Women’s basketball isn’t the big game on campus, but it’s the fastest growing.
The sellout crowds at the NCAA Final Four, the new network television package and lucrative coaching contracts all highlight the development of the women’s game.
The players, however, are the best thing going for it. They keep getting better and better.
DePaul coach Doug Bruno sees the evidence every summer at the basketball camps he has had since the late 1970s. He started with day camps attended primarily by high school girls. After two years, he made the transition to overnight camp at Illinois Benedictine College.
“Now we start in 5th grade and go through senior year and we have 2,100 kids,” says Bruno. “It’s very evident 6th, 7th and 8th graders now are competing as well as high school kids did when the camps started.
“Women’s basketball still is a relatively young sport in Illinois. When I coached the Chicago Hustle (a short-lived pro team), I became aware of the historical perspective. My players were primarily from the South and Southwest. Girls basketball had been in existence for a long time in those states and in Iowa.
“Title IX (the federal mandate for equal athletic opportunities for women in schools) changed the demographics. It put money in the programs of the state schools, and the national tournament went from a small-school phenomena to a state-school phenomena.”
In 1996, for the fourth straight season, the NCAA Final Four will play before sellout crowds. The 19,008-seat Target Center in Minneapolis was the 1995 site and this season the 23,901-capacity Charlotte Coliseum will be where it happens. Both arenas previously had presented the men’s Final Four.
With 40 applicants from which to choose, the NCAA already has selected Final Four arenas through the year 2000. It will go from west to east–from San Jose in 1999 to Philadelphia in 2000.
Minnesota coach Linda Hill-MacDonald sees the Final Four sellouts as “a huge statement for our game.”
“Somewhere, somebody started to pay attention,” she says. “The public embraced the game and the media followed. The cash plays in–people in corporate circles see there’s money to be made on the women’s game.
“This is an exciting time in women’s basketball. Now, little girls can turn on TV and watch women play. They can start relating to women’s basketball role models instead of men. When they go to our camp we always ask: `Who’s your favorite player?’ Up to now, almost always it’s a man.”
This season’s TV package is the most extensive in the history of the women’s game with 22 games scheduled for ESPN and 42 for ESPN2. The format calls for 23 regular-season telecasts, 33 postseason games and eight games involving the U.S. Women’s National Team, touring the country in preparation for the Olympics.
“The popularity of the men’s game increased tremendously when the early rounds of the tournament started coming on the tube,” says Northwestern coach Don Perrelli. “This added exposure is going to benefit those of us in women’s basketball in many ways.
“For years we were a hidden commodity; our fan base is built on a younger group and an older group. This (TV deal) puts us in a position to broaden the base.”
“A person who appreciates sound basketball will appreciate the women’s game,” says Bruno. “Even that jaded men’s fan who follows the NBA will realize Latasha Byears and Kim Williams are extraordinary players if he gets a look at our team.”
Ohio State coach Nancy Darsch believes the recognition of brand-name players is vital.
“A team of anonymous players won’t make it,” she says. “To continue to grow nationally, women’s college basketball must receive enough coverage so there will be names people recognize. I hope the national team will keep players in the public eye.”
Three of the highest profile coaches in the country–Illinois’ new coach, Theresa Grentz; Penn State’s Rene Portland; and Marianne Stanley, the interim co-head coach at Stanford who won two NCAA tournaments at Southern Cal–played in relative obscurity when they made Immaculata into the first marquee name in women’s basketball.
The small girls’ school outside Philadelphia won the national championship in 1972, 1973 and 1974 and finished second in 1975 in the pre-Title IX years when the sport was conducted under the sanction of the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.
When Grentz took the Illinois job this summer after compiling a brilliant resume both as the 1992 Olympic coach and in her 19 years at Rutgers, it paved the yellow brick road for Stringer to succeed her and become the highest paid coach in women’s basketball history.
“It’s good for Theresa, it’s good for the Big Ten, it’s good for Vivian and it’s good for all of us who are coaching women’s basketball,” says Portland. “Look what Vivian was able to get from Rutgers ($300,000)!
“People can relate to money; credibility is given in dollars. It’s the same with Theresa at Illinois (where her undisclosed package deal is believed to be in excess of the $115,000 she received at Rutgers). It’s what she deserves. They’ll (the schools) get their money back.
“The year after I graduated, I started coaching as an assistant at Immaculata for $200 a year. The next year I succeeded Theresa as the head coach at St. Joseph’s and I was making $2,300 a year. Two years later I went to Colorado and my salary went up to $23,000, which seemed like a pretty big salary.”
One reason women coaches haven’t received as much money as their male counterparts is their teams haven’t produced comparable revenue. Last season, Division I women’s basketball drew a record 3,617,575 and the Big Ten was the nation’s leading conference with an NCAA record average of 3,137 for 136 games. But that number suffers when measured against the Big Ten men’s average of 12,708 for 162 games that led the nation.
Perhaps significantly from Rutgers’ perspective, Stringer’s Iowa team lured 22,157 fans, the largest crowd ever to witness a women’s game, to Carver-Hawkeye Arena for a 1995 encounter with Ohio State.
“For that to happen (with regularity),” Grentz says, “we need the next generation of men to sit down in front of a TV set and watch a women’s game the same way they sit down now and watch a men’s game.”
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Coming Thursday: A preview of Big Ten women’s play.
