Let's Row Together
Women eclipse the men at the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Clarkonomics in Iowa. Adding in the intangibles. Arriving at what the men controlling sports in the 1970s feared most.
In one woman’s life, a generation’s story is revealed.
As a child in upstate New York Tara VanDerveer was the oldest of five children. And she loved basketball - reading about it, watching it, and most of all playing the game. Girls didn’t have basketball teams where she lived, so she played with neighborhood boys, and to get them to play with her she brought the ball. At school, she became the boys’ team’s mascot, but when she got too occupied in watching their games, instead of leading the cheers for them, she was relieved of her duties.
“It was extremely painful not to be able to play, and kind of always be told to go play with your dolls. The boys were just not very inclusive. But I also think they were mad because I would beat them. In my ninth-grade yearbook, the gym teacher wrote, "To the best basketball player, boy or girl, in the school." And it was really frustrating,” she said, when she spoke with ESPN in 2021.
Hers was the typical girls’ experience in her pre-Title IX girlhood. Mine wasn’t much different, though I had girls’ teams to play on even if no one cared that we played. Hers and my experiences echo through the lives of millions of girls. Today, many women denied their own chance to play in the pre-Title IX era have granddaughters who command the attention of millions who fill sports arenas in this country.
Some of these granddaughters played in the 2024 NCAA basketball tournament.
For the first time in NCAA Basketball tournament history, the women’s final drew millions more viewers - four million, to be precise - than the men’s game did. Two women who’ve been tracking the rise of women’s sports - Christine Brennan and Lindsay Gibbs - relayed this breaking news via social media. Each will moderate my book talk when I take “Locker Room Talk” on the road this fall, Christine (in Washington, D.C.) and Lindsay (in Greensboro, N.C.)
TIPPING POINT
“The women’s NCAA Final was the most watched basketball game - men or women, college or pro - since 2019, and the most watched college game EVER to air on ESPN; the trio of women’s final four games was up 114% from last year and 299% higher than 2022; and the women's final had the biggest audience for a Sunday afternoon sporting event on ESPN and ABC since a January 2021 NFL game.” [Lev Collective]
Now let’s return to Tara VanDerveer:
VanDerveer was a guard on Indiana University’s team in its early 1970s – the AIWA era for women’s sports; her team reached the Final Four of the AIWA tournament. When she wasn’t playing the game, she studied it: "I was kind of a gym rat," she said. "I loved basketball. I studied basketball. I read about basketball all the time.
“I was a basketball junkie."
Her addiction strengthened when she watched Bobby Knight coach the men at Indiana University. Sitting in the bleachers at every team practice, VanDerveer scribbled his drills onto notebook pages as Knight ran his players through them, pushing his team towards the Hoosier’s perfect season in 1976, the year after she graduated.
In her twenties, she was coaching college teams, turning those notebook scribbles into drills for her players. She exhausted her players to build endurance, and this brought them to levels of performance that these programs hadn’t reached before.
She transitioned her teams to NCAA play in 1982.
When this year’s NCAA tournament ended - with Stanford University losing to N.C. State in the Sweet 16 – Coach Tara VanDerveer retired this week after 38 years as the head coach at Stanford AND as the winningest coach in NCAA history with 1,216 victories and three NCAA titles. Early in her coaching career, she was forced to fight for respect for her position within her university’s athletic department, and then she had to demand respect for her team with the media.
“There was one time when some radio guy said, ‘Your game's before the men's game, and if your game goes into overtime, we've got to start the men's game at 7:30, so we'll just have to have a sudden-death basket.’ And I said, ‘If anyone comes on the court, there will be sudden death. But I will be killing them.’"
She never stopped demanding respect for the women’s game. In 2021 she castigated the NCAA for its “blatant sexism,” after visuals revealed the disparate weight rooms that the NCAA provided for women and men at its basketball tournament.
"A lot of what we've seen this week is evidence of blatant sexism," the 67-year-old Van Derveer said in a statement. "This is purposeful and hurtful. I feel betrayed by the NCAA. I call on University Presidents and Conference Commissioners to demand accountability. Who made these decisions and why?
"Women athletes and coaches are done waiting, not just for upgrades of a weight room, but for equity in every facet of life. …. With the obvious disparity between the men's and women's tournaments, the message that is being sent to our female athletes, and women across the world, is that you are not valued at the same level as your male counterparts. This is wrong and unacceptable." [Reuters]
A few weeks ago, I saw this photograph in The Wall Street Journal.
I couldn’t help but see it again, in my mind, when I read about VanDerveer and her youthful games with the boys.
This girl, Caitlin Clark, who “dominated these boys,” grew up to be a woman who demonstrated her “value” by powering Iowa’s economic growth.
