Paying attention to women’s sports

If you had asked me a month ago if our women’s basketball team was any good, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. And I even know someone on the team.

Admittedly, I don’t really follow sports much. If you had asked me how our men’s team was doing this year, I couldn’t have told you that either. It was only once it became clear that the women’s team was on track to be undefeated in the regular season that I started to pay attention. Granted, part, and perhaps even most, of my unawareness is due to my own indifference to sports; however, it is also clear that part of my unawareness is because we as a society don’t place as much of an emphasis on women’s sports teams.

This year, the only other undefeated Division I basketball team, University of Kentucky, is getting a lot more attention. A Google search of “2015 undefeated college basketball teams” brings up nine articles on the first page —eight of which are about Kentucky, only the ninthmentions Princeton in the headline, in addition to a news article about Obama picking Princeton. If media coverage is any indicator of interest, nationally the United States is simply much more interested in men’s teams than they are in the female equivalents.

Almost 43 years ago, Congress enacted Title IX, requiring federally funded schools to provide girls and women with equal opportunities to compete in sports. While this law has greatly expanded the resources available to female athletes, equal funds do not necessarily lead to equal support. The fan base and coverage continues to lag woefully behind that of male college teams. For instance, according to the Women’s Sports Foundation, female college athletes receive $183 million less in NCAA scholarships than do male athletes.

This trend continues in professional sports as well where women players are paid much less than men are and where many of these female teams struggle mightily for media attention and loyal supporters beyond young girls seeking role models. The view persists that female athletes are not as skilled, as fast or as strong as the men are. We need a paradigm shift that recognizes that female athletes and teams are not inferior; they are just different.

Our women’s basketball team is the perfect example of this. In general, women’s teams place more emphasis on teamwork, and less on individual play. But that doesn’t mean that is or should be any less interesting to watch. Those who claim it is less interesting do so simply because we have been taught that a certain style of game play is interesting —not because it inherently is.

Val Ackerman, a former president of USA Basketball and the WNBA, released a report in 2013 recommending changes to women’s college basketball to generate more enthusiasm and interest. Her recommendations included joining the women’s Final Four games with the men’s, playing them simultaneously in the same city as is done with professional tennis Grand Slam events. In the alternative, she offered that the women’s Final Four games could be played in Europe or China, where there is more interest in women’s sports. Although these solutions do not address changing our society’s learned male-centric interests, they are a step in the right direction.

I would not say that my experience deviates too much from the casual sports fans’ experience. I grew up being dragged to basketball games (both men’s and women’s —Go Mystics!) by my parents and watched some on TV too. So long as my parents pay the pool fee, I have filled out an NCAA men’s bracket every year since I was seven, though I pick largely based on schools I like or have a connection to, or remember as having done well in the previous year (so more or less like most of America, from my understanding).

But I have never completed a women’s NCAA tournament bracket or even thought about filling one out, frankly. This year my mom asked me if I wanted to, just for fun, because Princeton was in the tournament. It would have to be just for fun because there was no office pool for the women’s tournament. In perusing the women’s bracket, however, I realized all I was really interested in was seeing if Princeton could beat my home state, Maryland, and how far they would go (or to see perhaps if UConn would win, yet again).

I don’t have a huge interest in men’s basketball, but I’ve been taught to care about it enough that I want to fill out an NCAA bracket every year, despite being uninformed. But I never do this for the women’s tournament. Or pay any attention to women’s sports, college or professional. And I’m not the only one. A quick Google search reveals that this year 11.57 million brackets were filled out for the men’s tournament. For the women’s tournament, sites like ESPN do not even give a number, only revealing percentages instead.

Of course, at this point on campus, a lot of excitement exists for our team. Over break there were plenty of Facebook posts complaining about the seeding and then reveling in President Obama’s selection of Princeton rolling through the tournament and attendance at the first game. Everyone loves to rally around a winning team, no matter its gender. But perhaps we, the avid and casual sports followers, should have been paying a bit more attention all along, and I certainly include myself in that guilty group.

Marni Morse is a sophomore from Washington, D.C. She can be reached at mlmorse@princeton.edu.