Written by March Madness brings out the best and worst. The best being athletes and teams coming together and excelling on the court, with some extremely low-ranking teams going deep into the tournament. You never know what the NCAA basketball tournaments will bring every year.
And yes, I said tournaments. There is a women’s tournament. It is just as exciting. There are upsets in the women’s tournament just like for the men.
And that is where the worst comes in. And it starts with the NCAA. The NCAA puts on two basketball tournaments at the same time, one for men and one for women. If you were to take all of the athletes out of the picture and had regular people see the differences just in competition and training facilities, lodging, meals, and swag given to players, you would see the huge disparity. If you were to put the athletes back in the picture, you would know why it happened.
The NCAA tried covering the disparity up by saying that it was a “space issue,” which only touches on the weight room issue. What was worse was that a woman on the NCAA committee, Lynn Holzman, was the one to release the statement, expecting people to believe it. So many Fortune 500 companies, professional sports teams, universities, colleges, and of course the NCAA are highlighting what they are doing to equalize the playing field, the corporate office, or overall opportunities for women and all minority groups. It is really just lip service. These organizations are merely trying to check a box and pat themselves on the back for being “equal” and “equitable.”
Then the NCAA magically found a bigger weight room with proper weights, machines, and stretching areas, that was not previously available. This change was only because the noise from athletes, coaches, colleges, universities, fans, and the media got too loud. The NCAA would not have changed anything otherwise. And they did not change anything else that was not equal between the tournaments.
In this year’s NCAA Diversity and Inclusion Social Media Campaign, their focus was a “week of awareness, education and engagement showing the importance of inclusive environments in college sports, but it does not have to end there.” With the NCAA having this focus, you would think that they would strive for equal tournaments, especially when they are televised, and social media exists.
Muffet McGraw, Notre Dame women’s basketball coach, stated that what bothered her was that “no one on the NCAA’s leadership team even noticed” that there was a difference. I have to disagree with her on that statement. While I believe that many did not notice, I am confident that the disparities were directed and intentionally planned by many at the highest levels of the NCAA. Dawn Staley, the coach at South Carolina, stated it best: All of NCAA’s decisions, planning, advertising, and financing “mean one thing – March Madness is ONLY about men’s basketball.”
https://www.si.com/college/2021/03/20/ncaa-womens-tournament-full-weight-room
https://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/inclusion/social-media-campaign
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