Women's NCAA Tournament blew up in 2021 over inequality. It was a blessing in disguise.
The outrage over inequality at the 2021 NCAA Tournament sparked major changes, and women's college basketball has never been in better shape.
When an Oregon player posted a social media video of a small rack of weights at the 2021 NCAA womenâs basketball tournament in San Antonio and compared it to the fully-appointed gym provided for the menâs event in Indianapolis, it quickly exploded into one of the biggest public relations crises in the associationâs history.
With a nation emerging from COVID and still highly attuned to the social-justice movements that had swept through the country over the previous year after the murder of George Floyd, the NCAAâs treatment of one of its marquee events was suddenly on trial in the court of public opinion. The resulting uproar was broad, as voices within the sport aired grievances and pointed out inequalities between the menâs and womenâs tournaments that for years had been hidden in plain sight.
âWomenâs basketball has been crying out for help for so long, just beating our heads against the wall over and over,â Sedona Prince, the player who sparked the debate, told USA TODAY Sports last week. âThatâs what prompted me to speak out.â
Though womenâs college basketball had cultivated its own fan base and shown signs of growth in various metrics, its tournament had been perpetually overshadowed by the concurrent menâs event, which had stronger parity, more comprehensive media coverage and â as the world soon learned â more investment and attention from NCAA brass.
But the firestorm that followed Princeâs video changed the equation. While news cycles throughout the 2021 tournament revealed painful embarrassments for the NCAA and former president Mark Emmert, there had never been so much interest in the womenâs tournament.
Now, several significant voices involved in the sport have a different characterization of what happened three years ago: Blessing in disguise.
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âWithin anything where there has been significant change in our country or the world, often it is initiated by something â a crisis or an inflection point,â said NCAA vice president of womenâs basketball Lynn Holzman. âI believe that with our championship in 2021, it was that: A period of time when the proverbial curtain, if you will, was pulled back. It did initiate, I think, a lot of self-reflection by all the different levels of our sport.â
These days, the conversation around the sport is almost unrecognizable. Though members of the womenâs basketball community can still point to some frustrating inequities and believe thereâs still significant room to grow, this yearâs tournament will mark the most-anticipated and likely most-watched event in the history of womenâs basketball.
With the right matchups, thereâs even a possibility the womenâs Final Four could garner more viewers than the menâs â something that would have been unthinkable just a few short years ago.
âPeople are finally realizing that itâs not just, 'Hey weâre going to beg you to come, beg you to watch,' " said Christine Plonsky, a Womenâs Basketball Hall of Fame member and longtime administrator at Texas. âPeople have figured out itâs entertainment and the product is good.â
That awakening has undoubtedly grown from the confluence of stars currently atop the womenâs game, led by Iowaâs Caitlin Clark and LSUâs Angel Reese, along with South Carolinaâs Dawn Staley, who bridges the gap between generations that watched her win three Olympic gold medals as a player and two NCAA championships as a coach â and is favored to win her third this April.
Not only are these big personalities winning, theyâre marketable: Staley has appeared in Aflac commercials alongside former Duke men's coach Mike Krzyzewski; Clark is starring in State Farm commercials with Chris Paul, and Reese has a merchandise deal to sell her âBayou Barbieâ-branded clothes at DICKâs Sporting Goods.
âIf you had told anyone this was where weâd be in 2024, they would have never believed you,â said Prince, who played for TCU this season after transferring from Oregon.
Controversy drew major news coverage
But womenâs basketball has had superstar players, iconic coaches and dynastic programs before who did not break through to the mainstream sports fan in the same way.
Though difficult to quantify, thereâs likely some connection between the current explosion of womenâs college basketball popularity and the amount of attention the sport garnered in 2021 during a time of year when menâs basketball typically drives the conversation. Even if it was for a troubling or controversial reason, it was the most substantial mainstream news coverage the sport had ever received.
âIt has to be related,â said Jim Livengood, a former athletics director at Arizona, UNLV and Washington State who was heavily involved in gender equity initiatives at the NCAA level during his career. âYou wonder if change would have manifested itself if (2021) hadnât happened. Like most things in life, itâs about the right fit, the right place, the right time. Itâs congruent with what womenâs basketball needed. It was a jolt, and it got everyoneâs attention.â
Many of the issues that came to the surface in 2021 werenât new. Examples of inequity and frustrations with how the NCAA marketed womenâs basketball were raised eight years earlier in a white paper delivered by Val Ackerman, the former president of the WNBA, who had been hired by the NCAA as a consultant to study the state of the sport. The NCAA had also ignored signs that interest in womenâs sports overall was growing, not recognizing attendance and TV ratings for softball and gymnastics, in particular, were indicative of a wider phenomenon.
But circumstances around the 2021 tournament put those issues in stark relief. With the NCAA still grappling over how to manage COVID â vaccines were only made widely available around the start of March Madness that year â it decided to build bubbles to hold the two championships: Menâs teams all went to Indianapolis, while the women were based in San Antonio.
