UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, April 12, 1995
5A
DRAWING A CROWD
BASKETBALL. Continued from Page 1A
They aren't missing a thing some fans would argue. No matter what the price, no matter how glitzy the show, there are those who won't attend women's basketball games. They complain the game is boring, slow and not physical enough.
Women can't jump. The girls don't dunk.
Others say that criticism misses the point.
"If that is the criteria, women will never win," says Frank Deford, a special correspondent for Vanity Fair, National Public Radio sports commentator and former Sports Illustrated writer. "It's a different game."
Players and coaches in women's basketball say that women play the game the way inventor James Naismith intended it to be played. Women stress passing and ball movement. Shooting is more of an art in women's basketball.
"Women play the pure game of basketball." Colorado sophomore center Raegan Scott says. "Some people don't want the game to go above the rim. They think that would take away some from the sport."
Mixon continually fights the perception that not playing above the rim means the game is not exciting. But marketing efforts can only do so much.
"Marketing does not create passion and desire," says John Sweeney, associate professor of advertising at the University of North Carolina, who teaches a sports marketing class. "Marketing helps people focus on why they like a product or not."
De and John Tippie, Lawrence residents, were among the 1,406 fans that attended the women's last home game against Missouri. Senior citizens and families are the two major groups that back women's basketball.
Some people do like the product they see.
"Back the season up too much and you're into football," Conradt says. Some players agree that backing up the season is not the answer. But they have different reasons for it.
Still, women continue to close the gap between their game and the men's game. The women's Final Four was sold out again this year.
"It's a winner all the way around." Deford says. "The women would own that time. The calendar just sits there waiting for them. It seems to be so utterly logical."
Deford has been beating the drum to start the women's season a month earlier and then play the national tournament and Final Four in February. That time of year, television audiences hit a post-Super Bowl lull, but televisions are in high use because of the winter weather.
"That is telling women to take a step down from men," Colorado sophomore forward Erin Scholz argues. "I would rather compete for the attention."
Women's basketball seems to appeal mostly to families and senior citizens, according to a University of Texas study on women's crowds. When 13,532 people did fill the fieldhouse during Kansas' 1993-94 season, the record-breaking crowd was predominately families, senior citizens and high school girls' basketball teams.
It is not out of the ordinary to see women on the front of newspapers' sports pages. They are even breaking into television sports reports. What's critical about getting television exposure is that viewers become acquainted with players and coaches, personalities and rivaries. Sweeney saves.
Texas' study was part of the women's basketball team's push to step out of the men's basketball program's shadow during the early and mid-1980s.
To build their own identity, the Longhorns became accessible to their fans. Texas coach Jody Conradt, who has since led the Longhorns to two Final Fours and
Maybe what women need is to get away from the individual marketing plans like Mixon's and get together on a national bandwagon.
"Women have to do the spectaculari to get the bare minimum," Barry continues. "The men are going to get covered, regardless."
Still it takes hard work — harder work than the men — to get recognition.
KU basketball attendance
Besides that friendship and personal touch, ticket availability and prices for women's basketball games are inviting for families. At Kansas, if a family could get men's
Noah Musser/KANSAN
"There were six or seven years there where I never said, 'no,' " Conrad admits.
one undefeated season, says they met with a small group of boosters after each game to give an analysis and answer questions. Now that group numbers more than 2,000 members.
And like many women's programs, Conradt and her players would sign autographs, work in the community and, almost daily, do speaking engagements.
"It's free publicity," Colorado women's basketball coach Ceal Barry says. "The thing is, when you win, the media want to cover you, and the fans want to see you."
basketball tickets, they would pay $80 for four general admission tickets. The same family would pay $16 to see a women's basketball game, and those tickets are available.
"There are very few affordable things families can look to for entertainment," Kansas women's basketball coach Marian Washington says. "Women's basketball is something families could really get behind."
Kansas, like several other programs, has recognized this and gears many of its promotions to families. Kansas' halftime contests feature children and accompanying adults riding tricycles and shooting baskets.
