Sports
A manly man's view on the women's NCAA basketball championship – USA TODAY
Great news, fellow men. I have thoroughly enjoyed the women’s NCAA basketball tournament and it has not caused me to die!
Remarkable, right? As we await Sunday’s championship game, I can confidently say that men everywhere are now loving women’s basketball while continuing to exist.
What a world!
For years now, a sizable swath of the man-o-sphere rejected women’s basketball, discounting it for a lack of dunks or a lack of dudes or a violation of our beloved-but-secretive Rules of the Patriarchy and whatnot.
The women’s game seemed to have been invented so men could express deep thoughts like “Why would anyone watch that when they can watch men play?” and “I bet that women’s college team couldn’t beat the local high school boys team, and this hypothetical I came up with is in no way rooted in sexism.”
Whether it’s college basketball or the WNBA, women’s sports have long been fodder for important male thought leaders like the ones who do podcasts while wearing tank tops and looking like they would pass out if they walked more than 20 feet.
Do I hate Caitlin Clark?I want to despise Caitlin Clark for taking my school’s rival to new heights. But I can’t.
For ages, I assumed if I was ever caught watching a women’s basketball game, I’d have my man card revoked and be sentenced to 400 hours of watching 1960s and 1970s sitcoms to reeducate myself on gender roles.
But slowly, things have changed and become better for men.
It started, I suppose, in 2015, when they released a Mad Max movie with a woman in the lead role. I liked “Max Max: Fury Road” and didn’t expire after seeing it or feel like it had destroyed my childhood.
That prepared me for the following year, when an all-female remake of “Ghostbusters” came out. It was intimidating, of course, but I manned up, watched it, thought it was great and somehow did not leave the theater emasculated and incapable of being a dude. My buds still called me “Broseph.”
Fast-forward to the emergence of NCAA superstar Caitlin Clark of the University of Iowa, Louisiana State University’s remarkable Angel Reese and the University of Connecticut’s fierce Paige Bueckers. Those are all women, people, and they’ve turned this year’s tournament into must-see TV.
I don’t like March Madness.Sorry if that makes me weird.
Part of me wants to think that the women’s game has been good all along, and that I was just not paying attention to it because their programs don’t get the same level of financial support or media attention.
And part of me wonders if there’s an ingrained misogyny in male culture that makes accepting women as equals somehow taboo because it means we men might no longer be totally in control of literally everything.
But then I realized the problem was actually that LeBron James had not yet told me it was OK to watch women’s basketball. The Los Angeles Lakers star has long been a fan, and he recently said: “I don’t think there’s much difference between the men’s and women’s game when it comes to college basketball. I think the popularity comes with the icons they have in the women’s game.”
Cool. Now we men have a man-endorsed permission structure that allows us to enjoy women’s basketball without fear of being de-manned.
I’d like to congratulate my fellow men on this outstanding achievement. It takes a lot of courage for us to watch and appreciate a game that doesn’t feature men doing the exact same thing.
Way to go, guys. We did it!
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
