In a historic vote Wednesday at the NCAA convention in Nashville, the organization approved a plan to pay women’s basketball teams for making the NCAA Tournament. Men’s basketball teams have been reaping the benefits of the same revenue sharing plan for many years.
The proposal to pay the tournament teams was split into two votes. On the question of whether to establish a fund, all 292 members present voted “yes.” On the question of whether to start payouts with the upcoming 2025 NCAA Tournament, there was one dissenting “no” vote, but the measure still passed easily.
“We’re the lucky ones,” NCAA president Charlie Baker said. “We got to be here on the day it became a reality.” He added that he wants to continue working to grow women’s basketball. “That’s the part I hope, that someday down the road, we all will have someone say about us that they sit on the shoulders of the work that we did.”
Under the plan, teams will be given performance units that represent revenue. Each conference that gets an automatic bid will receive one unit, with additional units awarded for each team receiving an at-large bid. The longer a school’s tournament run lasts, the more units said school’s conference will receive. It…
