Ask McFartnuggets: “Why Isn’t Women’s Basketball More Popular?”

Dear McFartnuggets: 

How come women’s basketball isn’t more popular in America? When it comes time for March Madness the only people in my office that fill out of a women’s tourney bracket are me and Gerald the creepy janitor. He always beats me too because he says he watches all the college girls really closely. I can’t compete with that! This guy has inside information from all his Facebook stalking, plus he always picks UConn to win. Why aren’t more people into the women’s game? It’s the basically same thing! -- Martha from Bloomington, Indiana

Dear Martha:

Well it’s not exactly the same thing. The fact that there’s no dunking is a big deal. The average height of an NBA player is 6’7 and the average height of a WNBA player is 6’0, but they both play with a 10 foot rim. Imagine if the NBA rim was 12 feet tall and there was no dunking. I think more than a few people would stop watching because it just wouldn’t be as exciting. You could have all the stars like LeBron James you want, it would simply look weird to have the rim be that much taller than the players. Lowering the rims for NCAA women’s basketball and the WNBA would definitely increase ratings. When it comes to why no one cares about women’s March Madness, as you mentioned, UConn always wins so that takes a lot of the fun out of it. The reason that happens is women’s basketball just doesn’t have the talent pool of men’s basketball. That means every year there are like 5 top recruits from the high school level and they all want to go to UConn because it’s a winning school. Why would any girl with talent want to go to another school that won’t compete? Because of that there’s virtually no parity and it’s at the point where UConn winning isn’t even an accomplishment. With every additional title it’s like an avalanche that just keeps gaining snow. When you take the genuine achievement aspect out of sports no one will want to watch because there’s no drama. You’d think with women there’d be at least some drama, but that’s a sexist statement. Hope that answers your question!

Watching giants play basketball is fun, watching dwarfs play basketball is even more fun, but anything in between is not as much fun for some reason.

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