Photo Credit: The Independent via the Associated Press. The South Carolina women’s basketball team celebrates their third national championship.
NCAA women’s basketball has transitioned from undeveloped weight rooms and an average of 3.9 million viewers for a national championship game to shattering the viewership record with an average of 19 million viewers. College basketball has changed in groundbreaking ways, putting women’s sports in the spotlight.
The rise started the March of 2021, when former Oregon basketball player Sedona Prince highlighted the discrepancies between the men’s and women’s weight room by uploading a video on TikTok, showcasing just a single stack of weights and then panning to the men’s room which was loaded with different machines and benches. This sparked an uproar in the media with those arguing that both the men’s and women’s teams deserve equal treatment while others argued that the men bring in the most money and viewership to the NCAA so therefore the men deserve it more than the women.
This single debate led to the full inclusion and recognition of women’s collegiate sports. We saw the NCAA funding the success of that league and we saw the viewership spike along with it.
Just the next year in the 2023 women’s championship, we saw -at the time- the largest viewed game in women’s sports history with the intense championship game between LSU and the University of Iowa. With that exciting, high-scoring game, we continued to see viewership records getting broken and women’s sports gaining more and more media attention. Names such as Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, and Paige Bueckers have changed the trajectory of women’s sports, Clark especially.
Clark quickly became the face of women’s basketball and women’s sports in general making women’s sports heard and taken seriously in a male-dominated industry. She set multiple records during her senior season at Iowa, including the women’s all-time scoring record and most points in a single season for both men’s and women’s NCAA Division 1 basketball.
While Caitlin Clark and the Iowa team have done a great deal for women’s sports, we also need to appreciate teams such as South Carolina, LSU, and UCONN for their contribution to women’s sports.
The reigning national champs, South Carolina, went on an impeccable run going 38-0 and winning their third national championship, led by legendary coach Dawn Staley. Staley has built up the South Carolina team, with an unprecedented record of 109-3 in just three seasons. Staley and the South Carolina team have helped pave the way in women’s collegiate basketball by showing the younger generation how they can generate success in women’s sports. Without South Carolina and the other Final Four teams, we would not be able to see viewership records like this.
Women receiving more views in a championship game over the men is unprecedented and extremely rare, especially in a male predominated sport. The women’s tournament games gained more media attention and interest than the men’s resulting in this drastic turn around. Some may argue that it’s still not “real” sport and people are only watching because they’re bored. That has proven to be false with former NBA player Shaquille O’Neal saying he is able to name more players in the women’s tournament then the men’s, proving relevance to the sport.
Women in sports are finally getting the recognition they deserve and this can only continue throughout the years with the newest class of elite players heading to the WNBA.