https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/columnist\/nancy-armour\/2025\/04\/07\/ncaa-do-better-womens-basketball\/82970115007<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nNancy Armour basically keyed in on the same quotes from Geno Auriemma that I did. And she raised some great points that I would like to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She gave the NCAA some credit for their recent improvements such as awarding prize money in units to teams\/conferences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her points about the contract the NCAA signed is on point – they lumped in everything else with women’s basketball, and it is a long contract going to 2032. It hinders the women’s game from really assessing what they are worth on their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I loved the idea about domes. She is right that it is a horrible experience to watch a game in a dome. 68,252 fans filled the AlamoDome for Saturday’s Final Four. The women’s championship game filled Tampa’s Alamie Arena with 19,777 fans. Why not give them the chance to see how many seats they could sell in a dome? After all, more people tuned in to what South Carolina beat Caitlin Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes last year than people turning in to Connecticut beating my Boilers in the men’s championship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then Nancy Armour had this statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“And you cannot expect women\u2019s players to accept inconveniences that you do not ask of the men.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
UConn played in the last Elite Eight game, with its win over USC in Spokane ending about 11:30 p.m. Eastern on Monday. The Huskies tipped off again about 9:30 p.m. Eastern on Friday. The last Elite Eight men\u2019s game, meanwhile, wrapped up about 8 p.m. last Sunday and the first Final Four game wasn\u2019t until 6 p.m. on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Auburn, the last team in, just had to go from Atlanta to San Antonio, too. Not clear cross country like UConn did.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is absolutely true. Except San Antonio is in the middle of the country. No one was going to have to fly cross-country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, Purdue had to fly from the Sunday afternoon game in Detroit to Glendale, Arizona – that is basically cross-country. And it wasn’t the last game of the Elite 8, but they made Connecticut fly from Boston to Glendale, Arizona – that certainly qualifies as cross-country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We talk about making the game accessible to fans by not making them fly cross-country, but no one understands the math. By making it that no one flies cross-country, it means that Tampa and Glendale (or New York, Boston, Los Angeles or San Francisco) can simply not host a national championship. Otherwise, one of the regionals is going to have a long flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As we complain about the fact that UConn had to fly cross the country (and while I haven’t read anything defending them, UCLA had to as well – guess it is alright for a West Coast team to have to fly cross-country), let me remind everyone this. South Carolina and Texas had to make the short trip from Birmingham, Alabama to Tampa Bay, Florida. Not a single one of the men’s regionals were held that close to San Antonio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am all for giving the women’s game more equity – they deserve it. Those athletes are incredible and play fantastic basketball. I want to see them get the chance to take their game to a bigger stage. But lets leave the geography arguments out of the conversation. The only way to avoid anyone having a 5-6 hour flight is to force all the games in the midwest – and then everyone (but the midwest) gets a 3 hour flight instead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you are going to truly divide into regionals that split the country into 4 parts, and then rotate the final amongst those regions, then someone is going to have to fly cross-country whenever the final comes to the West or East coast. And there are too many major cities along the coasts to never have the championships there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The women deserve a bigger stage. But the NCAA deciding to play some of the games on the West Coast is not taking the game away from fans. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So as I looked at some articles this morning, I saw this headline by Nancy Armour from USA Today – Get with the times, NCAA – The women’s game still deserves better. Here is the link. https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/columnist\/nancy-armour\/2025\/04\/07\/ncaa-do-better-womens-basketball\/82970115007 Nancy Armour basically keyed in on the same quotes from Geno Auriemma that I did. And she raised […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2025-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3382"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3383,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3382\/revisions\/3383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tehodgson.com\/stompthelunatic\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}