What We’re Talking About
When colleges begin to cut women’s sports programs, you can’t say you weren’t warned. The combination of last week’s announcement by the Department of Education that NIL payments do not need to be proportionate between a school’s male and female athletes to comply with federal law; and the impending $2.8 billion House v. NCAA settlement, are ominous signs. You might be thinking, but that’s because men’s basketball and football are the only sports that actually make money. Oh really?! Perhaps the real problem is that the men in charge don’t properly value women.
Let’s take LSU gymnastics and the SEC. LSU gymnastics sold over 8,000 season tickets heading into their 2024 season. By the time the season ended (and before they were national champions), they averaged a crowd of 12,590. LSU men’s basketball, on the other hand, averaged less than 8,000 fans per game. When the men played away at other venues, the average was still less than 9,000 fans per game. LSU women’s basketball? Last year they averaged over 10,000 fans per game. Meritocracy, right? By raw data women are outperforming the men.
So when the NCAA negotiated their new TV deal with ESPN the contract exploded to $920 million over 8-years. Sounds good, right? One problem. The NCAA didn’t open up the bidding to anyone else and decided that when the House investigated how the NCAA undervalues women’s sports (the House report found women’s basketball alone to be worth between $81 million and $112 million), the NCAA disagreed in this assessment and settled with $65 million per season in this fresh contract. Overall, the new deal includes 21 women’s and 19 men’s sports; and when the money is carved out for men’s and women’s basketball and football, the remaining 39 sports were basically given away for scraps. In fact, the new TV deal says the value of women’s gymnastics and other growing sports are all worth less in 2024 than they were in 2011! For more on this, read economist and author, David Berri’s, piece here. (Listen to our past podcast with him here.)
Ok, so women put more butts in seats, but the TV ratings are probably garbage? Nope. As former Utah coach and must follow on social media, Greg Marsden, points out, women’s college gymnastics was the fifth most-viewed sport and drew more viewers than women’s college basketball and the Australian Open (tennis) on ESPN2. LSU’s gymnastics head coach, Jay Clark, is right to be upset that his program isn’t given primetime slots on television.
The men in charge of the NCAA and at ESPN refuse to believe people are interested in watching women compete more than men. It’s almost as if those making the schedule need to justify their bad business dealing by propping up less popular programming with unwarranted primetime preferential treatment. It’s egregious business malpractice that needs to be called out now because when the punditry starts talking about how women’s sports just don’t make money and therefore should be cut, ask them for the data to back it up because the numbers don’t add up.
Feelings
- No. 1-ranked Oklahoma is officially the underdog
- Never a doubt: Chuso is gunning for LA 2028
- Rhy McClenaghan is a gift to the sport
- We hope Jeff Graba feels better soon
- We’d now like AQI measurements before meets begin
- If flashing cameras are dangerous to athlete safety, so are flashing smoke detectors
- Wishing Chase Brock and her Achilles a speedy recovery
- Gabby Douglas gives us an A
- Frida Esparza was electric
- So happy Simone is finally getting her honeymoon
Facts
- Doubled: The number of perfect 10s in the 2025 season
- 5 Perfect 10s: Grace McCallum (UB), Kennedy Griffin (FX), Leanne Wong (BB), Sloane Blakely (FX), Lilly Hudson (FX)
- There are still no perfect 10s on vault
- As soon as Oregon State drops a 195.7750 road score they’ll shoot up the rankings
- Georgia meet was held in a cloud of smoke
- USAG has released their FlipNow and YouTube streaming schedule
- Irina Viner has resigned
- No. 2 LSU beat No. 1 Oklahoma and fell to No. 3 in the NQS rankings
- Mind blowing: The lowest ranked event for Jade Carey (No. 1 gymnast in the country), is vault, where she is a world champion and Olympic bronze
- 13,386 attendance vs. OU: LSU has never lost when their crowd is above 13k.
- Bonus: It’s not too late to play our fantasy game. Join here.
Award(s)
- Perfect: Grace McCallum, Kennedy Griffin, Leanne Wong, Sloane Blakely, Lilly Hudson
- Rock star: Frida Esparza
What’s On the Socials?
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Quotes
“Is it something?”
~ Rhys McClenaghan, Olympic and World Champion
In this week’s episode Rhys shares his thoughts on men doing scales.
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“There was a small fire involving leaves outside the coliseum.”
~ Greg Trevor, UGA Police Department Spokesman
Greg delivered comment regarding the smoke that went into the ventilation system and filled the Gym Dogs arena with smoke before (and during) the meet.
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“In June, on my 50th birthday, we will have a competition here in Tashkent. It will be a World Challenge Cup, and I really want to compete there so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.”
~ Oksana Chusovitina, Legend
Chuso giving an update on her plans for the future as she nears the half century mark.
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What? You want even more? Join Club Gym Nerd and you get a bonus episode, College & Cocktails, every weekend after our meet of the week. Once the NCAA season is over you continue to get a weekly bonus episode every Friday afternoon. Plus you get access to all of our archives, exclusive content and more. Then we give the sober analysis on Monday (or Tuesday) after we’ve allowed the data to penetrate our feelings.
This column was composed and compiled by Steve Cooper, Editor, GymCastic; as performed by hosts Jessica O’Beirne and Spencer Barnes.
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