Indianapolis, IN – Two years later, the NCAA still has yet to escape that moment when the world became aware of a major disparity between the men’s and women’s sides of the vaunted March Madness tournament. While the men’s teams had access to full gym set ups and seemingly to miles of premium exercise equipment, women’s teams only had use of what five pound dumbbells and Soloflex stationary bikes hotel employees could drag into hotel basements with little hotel dollies. Wow.
“Yeah…”, a chagrined upper executive exclaimed when the question came up at a press conference earlier this season. “We really dropped the ball on this one. Worse than those initial feelings of ‘Oh My God, why do people suddenly care so much about women’s basketball’ and ‘Fire the damn whistle-blowers’ was a later more nuanced reserved awful feeling of ‘Man, with all of the damning pictures circulating on the Internet, how the hell are we gonna be able to deny anything?’” And then he fretted about all the money women’s basketball already loses and that women should be happy that hotels have basements in the first place.
Well the NCAA’s Board of Governors just this morning announced a few changes to this years’ women’s tournament that should set the tone for an epic all-parties-involved experience that should make, well, all-parties-involved happy. Here they are as said by them…
VENUE CHANGE
The NCAA tournament will no longer take place this year in Greenville, SC or in Seattle, WA or in Dallas, TX. It will now take place at the university facility closest to our downtown 700 W Washington St office, the Indiana University Phys Ed building on W New York St. That way we can more closely monitor all games (which means no unsanctioned media) and make sure this will be the best experience possible, for all involved. Thumbs up! If the teams exceed IUPE’s capacity, then some teams can be moved to the next closest location at Brown Mackie College (which closed a few years back under a cloud of financial problems and investigations related to consumer fraud. Nothing to do with us. We’d just be using their old gym). Wink wink!
COMPETITION CHANGE
All teams will play all round games at the same time, on the same court, until of course the final where there should only be two teams left. Playing. So if you want to see your favorite teams like South Carolina or Utah or Uconn or even hometown IU or anyone else then you can, all playing on both sides of the same court at the same time. All teams. Yay!
PRESENTATION CHANGE
All competitors in this years’ women’s tournament will always be seen with elaborate, extraneous and unnecessary sets of exercise equipment in the background at their disposal. Even during games. Therefore, there will be no accusations of our favoring the men’s side (even though they bring in so much more money and cuz they’re men of course), simply because this year the women won’t be able to avoid endless amounts of exercise equipment always lurking in their presence. And because they will have all this excellent extraordinary equipment available to them at all times then they will be so happy that they will need to smile all the time. To show they are happy. Smile!
So there you have it. Watch the NCAA women’s tournament and support women’s athletics. And with all of these positive changes there’s no way the NCAA is gonna make a fool of itself now, right?
