PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — One year ago Oregon’s Sedona Prince shared a video that changed the landscape for women’s college basketball showing the disparities between the women’s setup in San Antonio versus the men’s setup in Indianapolis.
Her video — tagged with “If you’re not upset about this problem then you’re a part of it” — sparked outrage across the country.
In response, companies stepped up to fill the gap in resources and the NCAA hired a firm to conduct a gender equity review of its process which only further highlighted the ways college sports’ governing body had intentionally left the women’s tournament at a disadvantage in terms of resources, marketing and revenue.
This year, the NCAA started the work required to right the wrong of their own making. For the first time, the women’s tournament is allowed to use the powerful “March Madness” branding.
Kelsey Trainor a lawyer and business expert who specializes in NCAA coverage, found it shocking the NCAA would reserve “March Madness” for men only.
“The impact in the public space is huge. I also think we’re going to see a pretty large financial impact,” Trainor told KOIN 6 News. “From a gender equity perspective reserving something that has such massive brand recognition and not using it for your own product, you’re kind of betting against your own product to succeed. You’re betting against women’s basketball which is your own product, right? Women’s basketball is an NCAA product so you’re betting against yourself to succeed so it really didn’t pass the smell test of, like, this just doesn’t look, smell, sound right.”
While Title IX — which prohibits colleges around the country from discriminating between men’s and women’s sports — passed 50 years ago, the NCAA itself is not held to that same standard. That means things like what Sedona Prince saw and shared — and other inequities — could happen.
But Trainor thinks that now both the men’s and women’s tournaments are March Madness “we’re really going to see it play out long term, though, in terms of sponsor getting those advertising dollars.”
The NCAA also immediately increased the budget for this year’s women’s tournament by $3 million and changed their social media channels to reflect whether the account is for men’s or women’s basketball.
It’s in these small changes of perception, investment and opportunity for women basketball players and the tournament that Trainor said can increase greatly.
“It’s the same way that schedules on TV will say, you know, college basketball and then women’s college basketball, right? It’s that idea that sports are inherently male and we’re starting to see that narrative changed a little bit,” she said.
“It’s really just about that equity, that equality and it’s not that hard. I know it messes up some people’s notions of, you know, commonplace and the past and, you know, history or whatever but obviously history’s been wrong on this one so I think it’s about time.”