89

The UCONN Women's Basketball Team (surprise, surprise) upended Florida State last night to put themselves alone at the top of the basketball world having now won 89, count them 89 games in a row. And (unsurprisingly) people are talking all about it.

No matter how you want to slice and dice it, at the end of the day this is one hell of an achievement. There are a lot of snotty basketball fans out there making remarks about the lack of parity in the women's game and how women can't dunk and the ball is lighter and blah blah blah and no, I'm sorry, winning 89 of anything in a row is an insanely good achievement and I don't care if you're a men's team, a woman's team or a team of hyper-intelligent sea otters. It's pretty damn amazing.

Was it predictable? Yes. UCONN is insane. And by insane I mean insanely good- it's like watching a varsity team tee up on a team full of 8^th Graders and I have to admit that it does lay bare the parity problem in Women's Basketball. But you can complain about it- or you can look at this way: UCONN Is setting the gold standard- they shouldn't be penalized for it, instead all the other schools should be trying to catch up. It'd be interesting to see why the lack of parity is so evident in the women's game or if it's just a perception on the part of pretty much everyone.

Being curious, I decided to look at some statistics and discovered something curious- in the 27 years I've been on this Earth 13 different teams have won the Women's Tournament while 19 different teams have won the Men's Tournament. As soon as I figured that out, I decided that it was a pretty arbitrary number to look at, so I decided to go back further. Considering the fact that Title IX is generally considered to be the start of a renaissance in women's college athletics in this country, I decided to go back all the way to 1972 and see what, if anything we could take away from the 'parity question' then.

Turns out that was a dumb idea, because there was no women's tournament before 1982 which makes it hard to compare the two. But leaving aside that only 20 teams have won in the 38 years since Title IX was passed on the men's half of the equation, if you look at the 28 years the men's and women's tournaments have been in existence it's a gap of 19 teams to 13 teams. Not an insanely large gap if you think about it- especially given the head start the men have on the women. Given the fact that back in the day you had teams like UCLA rattling off 8 or 9 titles in a row you could argue that parity, if that's your thing, comes with time more than anything else. There are a lot of girls playing high school basketball right now- and not all of them can go to UCONN or Tennessee. The titans at the top usually have a solid group of 'almosts' nipping at their heels (like Stanford, Baylor) and eventually they too will be joined other teams and schools will undoubtedly start to play up to the level of the major powers in the women's game. The golden cup of so-called parity will, I think, come with time.

What's frustrating to me, more than anything else is the lack of interest in watching women's sports- either on television or in real life. General admission to an Iowa Women's Game will run you about $5 a pop. UI Students get in free! It's the best deal in town, quite frankly and given the fact that they're 11-1 right now, it's not boring. But congratulations are in order for the UCONN women… nicely done. And as for everyone else: who's gonna beat 'em? Time to step it up, methinks…