The overall winner from the sea-
sonlong competition won a family weekend in Kansas City.
Even with all the promotions, all the giveaways and all the hoopla, student hearts still don't seem to be in women's basketball.
"It's a shame we're not able to get the interest of the students," Washington says. "It's not just at Kansas though."
The Jawhaws leader is right. Both Colorado, which averages a higher attendance than the men's basketball team with more than 5,000 people a game, and Texas struggle with student involvement.
"That's the void we still have," Conradt says. "And we've done everything imaginable to get students to our events."
During the past 12 years, the men have been invited to 11 NCAA Tournaments and have advanced to four Final Fours.
ball enough to choose it, "says Betsy Stephenson, Kansas associate athletics director and senior woman athletic administrator.
The overriding reason for Kansas' low student and community support is probably the success and tradition of the men's basketball team.
"Students haven't gotten to a point where they enjoy women's basket-
That emphasis may have been lost in the crush of games this past season. Several times scheduling forced people to choose the men or the women. On five separate occasions, the two teams combined to play three or more home games in a week. When that happens, the women lose.
"We've been fortunate in that men's basketball doesn't need promotion," Mixon maintains. "They've got a big fan following and don't require a lot of time and effort. We were able to put a lot of emphasis on the women because of this."
The women's team averaged almost 8,000 people, including eight regular-season sellouts of the 8,241-seat Gamel Pavilion. The men's team averaged more than 13,000 people but played several games in the Hartford Civic Center, which is almost twice as large as Gamel.
Some schools have been able to balance the success of their men's and women's teams. Most notable is Connecticut with both teams nationally ranked in the top five most of the season.
Bruce Berlet, who covers Connecticut women's basketball for the Hartford Courant, says the Huskies do a terrific marketing job. Much like Texas, the coaches and players are active and accessible in the community. The men's and women's coaches also write a weekly newspaper column that summarizes the past week's games and looks ahead to the next games.
It all must be working. In addition to 6,581 season ticket holders, there are approximately 1,500 seats reserved for Connecticut students at the women's games. Connecticut conducts a lottery for those tickets, and they are gone every game. Students even camped outside for a day and a half prior to the Huskies
"We're not really challenging each other for fans," adds Connecticut senior guard Pan Webber.
Connecticut Public Broadcasting broadcasts all of the women's games. National audiences saw several of the Huskies games this past season on CBS and ESPN.
Other attendance numbers
The following numbers represent the average attendance per game at the schools indicated during the 1994-1995 academic year.
Noah Musser/KANSAP
showdown with then-No. 1 Tennessee to get tickets.
More recently, ticket scalpers have started selling tickets to the women's games.
"That's something you never would have thought about three years ago or five years ago," Berlet says.
And who would have thought that the media coverage surrounding women's basketball would have grown so much? The Hartford Courant sent four writers and one photographer to the women's NCAA tournament games, the same number it sent to the men's games.
and ESPN has signed a contract with the NCAA to broadcast 23 tournament games next season. That's a step forward.
"Five years ago I never thought we would have TV contracts," says Cindy VanMatre, the NCAA's assistant director of promotions and media coordinator of the women's basketball Division I championship.
Sweeney and others say it is critical for women's basketball to maintain its marketing focus. By doing that, the game may continue its climb in popularity, even to the men's level.
"I do think it can grow to be as exciting," Washington agrees. "People are realizing the product, women's basketball, is an exciting product."
Angie Halbleib doesn't foresee any quick changes. A regularly packed Allen Field House probably won't happen while she's here. She's resigned to that.
"We could be No. 1 in the nation, and we still wouldn't get any crowd," Halbleib says. "It would take something like going undefeated for people to notice us."
Still, she and Washington and Mixon and others in women's basketball hope. And they work toward the time when somebody like Haleible will come through that fieldhouse tunnel, took up at the stands and without any irony say, "Packin' 'em in tonight."