Women’s basketball isn’t having a second. This is our new actuality | USAEMALL.com

I was in the seventh grade the first time sports writing gave me a visceral feeling. UConn capped a 39-0 season to win its third national title in eight years, and I anxiously awaited the delivery of Sports Illustrated.

When it arrived, Maryland’s Juan Dixon graced the cover, but across the April 8, 2002, edition of the magazine’s top, it read: “UConn’s AMAZING WOMEN, Pg. 44.”

I immediately flipped past “Faces in the Crowd,” where you could reliably see female athletes in the magazine in 2002, and tore through the feature that detailed the lives of UConn’s close-knit seniors: Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Asjha Jones and Tamika Williams. How they lived together off campus. Cooked weekly family dinners. Fought over card games and bet about who would be the first to cry on senior night. … I ate it up.

These details stayed with me years later, because as a women’s college basketball fan in the 1990s and 2000s, there wasn’t much out there to consume about the most exciting teams and players. You rarely forgot anything. Facts just existed in your brain (sometimes for the next 20 years).

After rereading the UConn story, I turned to the back page to check out the column I always read — “Life of Reilly.”

The headline? “Out of Touch with My Feminine Side.”

“You think it’s hard coaching in the Final Four? You think it’s tough handling 280-pound seniors, freshmen with agents, athletic directors with pockets full of pink slips?” columnist Rick Reilly began. “Please. Try coaching seventh-grade girls. After working with boys for 11 years, I helped coach my daughter Rae’s school basketball team this winter. I learned something about seventh-grade girls: They’re usually in the bathroom.”

Those few pages about UConn’s intense, elite women were sandwiched by a three-word headline on the cover and 800 words better suited for bad movies or lazy literature on the back page. It was disappointing and frustrating. Worst of all, even to my seventh-grade self, it was expected.

For so much of sports history, women athletes (and their fans) have had to accept the highs with the lows and move forward, understanding that too often the lows were intentional — a lack of investment, institutional support or attention. Later, those lows were artificial reasons to continue holding down and holding back the sport. It’s the women’s sports Catch-22.

The “Caitlin Clark Effect” poured over into the WNBA this summer, and teams across the league — not just the Fever — drew record crowds and massive TV ratings. As the women’s college season began this week, even without the stars that pushed women’s college hoops to new levels, interest remains.

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Defending champion South Carolina sold out its season ticket packages for the first time in program history. UConn sold out its season tickets for the first time since 2004. LSU and Iowa, without Angel Reese and Clark, respectively, sold out. Texas, Notre Dame and Tennessee are also reporting huge increases.

Five months before the national title game, tickets are sold out for the Final Four, and the resale market is buzzing. Nosebleeds for the national championship game are nearly $200, while a courtside seat will run close to $3,000.

Nobody in women’s hoops has won like Dawn Staley — Final Fours as a player, national titles as a coach, Olympic golds as a player, Olympic gold as a coach. Her South Carolina office drips with memorabilia. Yet, among all of her special accomplishments, this particular moment in women’s college basketball feels uniquely different to her. “It feels like we’re free to just explore where this game can go,” she said. “There’s no boundaries on us, and because of that, you’re seeing talent, you’re seeing coaching, you’re seeing fan support, you’re seeing viewership — you’re seeing all of those things.”

Staley speaks often and openly about how the women’s game was intentionally held back by so many for so long. First, by the exclusion of women in sports before Title IX. Then, by the NCAA, which prioritized men’s college basketball. Also, by television media partners, which refused to put the game in front of as many as possible (and then used that lack of audience as a reason to not air it on major networks), and in print media coverage, which refused to write about women’s sports (and then often claimed no one read about it).

Then came last season. A year in which the women’s national title game pulled in nearly 4 million more viewers than the men’s title game, just three years after the Kaplan Report exposed the NCAA’s intentional undervaluing of the game and allowing its media partners to underpay.

“This,” Staley said, with a pause, motioning with her hands to indicate everything over the past year. “I never thought it would come during a time when I could be a part of it.”

Anyone who has been around women’s basketball will share guarded optimism as well as excitement for this season. Will this finally be the tipping point? Will the forces that held back the game permanently move out of the way?

Tara VanDerveer has seen it all, including what she thought was the turning point. Twenty-two thousand people showed up for Iowa vs. Ohio State in 1985, her first season in Columbus. But it turned out to be an outlier. Throughout her career, which began with her driving the team bus and doing the laundry as an assistant coach and ended last season at Stanford with three title rings and 1,216 career wins, she experienced those starts and stops, times when a moment could’ve turned into momentum if it had investment, support and excitement.

“We needed to build on that, not have it be a one-off,” VanDerveer said. “Keeping our eye on the ball, keeping having the game grow. More young girls playing. Great high school tournaments, enthusiasm for the college game. People being excited about the WNBA.”

VanDerveer says today feels like that.

Clark pushed the game to new heights last season. This year, USC’s JuJu Watkins, UConn’s Paige Bueckers and the Gamecocks — on a 39-game winning streak — are poised to continue the momentum. NIL has completely changed how women’s basketball players are marketed (and given them power), bringing in new fans. The transfer portal opened player movement and democratized the game’s increasing parity. Look around and you’ll see as many as 10 teams that look capable of heading to the Final Four. Gone are the days when a UConn or Tennessee could win so much they were blamed as being bad for the sport.

Less than a week into the season, we’ve already seen top-five teams pushed to the brink. The talented stars in women’s hoops? They draw. But the parity, which has never been better, and true belief that on any given night, anything could happen? That’s riveting.

What we’re seeing is long overdue, and it still feels like it’s just getting started.

For decades, women’s college hoops deserved better than playing second fiddle in the NCAA’s orbit. It needed to be untethered so that the moments could fit together into something bigger and better. It was worthy of more than three words on the front cover and a patronizing column on the back page. It deserved the full spread. So please, decision-makers and stakeholders, don’t mess this up.

There’s a new generation of seventh-graders watching.

(Photo of Dawn Staley: Sean Rayford / Getty Images)