Does anybody care about men’s college basketball anymore? Or is the competition between women’s college teams where the action’s at?
This is not for clickbait. I’m not trying to be facetious or sarcastic or seem disrespectful to the men’s game — one of the reasons I started playing basketball in the first place. Yet, this topic has become the elephant in the room among the basketball elite, the basketball gurus, and those who are historians of the games.
I remember the days I couldn’t wait to get up on a Saturday morning to watch The Syracuse Orangemen battle The Georgetown Hoyas in the old Big East Conference. To see the bright orange and supremely lit Carrier Dome (How bright the arena was always amazed me) with legendary coach Jim Boeheim perusing the sidelines to battle against the late great John Thompson, a towel draped over his shoulders, as he coached the boys from DC with the sweaty gray jerseys. The days of watching larger-than-life games on a too-small TV are still unforgettable moments from my childhood.
The NCAA broke the men’s game a long time ago through its greed and overbearing rules.
You can’t fall in love anymore with teams like the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels led by guys like Larry Johnson, Stacey “Plastic Man” Augmon, Anderson Hunt, or Greg Anthony. Great players don’t stay around anymore in the men’s game. If they did, we’d have someone to hate like so many of us did with Duke players like Christian Laettner, or JJ Reddick, who stayed through their senior years tormenting many of us with a mixture of their amazing skill and pompous attitudes. Having someone to hate was a tremendous part of the men’s college basketball experience.
Yet, gone are the days of great teams like The Michigan Fab Five, featuring Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jalen Rose, Jimmy King, and Ray Jackson. The bald heads, the baggy shorts, the black socks. Nobody stays around long enough to even develop a swag, a signature look, or get to the point “where everybody knows your name,” like they used to say in the theme song of “Cheers.”
Unfortunately, there aren’t many players to hate now in the men’s game. Maybe we watch our alma mater or tune into the NCAA Tournament to check on our brackets, feel a part of the madness, cash in on our bets, and have something to talk about with our coworkers.
The popularity of the women’s game is at an all-time high.
But truth be told, even the most exciting time of the year, as most define the Men’s NCAA Tournament, has fallen on hard times. A reported 14.693 million viewers tuned in to watch UConn stifle San Diego State en route to the 2023 NCAA men’s basketball championship last year at NRG Stadium in Houston. According to the Sports Business Journal, it was the least-watched men’s basketball championship game in history.
If you juxtapose that with what is happening with women’s college basketball, it will cause even the least curious of us to ponder. Last year’s women’s final between LSU and Iowa was watched by 9.9 million viewers on ESPN — hitting as high as 12.6 million across platforms — smashing the previous record.
Women’s college basketball has always had amazing players, but the popularity of the women’s game is at an all-time high. Even the casual basketball fan knows Iowa’s Caitlin Clarke, now the leading scorer in NCAA women’s basketball history.
Both men’s and women’s basketball fans are familiar with Angel Reese, LSU’s most dominant player and MVP of the 2023 Final Four. Legendary women’s college basketball coaches such as Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma, South Carolina’s Dawn Staley, and LSU’s Kim Mulkey are pacing the sidelines and commanding attention. Women’s college basketball teams and players dominate TikTok with fun dances, marketing themselves to the younger generation and older folks drawn to the platform.
The intensity and interest in the women’s game became even more apparent to me when I saw how many folks were discussing Sunday night’s SEC Tournament finals game between The University of South Carolina, boasting a 31-0 record, and the nation’s top ranking and LSU the defending national champions.
The game included an excessive amount of physical play, LSU’s Reese pulling a South Carolina player’s hair in the middle of a play, a brawl breaking out leading to six ejections, and family members who were hopping barricades onto the floor to involve themselves in the melee. It was the closest thing to resembling wrestling in the old WWF; full of passion and drama. Although some may have felt this cast the women’s game in a negative light, I, on the other hand, feel the intensity, animosity, heated rivalries and back and forth trash talk are exactly what the game needs.
So, it brings me back to this thought. Can we “fix” men’s college basketball?
For me, it’s doubtful. With conference realignments happening all the time, we are losing the traditional rivalries that made the game great. Many can never get used to Syracuse playing in the ACC or Maryland playing in The Big 10 Conference, which actually has 14 teams.
The other issue is the transient nature of the game. Although college basketball has always been a breeding ground for players looking to leap to the NBA, it has now simply become a rest stop for some of the nation’s top-rated high school boys basketball players. Sure, NIL money could help keep some men’s players in college longer, but the top-performing players will always be called to the NBA, where they can further line their pockets, setting up their families for generations to come.
You may be able to get a real education accidentally, but truthfully you are there to perform athletically.
It is not the same on the women’s side. Because of the lower salaries in the WNBA, many of the top women’s college basketball players can make more money from NIL dollars, which in turn gives them no real reason to rush and leave college for greener pastures.
Maybe fixing the men’s game is the wrong approach entirely. The NCAA broke the men’s game a long time ago through its greed and overbearing rules in the name of governing their “student-athletes” who, for those of us in the know, always knew were brought on campus to be “athlete-students.” You may be able to get a real education accidentally, but truthfully you are there to perform athletically. Topflight men’s basketball players bolting for the league, leading to fewer eyes on college basketball games, are a casualty of the war that the NCAA will have to live with for years of not addressing the real issue − recruiting mostly poor elite Black athletes from urban areas to predominately White institutions and expecting them to put out with their talents while staying broke.
Speaking of broke, maybe that’s how the men’s game should stay for now while we continue to engage with the women’s game, whose popularity is now at an all-time high. Isn’t this a good thing? The men have had the main stage on the college basketball scene for a very long time. As the men’s game seems to be slowly exiting stage left, the women’s game is perfectly positioning itself at precisely the right time to secure the spotlight fully.
John Celestand is the program director of the Knight x LMA BloomLab, a $3.2 million initiative that supports the advancement and sustainability of local Black-owned news publications. He is a former freelance sports broadcaster and writer who covered the NBA and college basketball for multiple networks such as ESPN Regional Television, SNY, and Comcast Sportsnet Philadelphia. John was a member of the 2000 Los Angeles Lakers NBA Championship Team,playing alongside the late great Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal. He currently resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and son.
