COME UP WITH A VALUE PROPOSITION.

I ask again, because ask again I must, "Why can't the women's [basketball] teams figure out how to pitch their entertainment to a broader audience?"  In spring, I was dismayed by the grousing about disparities in the contents of the tournament swag bag.

No doubt, dear reader, when I tune in one of the women's bracket games, I'll see players wearing warmup jackets with EQUALITY embroidered on them. That, too, is rich, here we have participants in a CHAMPIONSHIP TOURNAMENT that teams have to QUALIFY FOR endorsing something that is completely at odds with what CHAMPIONSHIP or WINNING are about.

Maybe, just maybe, the people managing women's basketball, whether at the team, conference, association, or professional level, ought come up with a better value proposition than "look how unfair this all is." That pitch has probably won over all the professional feminists and alphabet people that are there to be won over. It's unlikely to entice any new eyeballs onto the screen or into the stands.

The poobahs of college athletics did look into the womens' complaints.

The NCAA was also criticized over different quality of gifts and food, and because the COVID-19 tests administered to men's participants were daily PCR tests, considered more accurate, compared to the less-accurate daily antigen testing available to teams in the women's tournament.

"It is beyond dispute that there were significant disparities between the 2021 Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Championships," said the report.

Creating something resembling equality of condition, or equality of outcome, or whatever it is the association would like to do, is not going to be easy.

The NCAA should "maximize value through gender equity in marketing, promotion, and sponsorships," the report said, by marketing the women's tournament as a "stand-alone property" and using the term "March Madness" in conjunction with both the men's and women's championships. Also, the NCAA should consider holding the men's and women's Final Four in the same location, the firm concluded.

How do you simultaneously promote the tournament as a "stand-alone" event and hold it in the same city where the men are playing? Do you condition the sale of tickets to the men's games on the purchase of tickets for the women's games?  What happens when ticket holders treat those games (on the current schedule, Sunday and Tuesday of the championship weekend) as the collegiate equivalent of the sophomore games in high school?  That's long been an area of contention among people selling sporting events: the women's audience is different from that of the men's, and, at least in my neighborhood, an earlier start helps bring in the young kids.  In addition, there are limits to serving up a dose of identity politics seasoned with feminism and at least the L, G, and B parts of the transgressive alphabet.  Those fans are already in the stands, it's attracting additional revenue that ought be the chore!