Comparing men's and women's basketball on Twitter

There’s no doubt which national championship basketball game was better: the women’s game was a million times more entertaining than the men’s was. After watching them both closely and taking notes for our March Madness paper, I don’t see how anyone could argue this fact, whether you’re a casual basketball fan or diehard follower.

I’m an active member of the Twitter community, largely tweeting and reading about sports related topics. The tool has been a cultural phenomenon as it allows people to spout out an opinion and post it so easily to the entire world before they can even think about what they just wrote. It was unfortunate to read and hear that many male basketball fans, and even some well-respected media members, tweeted sexist remarks when watching the men’s game Monday night (including Simmons, who is one of my favorite sportswriters).

Erin Whiteside stuck up for the women’s game overshadowing the men’s in her blog post “Twitter users compare men’s basketball to women’s game.” Whiteside wrote, “The men’s game was boring. Illustrating just how boring it was by comparing it to women’s basketball denies the women’s game the legitimacy it deservers.” I couldn’t agree more. I actually thought that Whiteside could have even supported her argument a lot better as the post was fairly short. She was on the right track, but I felt like she just decided to stop. If I could, I would encourage her to follow through with her point and make it stronger.

In class we have talked about the struggle women went through to gain access to basketball, starting in 1975 in places like Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas. Many men thought it was a violation of tradition to allow women to play, and that the sexes were too different to play by the same rules. The rules were tweaked to make it more of a slower, half court type of game because the thought was that women couldn’t handle faster, more physical play. It was also believed that fans might not enjoy a higher scoring game played by women.

I understand the general public can be very ignorant, especially when it comes to sport. And most of the people tweeting those things because they intended them to be a joke. Too bad it wasn’t funny. I guarantee most of the people who made sexist remarks like Whiteside talked about haven’t even watched a women’s game recently. Women’s basketball has come a heck of a long way in a short time. It should be respected.

Twitter has been very interesting to study in today’s society. The way it connects so many people in a similar conversation has sparked many debates that are worth analyzing.

Bashing the men’s championship game was well deserved. But you don’t need to compare it to the women’s game to do that. The awful stats were enough to support that case. I predict that one day the men and women’s game will be equal. I also think we’re a lot closer to that day than people think.