Re: BouncyBall 2013/2014
Women's basketball is something that even bacon can't save....
I guess that depends quite a bit on the team! In some places, women's college basketball even gets more support than the men's team.
I was surprised when we first moved to Connecticut to find the women's college games broadcast on public television. I started watching and became hooked. They play the game like John Wooden's old UCLA teams played: great team defense, good ball movement, always striving to play their best without regard to the score. At times, against certain opponents, their defense reminded me of the '85 Bears, in that it was always a tossup to see whether the defense would score more points on steals and breakaways or whether the offense would score more. They play an entertaining style, with good players. If you like crisp execution on offense and good team help defense, then the UConn women are often worth watching. If you want dunks, meh. You won't get them.
Their coach even had a weekly talk show during the season.
When the contract with public television expired, there actually was a bidding war between them and SNY, which the latter won. The coach still has a weekly talk show, and the team also has a monthly "magazine" style show as well. For a commercial station to outbid public TV indicates that there is enough interest to advertisers (i.e. enough potential viewers) to make the contract worthwhile.
I've heard that in Tennessee, the women's team routinely would also draw more fans to games than the men's team did.
Overall, though, I'd tend to agree with you: outside of maybe a dozen or so elite teams, you just don't have the depth of talent nationally for a "typical" women's basketball game to be that interesting. The Women's NCAA tournament is a snooze until you get to the Sweet Sixteen or so. But then it can get pretty exciting from there to the Final Four.
