Geno’s not a fan

UConn coach says combined Final Fours ‘makes no sense’

Sitting amid the 113 pages detailing the wide gap between the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball national tournaments is a proposal that’s been percolating in college athletics for years.

The NCAA gender equity report released last week by the New York law firm Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP recommends staging the men’s and women’s Final Fours at the same site. A combined event, the report suggests, would ensure an “equitable student-athlete experience” while maximizing corporate sponsorships and “promotional synergies.”

It’s an idea pitched by Big East commissioner Val Ackerman in a report she wrote for the NCAA in 2013. It’s an idea some — including Ackerman — have modeled after marquee events such as Wimbledon or the U.S. Open in New York.

Men and women sharing the same stage, treated

equally by the events, and presented with an identical level of promotion. A tidy path to gender equality for the NCAA.

Makes sense?

Not to the coach who has participated in 21 Final Fours, including the last 13 in a row.

“Why would you want to have the Final Four at the same place where the guys are having theirs?” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. “It’s been my experience, coaching the women’s Olympic team, that whenever you’re around the men you are never treated equally. You never get what you truly, truly deserve, because there’s always the comparison and you’re always going to come out second in that comparison. I’ve seen it. And that’s one of the issues that the U.S. women’s basketball team has always had. It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just reality.”

The Kaplan report cites Ackerman’s recommendation and quotes tennis great Billie Jean King saying a combined men’s and women’s tournament was the best vehicle to create equality as she attempted to end gender pay disparities in the early 1970s. The report also said current college basketball players interviewed were in favor of combining the Final Fours.

The argument for the plan, beyond the opportunity to maximize combined corporate support? One site will streamline the infrastructure of the tournament for the NCAA, creating one model — the same food, gift bags, training facilities, accommodations, entertainment.

“Any concert by Miley Cyrus or anyone else that is open to the male studentathletes and their fans will obviously have to be available to the female studentathletes and their fans on the same terms,” the report says. “In other words, each and every detail will need to be considered, and decisions will need to be made carefully and with intent to ensure that the studentathlete experience is gender-equitable.”

A one-stop Final Four will also bring the entire college sports industry to both events.

Ackerman, reached last week, said the men’s Final Four tends to host industry meetings and is a draw for conference commissioners and other college sports leaders.

“Sponsors tend to be more active with the men’s tournament because may they have to choose,” Ackerman said. “They don’t have unlimited resources so they’re choosing where they can most reach fans. I think there’s been a diminishment because of the separation.”

Auriemma, though, believes the women’s Final Four will undoubtedly be overshadowed by the men’s games. Promoting the women’s game, he said, requires the sport to create its own universe.

He was initially open to the idea of a combined tournament, telling the Associated Press last week that “it’s worth a shot.”

But upon further review …

“Let’s go out there and stand on our own and get our own court, carve out our own space separately from everybody else,” he said. “Maybe even a separate weekend — who cares? But certainly, to me — and it’s just my own opinion, and I’m not speaking for anybody — but me, personally, that’s the last thing I would want, to have a Final Four in the same place where the guys are having theirs the same weekend.”

At the heart of Auriemma’s argument is the perception of sports fans, informed by his Olympic experience. No matter how good Diana Taurasi and Breanna Stewart are, he says, they’ll be compared to the likes of Kevin Durant when standing on the same stage.

“It makes no sense,” Auriemma said. “That was the only part of the report that I found to be like, c’mon. After all this good stuff you’re bringing up here, some really neat things that actually could effect change, that’s not one of them.”

But Auriemma is among those praising much of the report. “It can be a force for change,” he said.

The report was sparked by the side-by-side comparisons of the conditions at each bubble tournament — the men in Indianapolis, the women in San Antonio — first magnified in a social media post by Oregon basketball player Sedona Prince on March 18. The viral video pulled the curtain on what many already knew about the how the events were staged and led to an immediate examination of the inequity.

Kaplan’s report found the disparity is wide ranging, from the amount of NCAA staff working each event to the financial deals structured to support the men’s tournament far more than the women’s event. The NCAA famously used the phrase “March Madness” for only the men’s tournament, a poignant symbol of promotional imbalance.

But there are more tangible, practical examples. The reports finds the NCAA devoted the equivalent of 21.86 full-time employees to men’s basketball, but just 13.91 to the women’s game. While both staffs report to the same senior vice president, there is little communication between the teams.

Operating as a smaller and separate staff, the NCAA employees overseeing the women’s tournament are spread thin and unable to offer the same experience for studentathletes, fans, media and sponsors.

These are easy fixes for the NCAA, Ackerman said.

“I think there’s low-hanging fruit there that should be done immediately,” she said. “The immediate goal is to make sure next year’s women’s tournament in Minnesota is everything that this tournament wasn’t. It passes in every way and it’s first-class experience in every way for the athletes and the coaches and all the participants.

“That’s job one, making sure whatever mistakes were made are corrected and thensome next year. That’s really on the NCAA’s staff and organizers with whoever is overseeing that. I sense now a heightened awareness around gender equity not only at the national office but at the conference level, which is good.”

The report recommends a combined tournament no later than 2023. It also states that many “stakeholders” are in favor of combining the events for at least a trial basis.

Whether that happens soon is difficult to gauge, given sites are selected for the next five years. But, as Ackerman points out, the NCAA will be more cognizant of the disparity in the coming years, whether the events are separate or not.

Quinnipiac coach Tricia Fabbri said her program’s NCAA tournament experiences have been a joy. But she admits she was unaware of the depth of the disparity between the two tournaments.

“I was like, ‘Holy cow, I’ve been doing this for 27 years and never knew this difference existed between the men’s and the women’s tournament,’ ” said Fabbri upon seeing the side-byside comparisons.

And for those who cited the disparity in revenue as the root cause, the report’s media and sponsorship addendum present women’s college basketball as a financially healthy and growing sport. The analysis from Desser Sports Media estimates the women’s tournament could be worth between $81 million and $112 million a year in broadcast rights beginning in 2025.

The sport always painted as financially-dependent on the $1 billion men’s tournament is actually a money machine.

So what’s next?

“The shackles have got to come off from what’s holding us back,” Fabbri said. “We’ve always been like, ‘Oh, look at the dollars of what the women’s tournament brings in to what the men’s tournament brings in.’ … That’s always been the value ... the bottom line.

“And you saw how that was being manipulated from the NCAA office. That was the biggest takeaway from it all because the NCAA just left so much money on the table from not only the women’s tournament, but from how every tournament was being run.”