“The increased spending over the last three basketball seasons due to the growing attendance at home games generated a direct increase to Iowa’s GDP of between $14.4 million and $52.3 million, with an estimated $82.5 million in consumer spending. That’s nearly double the state revenue collected from the 2021 Iowa State Fair.” [Clarkonomics: The Impact of Caitlin Clark & Hawkeye Women’s Basketball on Iowa’s Economy, Common Sense Institute, Iowa]
Soaring attendance at Iowa women’s basketball games during Caitlin Clark’s career is estimated to have contributed between $14.4 and $52.3 million to Iowa’s economy. That is enough to—
Purchase between 1,418 and 5,176 acres of Iowa cropland.
Pay tuition for between 1,306 and 4,767 students at the University of Iowa this year.
Cover the costs of the University of Iowa’s planned hospital and clinic emergency department expansion, or the recently opened University of Iowa Stanley Museum of Art.
Buy every Iowan a ticket to the state fair or buy every fairgoer 1 to 4 funnel cakes.
THE REST OF THE STORY
Economics are one measure of impact, but I look toward what is derisively referred to as those “soft” indicators. These intangibles complete my scorecard. Though I am the daughter of a finance professor the money figures never seem to resonate with me as much as moments of human expression do.
And this week I came across two such indicators that for me mark this sea change in women’s sports.
High school senior Olivia Evans penned an essay in her school newspaper, ironically named The Hawk Eye, in Carrolton, Texas. Here’s how she begins her essay:
“Six years.
“I played softball for six years before quitting.
“I was a catcher on the Pink Panthers softball team. Our cotton shirts were dyed hot pink, I wore frilly ribbons in my hair every game and my bat was a deep shade of purple. Despite my feminine appearance, I never allowed others’ opinions to influence my love for the sport — or so I thought. Then I heard the phrase for the first time after a game:
“‘You throw like a girl.’
“That moment was only the beginning of many other moments and feelings. It was the phrase I heard throughout my entire life in every sport I played. Soccer, softball or volleyball — it didn’t matter. Any achievement or success I had on the athletic field was overshadowed by my taller, stronger male counterpart. Even at 10 years old, I knew no matter how talented I became, I would never be seen as good enough in comparison to the average boy.
“So, I gave up. I threw away sports, stopped trying out and looked for other extracurriculars — a decision I regret to this day. I felt overshadowed by my gender. I knew women were more capable than any backhanded comment or male comparison, but I also knew what being a woman in a male-dominated sport felt like: shame, continuous comments and hate.
“Yet at 17 years old, that feeling changed — and I have Caitlin Clark to thank.”
My second indicator, is shorter, but equally striking, in an essay a mother wrote.
“My son chose #22 for his new basketball uniform. That small fact says so much. Because that is Caitlin Clark’s number. A female basketball player’s number. Perhaps, before this year, that would have seemed a far off possibility. But this is the year that women’s basketball hit the tipping point. This is the year that women’s basketball was consumed by the masses - not just female athletes, not just girl dads - the masses. As a parent, a life-long athlete, and a champion for women’s rights, this is a dream come true.”
NOT SO FAST
Before we get too excited about arriving at this transformational moment, let’s take stock of where women’s sports are today – and realize why our fight for equity is far from over.
In a nutshell, here’s why: “The NCAA retains the rights to the championships in the sports [other than football] that it oversees, and has sold the most prominent ones in two separate deals. One is the continuing contract with CBS and Turner for the men’s basketball tournament, which brought in $873 million this year. The other is the just-completed $115 million deal with ESPN, which includes 21 women’s and 19 men’s championships.” [Wall Street Journal]
From October 2023 Wasserman report: “U.S., women’s sports comprise roughly half of the total competitions played across collegiate, professional and national sports events, while only receiving 15% of the coverage. However, removing collegiate competition from the mix, professional women’s sports make up only 8% of available competition inventory.” [Sports Business Journal]
“If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.”
We know that when girls and women have opportunities to compete in sports, they exceed societal expectations. By doing this, female athletes are living out the fears expressed by men who controlled sports when Title IX became law in 1972. Seven male coaches traveled to Washington, D.C. to plead with Congress to modify Title IX’s provisions when it came to sports.
“In May 1974 a couple of powerful Texans who feared Title IX's impact on revenue-producing sports—Republican senator John Tower and Texas football coach and athletic director Darrell Royal, soon-to-be president of the American Football Coaches Association—planned an assault on the two-year-old law. Royal and Longhorns NCAA faculty representative J. Neils Thompson helped draft the Tower Amendment, which would exempt football and men's basketball from Title IX compliance determinations. Royal feared the law would "eliminate, kill or seriously weaken the programs we have in existence." Its mandates, Tower said, would throw "the baby"—costly but profitable football—"out with the bathwater." For good measure, NCAA executive director Walter Byers added a formulation as alarmist as it was redundant: "Impending doom is around the corner." [Sports Illustrated]
Fortunately, they lost, and the vision terrifying these men has been realized.
If you want to pre-order Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside, go to Rutgers University Press at this link and use the code RUSA30. You will receive a 30% discount and FREE shipping.
So wonderful to be in touch through our weekly back and forth. Eager to meet you at JAWS
Thanks, Lisa. I always wait anxiously to hear the verdict -- from YOU!