Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 9, 1995                   TAG: 9504100060
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: D-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: New York Times News Service
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

UCONN WIN A BOOST FOR WOMEN'S SPORTS

The Huskies' thrilling 70-64 comeback victory over Tennessee last Sunday completed a trifecta of great moments in the National Collegiate Athletic Association women's tournament.

Last year, North Carolina's Charlotte Smith drained a 3-pointer with seven-tenths of a second left to beat Louisiana Tech. In 1993, Texas Tech's Sheryl Swoopes scored 47 points to lead the Red Raiders to an 84-82 victory over Ohio State.

Connecticut's triumph generated a 5.7 Nielsen rating for CBS, almost tripling the rating for Fox's National Hockey League games, which aired at the same time, and bettering by 14 percent the rating for NBC's pro basketball games. During the course of the women's final, which began at 3:30 p.m. (ET), the rating more than doubled, from a 3.2 at tip-off to a 7.3 by the conclusion at 6:30 p.m.

Within days, Lobo, who had played her final college game, was David Letterman's late-night guest, and Sports Illustrated put the Huskies on its cover - albeit a regional one only for New England and some of New York.

Does all this add up to a big boost for women's basketball? Certainly, said Donna de Varona, the Olympic swimming gold medalist and ABC commentator.

``This is the result of 20 years of growth and opportunity for women,'' she said. ``When Title IX was passed, women played halfcourt.''

Title IX, a 1972 law, requires that colleges provide female athletes with equal access to sports.

Connecticut's presence added something the women's tournament never had before: a Northeastern powerhouse. In Hartford, the Huskies' home TV market, the rating was a staggering 38.0. ``Connecticut's emergence is a great sign for women's basketball, much as UCLA's re-emergence in the West is for the men,'' said Len DeLuca, the vice president of programming for CBS Sports.

Swoopes is a beneficiary of growing interest in women's basketball. Nike announced last month that it would market a shoe called Air Swoopes.

``When I signed with Nike, I thought it was kind of a joke, and when they said they'd name a shoe for me, we all had a good laugh,'' she said.

Swoopes, who watched the Final Four live in Minneapolis, said the final game ``really opened the public's eyes.'' She didn't feel that way about her NCAA final game. ``I didn't think ours was the big breakthrough. Nobody had heard of us before. But after I scored 47, Charlotte Smith last year and now Connecticut going undefeated, that just builds it up for everybody.''

With greater TV exposure, women are showing that their below-the-rim brand of basketball can rival the men's for competitiveness and heart.

Next season, ABC Sports will go from one women's game to several, and ESPN's new seven-year, $19 million deal with the NCAA will put 31 women's tournament games on the air starting next year, including the Final Four and title games that CBS has relinquished.

Women will have greater attention paid to them at ESPN, which does not have the larger, more expensive NCAA men's tournament as its main focus, as CBS does. ESPN and ESPN2 will create a March Madness exclusively for women.

``It's more than just the games,'' said Howard Katz, ESPN's executive vice president. ``It's the greater profile we can give women's basketball on SportsCenter, ESPN Radio, ESPNET and other areas.''

Under ESPN, it will be interesting to see if more women are attracted to women's basketball. On CBS, more men watched last Sunday's women's final game than women. Viewed positively, the majority male viewership shows the game's crossover appeal. But seen negatively, it shows there may not be a critical mass of female viewers for the women's game, as there is for figure skating.

The demographics of the women's and men's championship games were almost identical for viewers 12 and over. The women's final drew an audience that was 57 percent men and 37 percent women. The men's game audience was 60 percent men and 34 percent women. In each, the largest percentage of men watching were above 50.

By contrast, the viewership for the women's figure skating final at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer was 56 percent women and 36 percent men.

But can the importance of the Connecticut-Tennessee game be overstated as a breakthrough for women's sports? Women's basketball, even in its current state, is still a stepchild to men's basketball and is the only women's team sport that gets much national attention. Yet for Swoopes and all other women players, there is no U.S. professional league to enter after college.

With regular schedules, women's professional golf and tennis get their share of notice. Figure skating has become a year-round extravaganza, with women leading the way. And when the Olympics makes gymnastics must viewing, women are the greater draw and the higher achievers.

But women's softball, soccer and volleyball are hardly blips on the radar screens of sports, despite growing participation.

The biggest dynasty in women's sports has gone virtually unnoticed: the North Carolina soccer team, winner of the past nine NCAA championships.

But Anson Dorrance, the team's coach, has little problem with an anonymity that extends to its title game airing, on a tape delay, on ESPN.

``The people who complain, who say, `Why me?' are just whiners,'' Dorrance said.

Added de Varona: ``We should be talking about the defending world champion national women's soccer team and the women's World Cup, but we're not. The women brought home their World Cup. The men didn't.''

But there are signs of a broader impact, including the introduction of Air Swoopes, and more products designed for women. Gabriella Reece is a star because of her dual existence as a model and a star on the women's pro beach volleyball circuit, which both Nike and Anheuser-Busch help sponsor. The Colorado Silver Bullets baseball team survived its first year of existence.

Starting April 16, ABC Sports will air ``A Passion to Play,'' four one-hour specials on women's sports. And the nearly all-women's America3 crew of the America's Cup yacht Mighty Mary has made a widely positive impact.

But perhaps most important, two women's sports cable networks are starting.

Liberty Sports, which owns and operates regional sports cable channels, has begun a women's channel within Showcase, a new network seen in 2 million homes, and which shares time with Hispanic and classic sports programming.

The other network, created by Mike Weisman, the president of NMT Productions, and Terry Kassel, a veteran sports sales executive, has investors and advertisers ready once there are guarantees that cable systems will carry it.