ESPN Gives Women’s Final Four Top Billing Over MLB’s Season Opener

In case you were away from the computer and TV on Sunday, allow me to fill you in. This was the focus of the main page on ESPN.com in the afternoon/evening:

If that wasn’t bad enough, you turn on ESPN Sunday night to check out the MLB season opener they had been promoting all week long and you get stuck with women’s college hoops. Oh that’s right, the Braves against the defending World Series champion Phillies for the first baseball game of the season got moved to ESPN2. I’m guessing I’m not the only sports fan around who was looking for a baseball game and got stuck with the ladies Final Four. I don’t need to see ratings to know who’s watching what. I don’t need figures to tell me that most people were trying to check out the baseball. I’m just sick of having the women’s tourney get pushed at me as much as it does on ESPN.

How can you tell me that the women’s college basketball tournament is any bigger than the softball finals which get televised on ESPN2? How is it that women’s college basketball is so popular that it necessitates a selection show and full-on studio shows that take up space in the ESPNews and SportsCenter loop? The soccer, water polo, gymnastics, and softball championships all have just as equal importance to me, why is it that only basketball gets the love? Just because ESPN has chosen it to be the glamor event of women’s college sports? If that many people wanted to watch women’s basketball, then why has the WNBA failed? Worse yet, just because ESPN televises the games, why do their highlights get shown on TV but other sporting events that are equally or more popular get shunned? The tennis masters series was at Indian Wells in March but you wouldn’t have been able to find those scores or highlights anywhere. But if you needed South Dakota St./Baylor highlight, you got it. Sure, I may have wanted to see how Courtney Paris’ promise came out, but I didn’t want to know that badly.