The sort of chatter that orbits men’s basketball — about officiating, trash-talking, sportsmanship, race, egomaniacal coaches, politics, ticket prices and TV ratings — has loudly surrounded LSU’s impressive win over Iowa in Sunday afternoon’s women’s NCAA basketball national title game.
And while some of the conversation was rife with blatant sexism and racism, it’s a sign that women’s basketball is rightfully asserting itself in our national sports conversation.
Sunday’s game itself has been a big story thanks to it averaging an astonishing 9.9 million combined viewers on ABC and ESPN2. That shattered the old record of an average of 8.1 million viewers for a Virginia-Stanford national semifinal on CBS in 1992 — which occurred in a wildly different television industry landscape.
What does it mean for the future of women’s basketball on TV? Our Bill Shea and Richard Deitsch discuss.
Shea: There’s been conversation for decades that a certain game, a particular performance, signified that women’s sports have arrived — I’m thinking of the 1999 women’s FIFA World Cup, for example. Yet they’ve always been here, just not with equitable financial and media treatment.
Clearly, that’s changing. It’s no coincidence that on Tuesday a consortium said…
