NCAA March Madness

In today’s world, men’s sports seem to always be in the spotlight while women’s sports do not draw much attention, as if women who play sports are not taken seriously. This happens on all levels of sports, and I have personally experienced it myself through basketball in high school. While the gym would be full for any of the boys’ games, our games had very little support with almost empty bleachers. When it comes to the professional level, when women’s sports do get covered by the media, most people judge female athletes more on their looks rather than their athletic skill, which is negative and unfair.

First, the randomness of which tournament favorites will perform to the best of their abilities and which will wilt under the pressure keeps fans on the edge of their seat, wondering if perhaps their team might fall victim to an early upset. Generally, in other sports, teams that have dominated the entire season end up winning championships, and sometimes all of the opponents that these teams face do not even get close to winning. Next, fans of an unknown small school or a team that just barely snuck in March Madness have serious reason to believe that their teams could do the unthinkable. In professional leagues and college football, only a select few teams make it to the biggest stage; this severely minimizes the opportunity for most fans to watch their teams play meaningful games. Finally, no other sport integrates brackets and addiction to predicting into their games like March Madness does. Out of all of the different sports in America, including global leagues such as the NBA, NFL, and MLB, March Madness draws people in who want to win pools and prizes more than any other sporting event in this country. Ultimately, someone’s love for March Madness can be basically traced to one main theme. In order to fully understand March Madness, a fan has to not only be a college basketball fan, but they also need to love the underdog. Without heroic lower

March Madness is a widely known college basketball tournament that decides the champion of college basketball. I will not be discussing the teams of this year’s tournament as there are 68 of them and that would take way too long. Instead I will be talking about the history of March Madness, such as upsets and teams who do usually do well as well as teams who usually disappoint.

One of the top sporting events in the world is considered to be the NCAA March Madness tournament. This tournament is ranked third just behind the super bowl and FIFA World Cup. It’s unbelievable to think that one of the top sporting events in the world is in college athletics. You have other professional sports like basketball, baseball, hockey and NASCAR, but there championships still don’t compare to the NCAA championship. March madness is so popular that global firms Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc believe that companies are expected to lose about $1.2 billion because of every hour of work that employees are watching games instead of working (Koba, 2014). These employees will spend on average 90 minutes a day at work watching

While participation of women in sports has increased, the media representation of women in sports remains problematic. Even the most talented elite female athletes like Michelle Kwan and Monica Seles are portrayed in a sexual fashion, as a way of deemphasizing their athleticism and neutralizing any possible threat they might seem to pose to male viewers. Very few male athletes are portrayed in such an objectified manner; they are portrayed as competitors first and foremost, not as personalities. Also, the media coverage of athletes is disproportionately focused on male athletes. The coverage of female athletes tends to stress individualized female sports where women can be sexualized like tennis and figure skating, versus competitive team sports like basketball and soccer.

As winter comes to an end and spring approaches, so does the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) March Madness frenzy. Since it's inception in 1939 this tournament has gained increased popularity among gamblers and fans alike to become the second most popular tournament in the US after American football's Super Bowl. Every year the madness begins the second week of March and ends the first week of April. Millions of fans across the states eagerly watch as 68 teams race to win college basketball’s biggest prize. This paper will look closely at two of NCAA Division I teams, the Oklahoma University (OU) Sooners men’s, and the Texas Longhorns (TL) women’s programs. It will first break down the tournament revenue brought in to the

Before I investigated March Madness for my research paper, I already had an excessive love towards this event. Ever since my favorite team, the University of Florida Gators, capped off a great season with a national championship over Ohio State, college basketball has played a significant part in my life for the near six months that it is on per season. If my love for sports was paired with my love for knowledge and history, then it is expected that I would be familiar with much that has already happened in the game’s history. While conducting my research, I was pleasantly surprised to find several sources with information that I was unfamiliar with before. One of the biggest fears when I started my

The Tigers slowed the pace in an attempt to neutralize the physical gap with other

Basketball is one of the biggest sports in America. It is also popular around the worlds. Men’s basketball, in particular, is given much more preference in American society. Many would argue that the comparison of the two simply boils down to sexism in sports, where people downgrade the strength and athletic ability of women in our society according to typical gender roles. However, there may be more confounding factors that are generally overlooked.

