NCAA inequalities

The women’s “weight room” is just a stack of dumbbells. While the NCAA put thousands of dollars into the men’s weight room, they couldn’t be bothered by the women.

Photo courtesy of Sedona Prince via TikTok

The women’s “weight room” is just a stack of dumbbells. While the NCAA put thousands of dollars into the men’s weight room, they couldn’t be bothered by the women.

Celeste Hirschi, Sports Editor

The NCAA has marketed their men’s basketball tournament to the point where everyone knows what March Madness is about.

However, women’s basketball has not been treated the same, and the women of college basketball want a change.

The young women of college basketball took to TikTok to show the inequalities between men’s and women’s tournaments. 

The videos showed how the girl’s weight room was worse than a hotel gym. 

While on the other side the men have state-of-the-art equipment and weight lifting areas.

NCAA’s vice president of women’s basketball, Lynn Holzman said, “We fell short this year in what we’ve been doing to prepare in the last 60 days for 64 for teams to be here in San Antonio, and we acknowledge that.”   

Due to Title IX rulings, distributing more money to men’s sports than women’s sports is not allowed, no matter the revenue they bring in.

While the NCAA came out and said that it was an issue of space instead of finances, it seems unlikely as there is plenty of space for a state-of-the-art weight room.

Overnight the women’s weight room got significantly better, but this does not excuse the fact that the women did not get the proper treatment in the first place.

The women’s NCAA basketball tournament got significantly less press coverage, media marketing, and even free merchandise for the players.

While the men’s tournament in Indianapolis is the biggest thing happening to Indiana in the past year and a half, the women’s tournament in San Antonio seemed to go unnoticed. 

There was no advertising or billboards to let everyone know that the greatest women’s college basketball players are in their city.

The NCAA doesn’t use the term “March Madness” When referring to the women’s basketball tournament. 

However, it doesn’t quite make sense if they don’t use it because the trademark is for both men and women. 

But when a fan watches the games, you don’t see March madness painted across the wooden floor.

Junior, Marissa Garcia said, “As a female athlete it saddens me that all of our hard work and dedication to our sports do not get as much recognition as our male counterparts.”

Even though it might be 2021 there are still too many inequalities between men and women, especially in the sports world.

 The NCAA needs to step up as an institution and fix these problems at the root. 

As long as there are institutional inequalities, there will be social inequalities as well.