Another Victory for Title IX

It's been a while since I personally made fun of women's sports and it's not something we've done a lot of here at Boiled Sports but hey, they're an easy target so let's have some fun.

The main reason I wanted to comment today about the "sport" of women's basketball is because I saw on Sportscenter last night that LSU had advanced to the Final Four even despite their coach (the unfortunately named Pokey Chapman) having to resign right before the tournament because she was a little too close to some of her former (and possibly current) athletes.

Anyway, what I noticed during the highlights was that it looked like they were playing the game in an empty gym. There weren't just openings in the seats, there were entire sections with nobody in them. In the lower bowl of the arena.

Another thing worth noting was when my mom called me at work a week or so ago and commented that even though the Purdue men's team was out, the women would be on that night. I reacted with my typical apathy towards women's basketball and she said I was sexist and asked how I could act like that.

Again, as I've said many times before, it's got nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with the quality of the game. I go to Yankee Stadium to watch the Yankees and I am far less excited to go to Newark to see the Newark Bears or to Trenton to see the Trenton Thunder. Why? Could it be the quality of the game? The option of seeing the best at their level versus the far-from-the-best? Yes, I think that could have something to do with it.

And I'm not alone. Even though the NBA wants to shove the WNBA down our throats despite the fact that the women's league is a constantly money-losing endeavor, people still have no interest. And it is true at the college level, too. Except for a few places, such as Tennesee, Connecticut, LSU and perhaps even Purdue, practically nobody cares about women's basketball. Want some proof?

Yesterday there were two Elite Eight games in the women's tournament. I'll understand if you didn't even know that. How did those games go? Well, the aforementioned LSU squad beat down UConn 73-50 as UConn shot a sizzling 33% from the floor, including 6 of 20 from three-range. And Rutgers beat Arizona State in a 64-45 rockfight in which the two teams combined to go 37-107 from the field for a combined 35%. How exciting. Seventy -- seventy! -- missed shots in a forty minute basketball game. That's atrocious. The fact that Rutgers is declared the winner after shooting 36% is more of a TKO than an outright victory.

Oh, but I'm a sexist, remember? I'm sure there are many thousands of people who would think me an idiot for these comments and would flood an arena to see regional championship games in the women's NCAA tournament. Right? Well, the attendance was a little over 9,000 people for these games. Oh, combined. Yeah, 6,082 watched the Rutgers-Az St. game and a whopping 3,046 showed up to see the overall number one team in the nation (UConn) play against a team that was trying to go to its fourth straight Final Four.

So the next time you hate on women's basketball and somebody uses UConn and the way they pack the house as an example of how wrong you are, point out how well UConn's fans travel.

Some more images from the excitement that is the NCAA women's tournament:

Holy freakin' hell -- I'm insane!

Look at those fans going nuts! The dude in the red jacket looks like he was just notified that the game ended.

Is this "playing the ball"? Nothing here looks legal. At least there are some fans in the house, though.