Women On Prime Time Ncaa Women’s Tourney No Longer Sideshow To Men

The night before the 1992 national championship game, the members of the Western Kentucky women’s basketball team walked like zombies through a 45-minute practice.

The players had been up since 5:30 that morning getting ready for their 9:30 a.m. semifinal - which turned out to be what Western Kentucky coach Paul Sanderford called “one of those knockdown, drag-out type of games.”

Now, they had to prepare to play Stanford for the national championship the next day at noon. Tired as they were, mentally and physically, they pushed themselves through the practice. Western Kentucky lost the next day, 78-62.

Because the women’s Final Four was televised nationally on CBS in the past, that’s the way things used to be. The men’s Final Four was The Show; the women’s Final Four was the sideshow. The women’s games were fit into the schedule at the convenience of the men’s tournament.

The women had to play the game of their lives two days in a row, unlike the men, who had a day off between games.

This year, the Final Four will be different. It will be on ESPN, which will allow the teams a day of rest between the semifinals Friday, March 29 (4 and 6 p.m. PST) and the final Sunday, March 31 (3:30 p.m.).

And the men’s Final Four games will fill in the blanks around the women’s games. The men will play March 30 and April 1. It will be Final Four weekend, but the women’s tournament will attempt to stand on its own. And ESPN has an NCAA tournament again.

“If ESPN does what they can and will do,” Sanderford said, “I think it will be a more entertaining championship game.” ESPN first televised the men’s NCAA tournament in 1980. Sixteen years later, the tournament has blossomed into an event called March Madness.

Women’s basketball advocates hope the network will do the same for their game, which has grown in the past five years. The tournament has expanded from 32 to 64 teams. The undefeated UConn team last season brought national attention to the sport.

In the next few weeks, ESPN and ESPN2 will televise 25 tournament games, including the regional semifinals and finals and the Final Four.

“We’re going to take a similar approach that we did to the men’s tournament,” ESPN senior publicist Josh Krulewitz said. “The idea is to showcase the top teams, games and matchups. We’re going to take people from game to game. If there’s a good finish, we’ll go to that.”

ESPN negotiated a $3 million, three-year deal with the NCAA.