Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 30, 1991 TAG: 9103300105
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Mimi Griffin, a former Pitt player who will do game analysis on the NCAA women's Final Four today (noon, WDBJ) and Sunday for CBS Sports, said the sport "went through a period of stagnation in the 1980s" and now an improved game is trying to play catch-up.
"In the mid to late '70s, women's basketball was really booming," Griffin said. "There were great players and a few great teams. Then the novelty wore off, and we didn't do a great job of continuing the process of promoting the game.
"There were still very talented players, even more than before. The sport was more competitive. But as an entertainment alternative in the '80s and as we start the 1990s, you have to do more. Coaches have to understand there is so much more than x's and o's. We have to teach players and coaches how to create exposure and how to best present themselves and the game."
Women's basketball has made strides in exposure this season. With today's doubleheader from New Orleans - Virginia-Connecticut and Stanford-Tennessee - the women's national semifinals are being televised by an over-the-air network for the first time. The national championship game, which will be on CBS for its 10th year Sunday, always has gotten decent ratings.
Women's basketball was helped in the NCAA's seven-year, $1 billion contract with CBS that started this season. The deal included regular-season women's games. Three games were aired. A doubleheader on Jan. 5, up against the NFL playoffs on ABC, was cleared in only 90 percent of the nation. A Feb. 23 game was available to only 91 percent. CBS Sports clearances rarely dip below 98 percent.
Griffin, 34, played at Pitt from 1974-78, then coached the sport before going into sports sales and marketing in Allentown, Pa. She remembers the advent of Title IX legislation pushing the sport during her college years. It helped that players like Carol Blazejowski of Montclair State, Ann Meyers of UCLA and Nancy Lieberman of Old Dominion had star quality.
"I remember a women's-men's doubleheader at Madison Square Garden in 1977," said Griffin, who was forceful and candid in working NCAA men's first- and second-round telecasts in the past two tournaments. "There were 12,000 there for Immaculata-Queens, and then more than half of the crowd in the Garden left before the men's game. I don't even remember who was playing in the men's game, but I thought that was pretty amazing at the time."
The Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women ran women's college sports until the early '80s, when the NCAA took control. Griffin said that once the original impetus of Title IX waned, many of the private schools that gave women's basketball its first push were bypassed by state schools, which had the economic wherewithal to support programs.
Griffin said women's basketball needs more players like former Southern Cal All-American Cheryl Miller, who not only impressed with her play but also her personality. It helped that Miller was in a major media market, too, unlike all-time scoring leader Lynette Woodard of Kansas, who became the first woman to play for the Harlem Globetrotters.
"Cheryl's flamboyance is what helped," Griffin said. "The purists might not have liked that, but she was great for the game. Lynette was a great player, but she was in Kansas, and she got little publicity.
"We have players now who are great players like that. Dawn Staley [of Virginia] has the same kind of ability Cheryl Miller had, but Dawn doesn't want the publicity. She's very much a team player, and that's fine, but the sport needs more publicity for players like Dawn."
Another problem for women's college basketball is that no one sees the scores of games until the NCAA Tournament reaches the second round. ESPN doesn't air women's scores, even of the top teams, and the first women's score most viewers saw repeatedly was James Madison's upset of top-ranked Penn State in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
"I'm glad somebody else has noticed that," Griffin said. "The NCAA is getting some corporate sponsorship money for women's basketball now [primarily from Rawlings], and there is talk of putting it toward televising the regional semifinals. But is that a good idea, when those games would be going up against the men's regional semifinals?"
Griffin said the women's game would be better served by having a weekly half-hour highlights show all season on ESPN or an occasional highlights package shown among men's game coverage on CBS. ESPN televises the NCAA regional finals, but as arena draws, this year's four games were hardly inspiring. The average attendance was less than 3,900.
No longer is women's basketball hampered by the sluggish halfcourt play. Men's college basketball used Magic Johnson and Larry Bird to bring about a resurgence in the late '70s. Now is the time, Griffin said, for women's basketball to find its own niche by promoting itself rather than continuing to complain about a battle of the sexes it can't win.
"Our ratings for the [Jan. 5] doubleheader on CBS were comparable to what men's basketball did against the NFL playoffs," Griffin said. "We're to the point now where there's a certain novelty to women's basketball again and a certain curiosity. It's up to women's basketball to take advantage of that.
"Playing good basketball isn't enough. You have to do more."
by CNB