UCan’t Compare

Good enough to stand on her own.

The University of Connecticut Lady Huskies are a fantastic group of female athletes and, on the whole, very likely the greatest women’s basketball team to ever grace the hardwood.

UConn and its shoot-from-the-hip, take-on-all-comers head coach Geno Auriemma deserve all the praise and accolades worthy of a group who routinely drill hapless opponents by 30 points and a knock to the ego. They perhaps deserve any more credit for besting the also-deserving men’s Huskie team in Google Page Rank.

However…

Comparing them to John Wooden’s 10-time champion UCLA Bruins men’s squads is like comparing a fine Ghiradelli truffle to a box of Publix chocolate ice cream or “Sgt. Pepper” to a late period Madonna single. Each entity has its own unique merits, but equating the two does a disservice to all parties and quite frankly – ahem, ESPN – makes reasonable people assume you’ve been blackmailed with unseemly pictures of Steve Levy.

In the decade leading up to UCLA’s legendary run of 10 titles in 12 years, eight different schools won national championships, including the Lucas/Havlicek-led 1960 Ohio State Buckeyes, Bill Russell’s San Francisco juggernaut, and a 2-time champion Cincinnati program that had been largely built on the stardom of recent grad Oscar Robertson. Point is, the competition was chockfull of future NBA stars, many of whom would go on to define the very trajectory of professional basketball. A host of these programs staked their claims to greatness on the iron-sharpen-iron west coast, where a relative historical no-name like Seattle University actually went on to produce more pro players in the ’60s than any other team.

Whereas the WNBA continues to flounder, existing a lesser career alternative to professional leagues overseas, men’s professional basketball in the ’60s and ’70s flourished amid a cutthroat, two-league battle to secure the cream of the college crop. UCLA’s run from ’64 to ’75 corresponded with an NBA-ABA bidding war that ultimately transformed the former into a legitimate national pastime when the associations merged in 1976. In effect, then, the UCLA-dominated college game sustained not one pay-per league, but two – and this at time when owners were pulling out all the stops to land premier talent.

Breaker of streaks David Thompson

The current women’s game simply doesn’t have the equivalent Major Leagues attracting talent to the college level. Superior female athletes play basketball, yes, but they also play volleyball and softball and lacrosse, because really, when’s there’s no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, what’s the difference?

All of these arguments of course speak to the issue of parody, an essential element of competitive balance that the women’s game lacks in spades. Nobody in her right mind believes the Lady Huskies belong in the same gym as the Bruins, or any men’s squad for that matter. Juxtaposing a women’s team with a men’s team is a pointless endeavor on par with comparing the respective careers of Edwin Moses and Secretariat because, you know, both ran.

Still, ESPN, and big media in general, insist on measuring Connecticut’s tremendous feats against those of a higher being, and upon deeper inspection, the analogies only serve to dwarf the former’s historic achievement. Rebecca Lobo and Doris Burke will not tell you that the women’s game is more top-heavy than Pam Anderson; or that the national runner-up has failed to score 50 points in the title game 3 of the last 4 years; or that only 13 different programs have EVER won a championship.

If the poor Wizard had only known – known his 10 titles and 88-game win streak would be so flimsily sacrificed at the alter of Title IX. He’d no doubt take it all in-stride and with an unparalleled strain of class: say nothing of the drastic differences in competition, or of the considerations that differing tourney formats entail, or of the bass-ackwards “gentlemen’s agreements” that only furthered men’s parody by limiting all pre-mid-’60s teams to three black players.

John Wooden, bless his humble soul, would not utter a word of anything resembling the above. He’d probably just say, “Congratulations, Maya Moore. You are just great at what you do.”

And, really, that should be enough.

- Robbie