-boy crap that gives sports writers a bad name.

Suggesting that women’s sport doesn’t matter is to suggest that anything below the D-1/professional level doesn’t matter either. It’s shortsighted. It’s insulting. And it’s just stupid.

Traditionally, this industry has done a pathetic job of covering women’s sport. It’s self-fulfilling situation, with the lack of coverage keeping the interest down and the lack of interest keeping the coverage down. We aren’t PR people, so it isn’t our job to promote, but the truth is we do it all the time with men’s sport. For instance, to use the example that started this thread, if you provide NIT coverage in a an area that doesn’t have a team still playing you are, in fact, promoting an event that no one outside of the participating schools appears to care about (if the participating schools care about it, that is).

Instead of falling back on your opinion—that’s women’s sport doesn’t matter—why don’t you show me how more people care about the NIT than do the women’s NCAA championship?

I’d imagine the interest is about the same in many parts of the U.S., with more interest in the women’s tournament in areas where there is a local team still playing. All things being equal, my news judgment tells me, a national championship is more important than a tournament that is used to determine the 66th best team in the country (and it matters a fig that the winner could beat some of the teams in the tournament. They weren’t invited. They are the 66th team, period. Woulda, coulda, shoulda and all that.)

 

Michigan barely cracked 3,000 for its NIT game. With tickets at half price.

 

Well, we could determine that by looking at television ratings. Anyone know the ratings for the NIT games on ESPN compared to the women's games on ESPN? If we use national numbers, it should tell us the level of national interest in both tournaments. -- I don't think this is the best way to determine news judgement (otherwise, american idol and dancing with the stars would be front page in every paper, every day) but it is one way to judge interest in story -- which is why american idol winners get coverage in some papers and "in case of emergency" doesn't