Before I conducted this media analysis about women in sports and sport broadcasting, I hypothesized the obvious - that more male sports would be in the media, and that there would be more male sports broadcasters as well. Through my observations I did find that the sports arena and sports broadcasting sphere are male dominated. However, I also found that although there are not many stories about women, there has been a steady progression and magazines like Sports Illustrated are becoming bold enough to highlight women athletes in a magazine that is targeted towards a male audience. Although women still have a long way to go, they are making some headway into the male-dominated sports arena.

Gender classification is a predominant topic within today’s sports and is most broadly understood through the portrayals of sports media. Through overt and covert ways, sports media has continued to promote a masculine representation of sports (Millington & Wilson, 2010; Messener, Duncan, & Jensen, 1993). By understanding the way in which sports media portrays sports, one can recognize how masculinity has dominated the world of sports. With the aid of two unique studies of sports media, this paper will critique the way in which media has effected the gendered depiction of sports.

Astonishingly, sexism still exists and in 2002, columnist Stephen Moore expressed, allowing women to play in March Madness is “annoying” and the tournament would be better without them (McDonagh & Pappano, p. 237). He believes women in sports intrude and ruin “precious moments of bonding” (McDonagh & Pappano, p. 237). This all begins with the idea men are better than women. These mindsets believe men have superior talent and therefor deserve to have their own sports. They should not have to share with the lesser sex.

As a nonprofit the NCAA is often not compared to large companies even it makes comparable revenue. All television and video game revenue, as well as ticket, jersey, and souvenir sales made from college athletics all go to the NCAA, the conferences, the athletic departments, and the coaches. In fact, one study suggests, “Men’s basketball and football combine for $6 billion alone” (Mondello, Piquero, Piquero, Gertz & Bratton, 2013). None of that revenue goes directly to the student athlete even though the NCAA surely has enough money to do so if it chooses. USA Today writer Bruce Horovitz states in his article, March Madness Evokes Marketer Madness that, “The NCAA men’s basketball tournament generated $1.15 billion in television ads in 2013, well beyond the revenue generated by the NFL and NBA playoffs, according to ESPN” (Horovitz, 2014). Marc Edelman, a professor at City University of New York takes it a bit farther in his article The Case for Paying College Athletes, and claims, “The college sports industry generates $11 billion in annual revenues. Fifty colleges report annual revenues that exceed $50 million. Meanwhile, five colleges report annual revenues that exceed $100 million” (Edelman, 2014). In contrast, during the 2014-2015 season the NBA grossed about $5.18 billion in revenues according to Forbes Magazine, which was a league record high. The NCAA revenue money is also not evenly distributed among the schools, as top tiered athletic programs tend to make more money

With the rise of feminism, gender inequality has been quite the topic in todays time. With the wanting of equal rights and treatment it has been pointed out as per which all places males have the hegemonic overview and women are the oppressed; one of the areas where its unequal in gender is in sport. This paper will examine and break down the issues regarding sex and gender biases within sports in modern day media and how it can be resolved.

From the three network affiliates they studied, they found that 96.3 percent of the coverage was for men’s sports and women only received 1.6 percent (Messner and Cooky 4). When analyzing the coverage of Sports Center, which is arguably the most popular sports show on television, they found that women still only received just 1.4 percent of their coverage (4). This study also found that 100 percent of the Sports Center programs had a lead story that was about men’s sports (4). Even the most renowned and credible sports show, which only shows sports all year long, does not even provide women’s sports with equal attention. Even more shocking than this was that the study also revealed that reporters devoted more coverage to men’s sports that were out of season than they did women’s sports that were actually in season (4). This can be extremely disrespectful to female athletes when their sport is pushed aside and ignored so that a men’s sport that is not even being played can be covered by the media. These women put all their effort into performing their sport at the highest level, but their media attention gets replaced by men who are in their off-season.