The long-awaited media rights deal for women’s college basketball is here. And despite valuing the sport at $65 million a year in an eight-year partnership with ESPN, the news was met with a familiar disappointment in coaches’ offices across the country. Publicly, coaches will praise the progress made by the NCAA, but privately, they’ll keep a watchful eye on the next moves made by NCAA president Charlie Baker.
With the momentum women’s basketball has captured in recent years and its broadcasting deal expiring at an opportune moment, coaches had made public pushes for the NCAA to put the women’s basketball media rights deal on the free market. Some even received signals from the NCAA that a stand-alone deal, more similar to the men’s NCAA Tournament, would be the way forward.
But it’s fair to say, even with their best efforts, their hopes were never terribly high. Decades of feeling as though the NCAA had pushed women’s basketball to the side had made sure of that. So, they weren’t floored when they learned Thursday that women’s basketball was packaged along with 39 other championships.
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