Christine Brennan's column

True. But for my money, the really good ones write about different things. The Brennans and Rhodens of the world keep beating the same deceased equines.

 

Ummm, women's basketball was being played for a long time before the NCAA got involved in '82. The old AIAW (Assoc. of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) was as good as it got for decades.
The quality of those teams was likely superior to the women's teams of today.
The NCAA only got involved after the smoke cleared on the whole 5-on-5, 6-on-6 battles that state high school associations went through in the 70s.
But the AIAW was always playing 5-on-5, so the best players always chose those schools.
Pat Head nee Summitt led the charge for 5-on-5 in Tennessee and throughout the South despite the wide-spread perception that women weren't up to the challenge of running up and down the court. One million torn ACLs later, nobody talks about 6-on-6 anymore, and Summitt is considered the greatest women's coach ever.
She also likes for her team to be called the Lady Vols.

 

You are totally delusional if you believe that to be true.

 

I'd take any of the teams from UCLA's run in the 60s and 70s in a head-to-head matchup against any of the recent NCAA champs.
And how can you say the teams are so much better now than just 10 years ago? What do you base that on? And you can say bigger, faster, but it isn't like girls are suddenly 6-10 and taller. The real big difference between the women's game now and then, is that wing players have gotten taller. It used to a 6-foot girl automatically played post, but now they are playing outside.
I covered an NCAA regional 10 or 11 years ago that had USC and Lisa Leslie and I've recently covered SEC women and I'd take Leslie over Candace Parker.

 

Way to shift that argument, slick.

1982 is 25 years ago.

 

Actually Junkie started with 10 years ago, but to back further in time Wendi Scholtens starred at Vandy in the mid-80s, more than 20 years ago, and if you take her and how she played then into women's basketball now, she'd be in the top 3 for best players in the country.

 

There may have been a few individuals from the 70s or 80s who could succeed in the current women's college game, but there is a huge difference in the level of play from then to now. It's such a large gap that I can't see how you can argue it.

There is a larger talent pool to pull from and the players' talents are far better developed when they reach the college level.

 

I'm back.

I don't understand how my position is not completely logical.

let me make a very clear statement on which I base my argument: if you say the word "basketball" without specifying which kind you're talking about, the assumption is made that you mean men's basketball. men invented it, were the first to play it, and currently dominate the coverage of the sport.

naming five or six communities where women's basketball is popular is not nearly enough to make the above statement inaccurate.

if my statement is true, it is entirely LOGICAL to state that the modifier "men's" is not needed to differentiate men's basketball from the women's game. the public already knows that you mean the men's game without having to say it!

if you think my statement is not true, that's fine. I'm willing to hear alternate theories. but let's define the terms of the debate.

and by the way, if you're going to take the approach that the two games must be distinguished, LOGICAL consistency requires you to say "NFL football" each and every time you refer to the professional game being played on Sundays. after all, there are places who might think the word "football" refers to "arena football", or maybe even "soccer". so you better clarify that.

then of course, you better call it "men's baseball" too. because there are women's fast-pitch baseball leagues who feel that they deserve recognition and we certainly can't risk offending them. so let's go with "women's baseball" and "men's baseball" just to keep things straight.

common sense > political correctness.

P.S.- the answers "the NCAA does it this way" or "my paper does it this way" are pretty weak. if you can't come up with a defense besides "someone else told me to do it this way", what does that say for your argument?

OK let the insults begin..................

 

To me, it's not that your point isn't logical. It's that it's inaccurate.

We are in the business to inform the public.

If adding a word is the difference from making it logically true, probably true and hopefully true to absolutely true, I feel we should add the word.

 

Nah, no insults. Not even vitriol. I'll just say your points, and some others here (including mine), have drifted from the original premise, the main point of her column. To suggest Florida is the first school to hold Division I basketball and football national championships at the same time is, at worst, wrong and, at best, incomplete.

 

And not worthy of an entire column.