Dick's Sporting Goods is offering to bring gym equipment to the women's NCAA Tournament
Which begs the question: Did the NCAA ask for help before the tournament?
For reason that are not real and do not deserve to even be heard, the NCAA gave women’s basketball players living in the San Antonio tournament bubble a gym setup that … would not even be good enough for any single person, let alone a several dozen elite athletes.
A coach with the Stanford women’s team noticed the discrepancy between what her team had to work with compared to the vast, fully equipped men’s gym in Indianapolis and went public, sparking a national conversation.
The NCAA blamed the paltry setup on limited space (players quickly showed there was plenty of room) but said it was working to fix the situation.
Dick’s Sporting Goods is here to help!
@NCAA Our teammates have worked quickly to get truckloads of fitness equipment ready to send to the women’s @ncaawbb @marchmadness bubble – we are standing by to deliver it and have your facility outfitted within hours! Let’s make this happen. pic.twitter.com/6QJJjrrDgx
— DICK'S Sporting Goods (@DICKS) March 19, 2021
I’m about as cynical as anybody when it comes to brands, and this is clearly a brand noticing a chance for good publicity. So why am I giving them the publicity they seek? Because I think if the NCAA had just tried, Dick’s — or many other companies — probably would have helped earlier.
In fact, here’s Orange Theory basically saying as much:
So @orangetheory is stepping up and offering their services where they can pic.twitter.com/qMZGiaBFcA
— Arielle (Ari) Chambers (@ariivory) March 19, 2021
We’ve catalogued all the inequities that players at the women’s tournament have had to fight through in recent days, and the more I think about this situation the more angry I get because it just sort of seems like maybe the NCAA didn’t even try.
Lining up a partner to provide some gym equipment for an event like the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament should not be that difficult. That’s incredible exposure for any company. Finding restaurants or catering companies to deliver real food at reasonable prices doesn’t seem like too much to ask, either.
The tournament isn’t the usual economic engine it is for the host city due to limited fans, but it’s still a big deal. There should still be ample local support. And we’ve all lived through a pandemic for a year, we’re accustomed to things not being what they once were. And we’ve tried to adapt.
It seems as though the adaptation for the women’s basketball tournament was taking the easiest way out. That’s why this is all so appalling: Things got a little complicated and the NCAA quickly turned to treating the less-lucrative tournament like an afterthought.
Dawn Staley eviscerates Mark Emmert and the NCAA over shabby treatment of women’s basketball