CONTEMPLATING THE VALUE PROPOSITION.

Women's basketball has probably reached the limits of its appeal to the woke.  Chicago Sun-Times sportswriter Rick Telander considers possible appeals to a broader audience.

The women’s game is a comparative startup, puttering along in a secondary fashion. But with the right tweaking, I feel certain it could grow into a monster to rival the men’s billion-dollar March Madness (trademark, of course) money pit.

I'm leery of any references to money pits, maybe ten years of breathless "Could this be?" leave me cold.

Although Mr Telander makes the obligatory nods to path-dependence on equity, he continues with the outlines of a value proposition.

A lot of people say the women’s game is slow, old-fashioned, not gymnastic and high-flying. All that may be true, but it’s only in comparison to the men’s game.

The first thing I would do to push the women’s game into the stratosphere is get away from comparisons to what men do. Women’s tennis thrives because of what women can do on the court, not what they can’t do.

Use that as impetus. Nobody avoids women’s tennis because the females can’t serve 140 mph. They love it for what it is — great competition.

Maybe getting rid of those baggy shorts has something to do with it.  Sorry, I was supposed to be endorsing a value proposition.  Perhaps following a few players emerge and thrive qualifies as such.

Use these women as posters to make your game famous and cool. It can be done.

And here’s another huge advantage to the women’s game: The stars return year after year. The men, if they’re any good, are one-and-done. Remember Zion Williamson at Duke? Barely.

Right now, the WNBA won’t take any U.S. players until they’re 22 and have completed their college eligibility.

Might be, although the perennial participants in the men's finalists seem to have an occasional fallow year (Kentucky this year, Duke a few years ago, there have to be others) and then there's a new crop of one-and-dones and you see some subset of the dozen or so usual suspects establishing their lottery pick qualifications in early April.

Better, though, to think about expanding the fan base than to keep doing the same thing.