I’ll be honest. I couldn’t CARE LESS about the winner of today’s NCAA women’s basketball championship game between South Carolina & Caitlin Clark’s Iowa.
But there are some things I do care about. 14.2 million viewers, the most ever to watch an ESPN men’s or women’s basketball game. The sight of little boys scrambling to get the autograph of a girl basketball player, Caitlin Clark. And the names of the pioneers of women’s basketball during this NCAA tournament, stars whom America did not let shine.
I got a soft spot for that stuff. All efforts by Major League Baseball to include former Negro league players and statistics are applauded by me. Same goes for race, Texas, and high school football. Michael Hurd, author of “Thursday Night Lights,” said it best about Earl Campbell’s talented older brothers: “because of the injustice of segregation, nobody knows that Earl wasn’t even the best football player in his own FAMILY.”
And this year’s NCAA women’s basketball tournament feels like more of the same. It is a coronation of the game, the women who play it, and the pioneers who came before. I’m old now and remember them well. Nancy Lieberman, who had no league to play in. Cheryl Miller, who was way better than her brother. Lynette Woodard, who would be a household name in a parallel universe.
I wrote a Roo Tale about AC women’s basketball back in 2017, when South Carolina ended powerhouse UConn’s historic winning streak to reach the NCAA title game. I tied that winning streak to WashU, who held the record before UConn. And I told the story of the exceptional Austin College women’s teams of the late 1990s, including the 1999 team that nearly ended that WashU streak on their home floor.
But the real reason I wrote that Roo Tale? Because the story of AC women’s basketball mirrors the story of America, the sport, and gender inequity. Inequity is a Marc topic. It is also a very American topic. But so is the decades long effort by pioneers to end inequity by climbing MLK’s “mountaintop.” I’ve shared that 2017 AC women’s basketball story here again (see the comments); it might be enjoyable reading for those who actually DO care about tonight’s outcome.
This year’s NCAA women’s tournament has given me so much. It gave me a great story about Roo Mark Kellogg (h/t Trisha Kellogg), whose West Virginia Mountaineers nearly dethroned Caitlin Clark in round #2. It gave me a classic Iowa-UConn Final Four game, watched by 14.2 million viewers, including Trisha’s family (in the stands) and me (alongside 10 other random GUYS in an Austin, TX bar). Today it will give us all an amazing final between an undefeated South Carolina and the collegiate game’s best player ever.
I’ll be honest. I couldn’t CARE LESS about the winner of today’s championship game. Because if you hold my values, you know the feeling we both share. We’ve ALREADY won.
