Love him or hate him, Bill Simmons has never been shy to give his sports takes — and he often likes to sprinkle in some historical trends.
With March Madness coming up in a few weeks, Simmons said on an episode of his show, “The Bill Simmons Podcast,” while speaking with writer Chuck Klosterman that this year, he’s paying more attention to the NCAA Women’s March Madness than he is the men’s.
“I care more about the women’s college basketball tournament than I do about the men’s at this point in my life,” Simmons said.
Simmons wasn’t shy to admit that he used to not enjoy watching women’s college basketball.
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“I am the same person who once upon a time — I did not want to watch women’s college basketball, I did not like the product,” Simmons said.
He said that it’s not just because Caitlin Clark that he watches; He also watches the star-studded LSU Tigers team that has the likes of Angel Reese and Hailey Van Lith and USC freshman Juju Watkins, who he’s watched for years now because she’s the same year as his daughter.
Simmons said there are a few changes that have made the game better. He pointed at the style of game and also the continuity that many of the college programs have that has been lost in the men’s game.
“There’s continuity — the style of play is good. It’s got a lot of the fundamental stuff that it used to have combined with the slash and kick in the threes,” Simmons said. “But continuity, which in the Men’s now it’s gone.”
In the men’s game, many of the top prospects spend just one year in college before declaring for the NBA. This is what prospects like the No. 1 overall pick of the 2022 NBA Draft Paolo Banchero did when he played just one year at Duke, and it’s the same that Simmons says incoming Duke freshman Cooper Flagg will likely do.
But in the women’s game, players have to be at least 22 years old during the year of the draft, which means many players have to finish college before declaring for the draft. That allows fans to gain a greater attachment to the players, like Clark and Reese, or Paige Bueckers at UConn, who recently declared that she’s returning for another year.
Simmons also argued that this boost in popularity of NCAA Women’s Basketball could translate to the WNBA, particularly because of Clark.
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“I think she has a chance to be the most fun basketball player, male or female when we get to the pros,” Simmons said. “It’s basically all the same [Steph] Curry stuff, just with a female, but it’s all the same things I love about watching Curry and how they play off teammates in the dribble handoff. She’s also a good passer, but I just like watching her play. I would like watching her play in any format.”
But while NCAA Women’s Basketball garners more viewers — at least for its high profile games — versus the WNBA, Simmons thinks that it may be more beneficial for some college students to stay in college rather than go to the WNBA. This is a controversial topic that someone like 2023 WNBA first round pick Haley Jones disputed the other day when she said that she didn’t lose money when she decided to go to the WNBA.
“I don’t really know where that [narrative] came from,” Jones said.
Erica’s followup yesterday was brilliant because, in clear language, it dismantles this bogus argument. The NIL conversation continues to be an echochamber of ignorance, because so many of the men in sports media are not consuming the content they spread false narratives about. pic.twitter.com/5KjSRBJYQW
— Myles (@MylesEhrlich) February 28, 2024
While the earning side may be dunked, the popularity and viewership of some of the top games in the NCAA are higher than the biggest WNBA games, as Clark’s top game this year had over 1.75 million viewers versus nearly 900,000 for Game 4 of last year’s WNBA Finals.
But Klosterman made the case that history has shown us, through the likes of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in the NBA, that the popularity of the women’s game could spill over to the WNBA in about a decade.
“For 10 years, it’ll seem as though when it’s called basketball is still considerably, like a much bigger deal than the WNBA and then maybe 10 years in, it will start to equalize and then the WNBA will end up becoming the dominant thing,” Klosterman said. “The same way that this happened with men’s basketball. College basketball was more popular then eventually, really it was kind of like post-Magic and Bird in the NBA, that the [NBA’s] so much more dominant than the college game.”
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