USA Today's Aunt Bea: Combine the two NCAA basketball tournaments

Since the advent of the interweb, I haven't had much use for the USA Today, so I had forgotten Christine Brennan's continual hammering of the women's game. Not much has changed in 12 years. She's still fighting for the women's game, and much of the country doesn't care.

They were talking about this article on the radio this morning, Brennan thinks that the NCAA should group the NCAA and the Women's NCAA tournament together at one site.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/brennan/2008-03-19-women-men-final-fours_N.htm.

 

And tell Aunt Bea she better have my Bea pies ready or I'm gonna kick her ass.

 

Did he say this tongue-in-cheek? You could maximize the crowds, in theory, by alternating days - both at the Metrodome, women on Saturday and Monday and men on Sunday and Tuesday - or you could completely destroy anything you're trying to do by holding one at the Xcel Energy Center and another at the Target Center at 7 p.m. on the same days.

 

To most of the sports nation, and its chroniclers and yakkers, "men's" is superfluous. They know what they are talking about, never mind what kind of message we're sending to the 12-year-old girl shooting hoops on the driveway.

Won't somebody please think of the children?

 

Logisitically, this would never work. Consider now, in most men's Final Four cities, you can't find a hotel room that weekend. Add the women's tournament, and it would be an absolute logistical nightmare.

This was a typical Brennan column _ went to the usual suspects (Richard Lapchick, Donna Shalala) to parrot her talking points, then went on with her usual poor-women's-basketball-no-one-watches theme.

My favorite quote was from Shalala about how the "national press" would be there covering the men, so they would cover the women as well. Right.... On game night, most of the national men's basketball writers are going to be grabbing a steak somewhere right about the time that Rutgers-Tennessee women's semifinal tips off.

I like the women's tournament, I enjoyed covering the games this weekend in Des Moines, and I'm going to try to do the Final Four next year in St. Louis. But let it stay on its own, and be its own tournament.

 

Yawn.

Sell something about which critical mass might care, CB.

The NCAA has compelled a measure of forcefeeding of women's BB on ESPN.

You might want to wait for some tangible ratings for those broadcasts before getting all giddy.

 

It would be a terrible idea. Because they would package tickets. Then all the fans would leave after the mens game, or not show up until after the women's game and that would big an even bigger slap in the face than no one caring at all in the first place.

 

WFW. Except I was in College Park.

 

I imagine there's plenty of women's basketball coaches who think it would be a bad idea too. Piggybacking the men's tourney puts out the wrong message about their sport.

 

And reminding me again why I don't read her. Forcing me to watch a sport I really don't give a shit about, all in the name of 'because'.

 

The best thing that could happen for the women's game is to shift the season by one month in either direction, so it can escape the shadow of the men's tournament. There might be a better case for combining the Frozen Fours.

 

You guys are sexist. I like this idea. I don't think it goes far enough.

In fact, I think the bowl games should be held in conjunction with the women's volleyball playoffs.