All Things Sports

This week marks the start of the NCAA March Madness tournament where 64 of the best teams in college basketball, and UCLA, will try and compete for the Men’s National Championship and a trip to the Final Four. It is also starting this week for Women’s College Basketball and both are national events with games that are nationally televised. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for students(unless you make it multiple times during college) where they get to play the sport that they love and have it nationally televised.

 There is a lot of money involved in March Madness. In 2022 alone, the NCAA generated 1 billion dollars of revenue from both the men’s and women’s tournament. However, most of that money is only seen on the men’s side of the bracket. According to USA Today, an investigation conducted by an independent law firm found that the NCAA only prioritizes men’s basketball and doesn’t give women equal treatment. This in turn, perpetuating gender inequality in sports. Now, how is a sport supposed to grow if the organization responsible for promoting it doesn’t promote it? It’s not just the marketing either. Go on social media and you can find many posts on social media highlighting the discrepancies in treatment of the women’s and men’s athletes. This includes items that the NCAA gives them, workout facilities, and other things that are emblematic of the NCAA’s favoritism towards the men’s game. Now some may try to argue that this is justified because men’s basketball receives more hype and the players viewed are the ones going to the NBA. However, the hype and attention is simply because that is how the NCAA has designed it. For example, they themselves only associate the term “March Madness” , the iconic name for the tournament, with the men’s tournament and not the women’s. By not associating the infamous term with both tournaments, they are inherently choosing to promote only men and not women because the term is known nationwide and only draws attention to the men’s game. Had it been associated with the women’s game, it would be easier to draw more attention and better promote the women’s game. This promotion could create a cascading effect all the way to the pros as people would see players they recognize from women’s college basketball move on to the WNBA and gain interest there as a result. So by the NCAA’s own design, they are actively putting down women’s basketball both college and pro. The other side of the promotion lies in the marketing and sponsorships that the women’s side receives. This can be improved through several methods, most notably making the women’s tournament a standalone event and hosting the Final Four in the same location as the men’s, according to the USA Today article.

 The other aspect that must be noted is the treatment of the players themselves. Look online and it is very obvious that the NCAA favors the men. Now someone can try and point to the money, advertising and other factors, but there are two flaws with this argument. The first is that the NCAA makes that money from both the men’s and women’s tournaments. That 1 billion dollars isn’t solely the men’s game. The second major flaw is that this policy allows money to dictate the differing treatment of students by the same group. This is simply unequal. A student shouldn’t have their experiences changed, tampered, or worsened just because someone thinks the other group is more important. Now in the real world, life is unfair but we shouldn’t let this harm students. Students of the same organization shouldn’t be treated differently because of capitalism. That is immoral and wrong. This needs to change and the best and quickest way to do this is to give the women everything that the men have. Pure equality. The same equipment, treatment, gifts, and food. All of it needs to be the same. That is the only way to fix this. The NCAA has been perpetuating gender inequality for too long and it needs to change. If it is to truly get more equal it starts with the foundations: our students. These athletes are the future and a future of equality starts with equality for them. So when March Madness begins I am not just going to be watching Oral Roberts(yes that’s who I am rooting for) try and win the men’s bracket, I am also going to watch the women’s tournament, and not just because Stanford is a 1 seed. I am not going to let the NCAA efforts dissuade me from watching quality basketball and seeing some of that famous madness on both sides.