The University of Connecticut women’s basketball team might be the best collegiate sports team ever, and they’re certainly one of the most dominant. On Sunday, they extended their winning streak to 88 games, trying the mark of UCLA’s men’s team of the early ’70s for the most consecutive wins in NCAA basketball history. They take on Florida State tonight in an attempt to win game 89.
The Lady Huskies already own the women’s record. Their head coach, Geno Auriemma, thinks his team is only getting so much press because they’re breaking a men’s record:
I just know there wouldn’t be this many people in the room if we were chasing a woman’s record. The reason everybody is having a heart attack the last four or five days is a bunch of women are threatening to break a men’s record, and everybody is all up in arms about it.
His team is threatening to break the record of the great John Wooden teams, and Auriemma says it polarizes fans:
All the women are happy as hell and they can’t wait to come in here and ask questions. All the guys that loved women’s basketball are all excited, and all the miserable [people] who follow men’s basketball and don’t want us to break the record are all here because they are [ticked].
Auriemma concluded:
Because we’re breaking a men’s record, we’ve got a lot of people paying attention. If we were breaking a women’s record, everybody would go, “Aren’t those girls nice, let’s give them two paragraphs in USA Today, you know, give them one line on the bottom of ESPN and then let’s send them back where they belong, in the kitchen.”
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Much of Auriemma’s sentiment is over-the-top here, but is he right? When UConn broke the women’s record, there wasn’t nearly as much fanfare as there is now. Should it be more important for the team to break a men’s record? Men’s basketball and most other major collegiate sports are more popular, so, inevitably, that’s what records get measured against. Women’s basketball and men’s basketball are two separate arenas, and they should really just have their own records, but the comparison is inescapable.
Auriemma’s outrage might be a bit misplaced here, though. I doubt that anyone’s really up in arms about a women’s team breaking a men’s team’s record. Most of the people who place men’s basketball above women’s basketball just don’t care about the women’s sport. If anything, that’s what he should be upset about.
When his team tied the UCLA record on Sunday at Madison Square Garden, 15,232 people attended—the second-most ever for a women’s game at MSG, but nowhere near the sell-out a men’s game with the same stakes would produce. And that’s really what Auriemma’s problem is. His team is getting more attention than any other women’s team ever has, but despite that, they’re still way behind the men’s game.
What do you guys think? Is Auriemma right to be upset? Is this a gender problem? Is there a double standard? Or is this just a case of men’s basketball being more popular than women’s basketball? Should the two sports even be compared?
Let us know in the comments.
—Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Female collegiate and professional sports are irrelevant.
The people who participate in, coach, and follow them know this, and it pisses them off. So, whenever they get a chance, they take a dig at it. It makes them feel better.
Now that UConn’s streak is over, they can fade back into female sports obscurity where they belong.
It’s somewhat pointless to compare the streaks, because all they have in common is a number and the fact that it’s the same sport. Everything else is different — eras, players, circumstances, opponents. You ran into some of the same ideas with Brett Favre’s consecutive starts streak. Is it better than Cal Ripken’s because football is more physically taxing? Is it not as good as a consecutive starts streak for a lineman, because linemen endure more physical punishment per game? You’ll waste a lot of time trying to rank them, and the point is, UConn’s streak is just a great… Read more »
I’ll be the asshole who says it: The reason it’s not getting much press is because IT’S WOMEN’S BASKETBALL! Women’s basketball is ridiculously boring compared to watching men’s basketball. Don’t give me this crap about how pure the game is and how women play a technically correct version of the game. Bullshit. There’s a reason the WNBA is less interesting than the Little League World Series. Because it sucks. Because no one cares about it. Because it is BORING! Let me be the first to admit these women are great athletes. And yes, they would mop the floor with my… Read more »
Give me a break. Have you actually watched any games? Women play FAR more aggressively than do males.
An easy (if not obvious) conclusion of this “issue” is that the sports media (ie, ESPN) are hypocrites. They are hyping the UConn (women’s) basketball team as being on the verge of breaking the UCLA (men’s) record, while – at the same time – they are hyping that Duke’s Coach K is on the verge of passing Dean Smith into second place on the all-time coaching wins list, behind only Bob Knight. But Bob Knight only has 902 (men’s) wins; Pat Summit has over 1000 (women’s) wins. Sports media: whatever position you want to take (division 1 college basketball records… Read more »
I think there are actually two parts to this: 1) is he right that we’re caring more because it’s an overall record vs. just a woman’s record? Yes. 2) Are we “up in arms” because a man’s record is going to get toppled? I doubt it. I live in Toronto, and a few years ago the quarterback for our CFL team, Damon Allen, broke the all time passing record for professional football overall. He didn’t get much press for it (in relative terms to let’s say, a Michael Vick dog conviction) because he was just doing it in a league… Read more »
Records get broken, it’s the reality of sports. I am interested to see if women’s college basketball will follow the path of men’s college basketball going forward. Thanks to the financial growth of the sport and the popularity of March Madness coupled with international recruiting, the men’s game is characterized by a lot of really good teams (all of which beat each other around throughout the season). The women’s game on the other hand is characterized by 2 or 3 great programs, 15-20 decent teams, and then a ton of uncompetitive schools that really just function as scholarship programs (a… Read more »