LSU's Angel Reese waves goodbye after Iowa's Monika Czinano fouls out during the second half of the NCAA Women's Final Four championship basketball game Sunday, April 2, 2023, in Dallas. When the next Caitlin Clark comes back to San Antonio, she won’t have to worry about any sad little boxed lunches. Globs of Salisbury steak won’t be on the menu this time, unless she and her teammates really, really crave it.
By the time the women’s Final Four returns, the players will be treated like stars, and they might just take over the whole town.It won’t be because the NCAA will be looking for positive public relations. The appeal of Clark – the Iowa sharpshooter who’s as popular of a college basketball sensation as anyone since perhaps Duke’s Zion Williamson – played a significant role in that huge rating, but Sunday wasn’t a freak outlier. One of the women’s semifinals on Friday drew 5.5 million viewers. Ratings for the first four rounds of this year’s tournament increased 42 percent from last season. And this year’s tournament as a whole set a record for attendance .
The women’s games had better pace, better shot-making, and with the exception of a buzzer-beater in San Diego State’s semifinal victory over the Florida Atlantic men, better drama. And when a sublimely stupid, days-long controversy erupted over trash talk that neither Iowa’s Clark nor LSU’s Reese seemed to think was a big deal?
The NCAA admitted it was wrong when players pointed out that the men got much better meals, much better weight rooms, much better swag bags, and even better COVID testing. It was a travesty then, even when people could make credible claims that the men’s event dwarfed the women’s tournament in popularity.