The bubble isolation factor
Having teams essentially isolated in one location for the entire tournament made it easy to compare things side-by-side: Not just weight rooms but the quality of meals, gift bags and other amenities available to the players. With social media giving athletes a way to present visual evidence to the wider public, the NCAA had no way to spin things. If the NCAAâs mandate was to deliver equal championship experiences to the men and women, it had undeniably failed.
âIt was a great thing that it happened,â said Arizona coach Adia Barnes, whose team made the championship game that season. âIt forced us to think about stuff we never thought about before. There was so much stuff we were used to and just accepted. It was the norm.â
The outrage lasted well beyond the tournament, and the NCAA hired an independent firm to conduct a gender equity assessment of its entire championship menu. Issues like budgets and staffing were addressed to align the tournaments as closely as possible, and changes were made to boost cross-promotion and sponsorship activation opportunities.
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The NCAA also agreed that the âMarch Madnessâ branding, which had only been used for the menâs event, should also be floor logos and part of the nomenclature for the womenâs tournament.
âLittle things stand alone,â Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez said. âBut collectively, it was a statement about how these properties werenât equal. These were things people had been saying for years behind the scenes, but it finally galvanized in a moment that things started to get done.â
Staley, Mulkey salaries make statement
Following the 2021 tournament, LSU made arguably the splashiest hire in the history of the sport by luring three-time national championship coach Kim Mulkey from Baylor. LSUâs willingness to spend an average of more than $2.9 million per year for a coach â despite womenâs basketball losing money â marked yet another shift in how the sport was perceived, especially at well-resourced schools in major conferences. Known for the flashy outfits she wears on the sideline and comments that sometimes trend toward the politically incorrect, but also for winning big, Mulkey immediately brought another big school and its fan base into the conversation.
Later that year, as Staley entered into contract negotiations with South Carolina, she was both public and forthright in linking her salary â and the pay scale it would create throughout the sport â to the continued fight for equity.
âThis is an equitable statement,â she said after inking a seven-year, $21.4 million contract that put her on par with UConnâs Geno Auriemma. âAnd in the midst of all our inequities in our country, I hope itâs a turning point.â
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For a sport whose leaders had generally come from the nascent era of womenâs basketball, when the product was either ridiculed or ignored by all but its niche of hardcore fans, this was a completely new way of talking about and fighting for their piece of the pie.
Suddenly, new conversations and considerations were cropping up all around college athletics. Plonsky recalled a Big 12 meeting around this period in which former commissioner Bob Bowlsby warned that holding the womenâs basketball tournament at Kansas Cityâs historic Municipal Auditorium rather than the modern T-Mobile Center where the men play would make the league a target when a player or coach inevitably spoke up about the difference in venues. This year, the women played at T-Mobile for the first time, drawing a record crowd.
âAll of it has caused deeper thinking, more commitment and more investment overall in the womenâs game, and itâs paying off in spades,â Plonsky said. âCoaches and staffers tend to be pretty dutiful people. But I promise you, in todayâs environment, when kids tell the truth and tell a hard truth, people respond.â
NIL unlocks marketing potential in women's sports
Though it wasnât directly related to the fiasco in San Antonio, another important milestone occurred in 2021, when the NCAA allowed athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness for the first time. Though much of the focus immediately went to football and menâs basketball players suddenly being allowed to make money and the potential impact on recruiting, it also unlocked the marketing potential in womenâs sports.
By the 2022 tournament, UConnâs Paige Bueckers had signed deals with Gatorade and StockX, while South Carolinaâs Aliyah Boston was representing companies like Bose and Bojangles, a fast-food chain. The NIL interest confirmed what many inside the womenâs game had been arguing for years: Many of its players were marketable personalities who could connect with fans beyond the framework of a basketball team, where individualism hadnât necessarily been embraced as much as it was in the menâs game.
âTheir engagement levels are through the roof, thanks to the authenticity and vulnerability they bring to social spaces,â said Bonnie Bernstein, a veteran sports journalist and broadcaster who is now founder and CEO of Walk Swiftly Productions. âYou want to watch these young women play because you feel a human connection. If youâre a brand supporting the Caitlin Clarks, the Angel Reeses, the Flau'jae Johnsons, the Haley Cavinders, youâre reaching younger fans and cultivating your next generation of consumers in a really powerful way. Itâs just smart business.â
Stakeholders in the sport can point to other factors that led to a spike in popularity, including a more fluid group of teams making deep NCAA Tournament runs and a legion of NBA players using their social media platforms to promote womenâs basketball and make it more socially acceptable for men to watch.
The role of 'Clarkonomics'
But thereâs no denying the effect of a phenomenon like Clark emerging at a time when new eyeballs were being drawn to the college game. Clarkâs presence last year helped ABC and ESPN draw a record 9.9 million viewers to Iowa's championship game against LSU and an 87% increase in overall Final Four viewership from the previous year.
