As March Madness Begins, It’s Time For Women To Play For The Money

March Madness has arrived with visions of Cinderella teams dancing in athletic director’s heads. Survive and advance, they say, and the conference revenues will flow. For schools in ‘basketball-centric’ conferences, this is when they make their money.

But for women’s basketball teams (even high profile ones like South Carolina), there is a different set of expectations buried deep in the culture of the NCAA. Female athletes and teams are excited about the opportunity to compete for an NCAA championship, but the pressure is different. Unlike the men, there are no financial expectations. From the perspective of many in college athletics, the men’s tournament just means more-more money, more attention, more institutional prestige.

As March Madness begins, why not the same expectations for women?

Entire Division I conferences have been built on creating depth and success in the men’s basketball tournament. As one president told me, “All the decisions we make are geared towards that (success in the men’s basketball post-season)”. The men’s revenues back that up: each win in the 2023 tournament is worth about $340,000. If four teams from the same conference win and advance, the conference receives $1.36 million rolled into a 6 year average total (2108-23) at a minimum. While its not FBS football money, it still counts.

The old logic is simple to follow: a basketball-centric conference is one where men’s basketball is a major focus and a source of pride for its member institutions, and where the conference as a whole is known for producing high-quality basketball teams and players.

Conferences have always been formed around the power and potential of men’s basketball and football-only. It’s time for that to evolve.

Enter the Kaplan report

After Sedona Prince posted her famous 2021 TikTok video about the differences in the men’s and women’s tournament experiences, the NCAA commissioned a detailed, three-part report focusing on the organization’s lack of growth when it came to promoting and supporting the women’s game.

Referred to as the “Kaplan report”, the report pointed out many discrepancies in the way the organization viewed and treated women’s basketball as compared to men’s.

A sample:

• Men’s basketball has a dedicated senior vice-president and 11 full time staff;
• Women’s basketball has a vice-president and 7 full timers, including the VP and her executive assistant;
• Men’s basketball employs external contractors like Populous, who provide logistics, signage and construction services (totaling $942,688 in 2019 alone);
• The women’s side typically does not (except for 2021);
• Differences in the amount spent on each championship are staggering- in 2019, the NCAA spent $53.2 million on the men’s tournament, and $17.9 million on the women’s.

It’s clear the NCAA focused heavily on driving larger revenues from the men’s tournament-that’s how the staffing imbalances have been justified.

The Knight Commission’s CEO, Amy Perko says they were told the NCAA’s Transformation Committee would address the equity issues in its final report, but it only “acknowledged the distribution formula should change. It remains bogged down in committee review. By this April, two distribution cycles (with more than $330 million distributed) will have passed since the NCAA board received Kaplan Hecker’s equity report and its recommendation to change its inequitable distribution formula.”

Slow to adapt and change

While Transformation is the word used frequently in describing this new era of college athletics, it’s clear there is very little of it focused on addressing the growing popularity of women’s sports. Women’s basketball, volleyball and softball lead viewership trends, and if leveraged as detailed in the Kaplan, Hecker & Fink report, could bring $1.2 billion over 10 years into the NCAA’s coffers.

Why isn’t the NCAA’s leadership, comprised primarily of college presidents from all Divisions, jumping on this opportunity? Presidents and athletics directors love more money. Every conference, Division and institution is always looking to grow their revenues. The ACC in particular is in the middle of a very public discussion over revenues-both earned and distributed.

A potential explanation for this intransigence may lie in the NCAA’s attitudes about change in general. The structure of how conferences are put together has a foundation in sexism-only men’s sports make money, so that’s how we will align conference membership. Our focus will be on the amount of national media attention our men’s programs receive. There has been little movement towards adapting to the notable changes in both the women’s sports media landscape and fan behavior.

Reminder-this is the same organization begging Congress for an antitrust exemption and/or legislation for a host of items, including NIL regulations.

How might conference membership and alignment work now that a number of institutions place greater emphasis on their already successful women’s basketball programs? Simple. Apply the same analysis stated above: “women’s basketball is a major focus and a source of pride for its member institutions, and where the conference as a whole is known for producing high-quality basketball teams and players.”

Did you see the College Game Day pregame show from Iowa City? It was electric.

Connecticut and Tennessee are great examples of teams that accelerated an institution’s national profile in the early 1990s. Today, superstars like Aliyah Boston, Angel Reese, Grace Berger, Cameron Brink and Caitlyn Clark have been must see TV when their teams play. Should South Carolina, LSU, Indiana, Stanford and Iowa receive greater shares within their conferences because they have had greater success in the tournament recently? Or should the revenues be shared equitably to grow each conference’s depth?

It’s not just women’s basketball

You could ask the same of Nebraska’s volleyball program or Oklahoma’s softball program. These teams have had national impact and draw huge audiences to their games. Nebraska is planning on a volleyball match on August 30, 2023 inside of Memorial Stadium, hoping to attract the largest crowd in NCAA history. Chancellor Ronnie Green commented “now we are preparing for another big opportunity to fill the stadium and show the nation that the epicenter of collegiate volleyball is in Nebraska.” A bold vision, for sure.

Many advocates are right to argue that elevating the profile of women’s sports is a moral and ethical imperative. Title IX requires equitable treatment of men and women in all aspects of their educational experiences.

But maybe it’s a little more fundamental than that. If commissioners, athletic directors and presidents are leaving over $1 billion on the table, are these senior leaders executing their fiduciary responsibilities appropriately? Or are they wrapped up in perpetuating an inefficient and biased revenue model?

It’s time to start asking hard questions. It’s time for women to play-for the money.