Women’s basketball has soared in popularity in recent years, with this year’s March Madness tournament dwarfing its men’s counterpart. There are plenty of reasons for this, but one of them is that the game is just fun to watch.
This should result in more media money, which should result in higher salaries. We’ll see. Football really does suck a lot of the oxygen out of the room, financially speaking.
Another part of the discussion is that popularity is sort of meeting in the middle, since as women’s basketball rises, men’s college basketball has been gutted by (among other things) stars leaving after one year, as well as court-forced rule changes (completely reasonable, IMHO, because players should get agency) that have everyone else playing musical chairs as they switch schools to pursue their financial and athletic dreams rather than buckle down to get a degree, which is often nerfed anyway.
College athletics in general, and “revenue sports” in particular, try to meet the letter of the “Student Athlete” rules without giving a single shit about graduating players who have the same level of mastery and accountability as even a garden variety liberal arts major. It’s not really a new thing, either. I muddled my way through an English degree, learning study skills as I went, and while I’m under no delusions that meeting the minimum standards was as hard as it would have been in an engineering program, there weren’t exactly any athletes in my classes on Elizabethan Drama or the History of the English Language, either.
There are plenty of reasons for this, but one of them is that the game is just fun to watch.
I encourage everyone who takes the “it’s just fun to watch” rhetoric to heart to look at NASCAR. There was a period where it was “cool” to watch NASCAR, once that hype faded and only the people who actually cared about the sport were left, they started having massive declines in spectators.
I expect women’s basketball to have the same result. It’ll be fun to watch for a year or two to please the feminists, but after that people will realize they don’t actually care and focus more on other things.
It hasn’t? Women’s Final Four broke records in 2023. ESPN inked a $920m deal in Jan. 2024. None of this is instant. If it keeps building people will keep investing.
This should result in more media money, which should result in higher salaries. We’ll see. Football really does suck a lot of the oxygen out of the room, financially speaking.
Another part of the discussion is that popularity is sort of meeting in the middle, since as women’s basketball rises, men’s college basketball has been gutted by (among other things) stars leaving after one year, as well as court-forced rule changes (completely reasonable, IMHO, because players should get agency) that have everyone else playing musical chairs as they switch schools to pursue their financial and athletic dreams rather than buckle down to get a degree, which is often nerfed anyway.
College athletics in general, and “revenue sports” in particular, try to meet the letter of the “Student Athlete” rules without giving a single shit about graduating players who have the same level of mastery and accountability as even a garden variety liberal arts major. It’s not really a new thing, either. I muddled my way through an English degree, learning study skills as I went, and while I’m under no delusions that meeting the minimum standards was as hard as it would have been in an engineering program, there weren’t exactly any athletes in my classes on Elizabethan Drama or the History of the English Language, either.
I encourage everyone who takes the “it’s just fun to watch” rhetoric to heart to look at NASCAR. There was a period where it was “cool” to watch NASCAR, once that hype faded and only the people who actually cared about the sport were left, they started having massive declines in spectators.
I expect women’s basketball to have the same result. It’ll be fun to watch for a year or two to please the feminists, but after that people will realize they don’t actually care and focus more on other things.
It should, but hasn’t. That’s why this is newsworthy
It hasn’t? Women’s Final Four broke records in 2023. ESPN inked a $920m deal in Jan. 2024. None of this is instant. If it keeps building people will keep investing.