âWe could put together a list of 10 things that have happened in the last few years that have helped push this along in a very organic way,â said Debbie Yow, a former basketball coach who became one of the most prominent women in college sports administration as the athletics director at Maryland and then North Carolina State. âItâs now cool to be a fan of collegiate womenâs basketball. It used to not be cool. It feels important, it looks important and itâs on TV, so it must be important. Thatâs what can happen when you give it its due.â
That frenzy has carried over to this season, in which Clarkâs Iowa team has sold out buildings all across the Big Ten and scored the second- and third-highest television ratings for regular-season games of either gender.
If top-seeded Iowa makes the Final Four again, it could conceivably draw more viewers on ESPN and ABC than the menâs event, which this year will be broadcast on TBS.
âItâs Exhibit A on what a single player can do for a sport,â said Ackerman, who is now the Big East commissioner. âIâd love to see some data around this, but it does seem like whether itâs womenâs basketball, softball, gymnastics, volleyball â womenâs team sports in particular â are in a period of upward trajectory. And thereâs probably not one reason or one person responsible for all of it. But the fans are talking. Theyâre showing up at games, viewership numbers. More people seem to be interested and care.â
However it got to this place, the conversation in womenâs basketball is now turning a bit from equity toward how to capitalize on what longtime broadcaster Debbie Antonelli called the new âClarkonomicsâ of the sport.
For a long time, womenâs basketball was criticized for not selling tickets or getting ratings. Now that itâs been proved a good product can do both, how will that translate to increased economic potential?
âIf the first 50 years of Title IX were about opportunity, the next 50 should be about investment,â said Antonelli, who calls games on ESPN and CBS. âI think it took a Caitlin Clark to open everyoneâs eyes. We needed that. But we canât just have this be a moment in time. It has to be the moment that moves us forward. There are new people coming to our game, and thatâs important. Now we have to keep them.â
For the NCAA, itâs going to require a delicate balance between ambition and pragmatism.Coming out of the San Antonio mess, some stakeholders were pushing the NCAA to sell the future broadcast rights to the womenâs tournament as a standalone property during its next negotiation in hopes of maximizing its value.
Despite the Clark factor â âYou could call it a supercharger,â American Athletic Conference commissioner and former television executive Mike Aresco said â the NCAA opted in January to once again bundle the womenâs basketball tournament among 40 championship events in an eight-year, $920 million deal with ESPN. Itâs worth roughly three times the current TV deal and goes into effect next season.
Essentially, the NCAA decided that it would serve the greater good by using womenâs basketball to help maximize exposure and revenue for a variety of sports â including womenâs sports like softball and volleyball that are also growing in popularity.
âI think thatâs a fair decision,â Ackerman said.
But more contentious battles are ahead.
Could men's, women's Final Fours be in same city?
Discussions are underway about how to tie womenâs basketball tournament revenue to so-called âunitsâ that are tied to how far teams advance in the bracket. On the menâs side, these units generate considerable amounts of money â $2 million for each round a team plays in, distributed to its conference over a six-year period. Womenâs coaches say this type of distribution model encourages administrators to invest in menâs basketball and are hopeful there will be a similar outcome when womenâs hoops start to get units, which new NCAA president Charlie Baker has said should start with the 2025 tournament.
Womenâs tournament revenue has never been distributed in that manner, and there is some concern among administrators that a smaller unit number for women will have the optic effect of going backward on equity. It seems likely the NCAA will have to figure out a way to tie the two tournamentsâ revenue model together.
Thereâs also an appetite to at least experiment with a joint menâs and womenâs Final Four in the same city, which was one of the recommendations that came out of the 2022 equity review. Ackerman compared the potential of such a move in elevating womenâs basketball to the tennis Grand Slams, where womenâs matches sometimes get better billing than the men, depending on matchups and star power.
"I think you have the potential to create a colossal event for college basketball by bringing the two events together, creating efficiencies in terms of operation," she said. âLetâs dream big here.â
So far, though, the NCAA has resisted moving toward that model. Holzman said the membership has studied the possibilities of a combined event and is happy with the current trajectory of the womenâs game and specifically the Final Four, which has sold out 11 of the last 12 years. Because the NCAA has already awarded men's Final Fours through 2030 and women's Final Fours through 2031, a joint event would likely be well into the future.
Who knows where womenâs college basketball will be by then.
Since the embarrassment in San Antonio, the last three years have borne witness to possibilities and conversations that werenât occurring before. As the tournament begins this week, the sport has never been in better shape.
âI think this is an awakening that probably needed to happen,â Ackerman told USA TODAY Sports in 2021. âI think it will jump-start more change. I think people should not underestimate the power of women to get some things done now because of this. Maybe it'll turn out to be a blessing.â
Her words couldnât have been more prescient.