Is the top of women's college basketball better than the WNBA?
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A thread on SPS didn’t stay on topic. Oh the horror. Next you’ll tell me that certain people on this board have a tendency to take sports topics and turn them into political debates. Boy, that would be wild. Cannot imagine someone doing that all the time just to get their jollies out.
I've said before it's amazing the number of times I'll open a thread and read down through the new comments and have to back out to see what the original subject was. Impressive how far off topic some of them can get.
In fairness, it's not unlike a lot of dinner/party conversations I've been in that get to bouncing around until someone finally asks, what were we talking about?
I accept that others may dislike me pointing out that the thread topic wasnt about if a men's college basketball team could beat the best WNBA team.
I thought it was odd to force the men's top100 college basketball team into the conversation in part because it just seems like something that would be nearly universally accepted.
I thought it would be so agreed upon that it wouldnt further the conversation. But here we are talking about it, so I was wrong. I need to go back and look at the last time I was wrong on here because I think it was when I predicted Dak would win the Heisman in 2015.
ETA- my comment about the last time I was wrong was 11 years ago was not serious. ** should have been included. To be clear, I have been wrong since then. I also thought we would beat Liberty in the 2019 NCAA Tournament.
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At first that sounds like a reasonable position, and then you get to the part where you are wanting people to watch a WNBA game, and then it sounds like you're just an *** hole that wants people to be punished.**
I’m definitely an *** hole, but I don’t want to punish random people.
You’re welcome to all your opinions on the WNBA without watching anything but videos intended to highlight the bad. You’ll have lots of companionship on the webs.
ETA watch any minute of this video highlighting a recent Clark great game and you’ll see plenty of good basketball…
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I think I ultimately agree with you, but to me the plausible route of creating more NBA fans was not to get women to watch the WNBA, and then become NBA fans. It was to keep younger girls interested in basketball because there was a dream of professional sports for them, and hope that those girls would become NBA fans. I don't know how you measure that other than just track female fans of the NBA over time and see if they are overperforming there as a demographic starting say, 10 years after the WNBA was formed?
I have no clue if it's plausibly been a good investment. Google says they've lost between $350 and $400 Million since 1997. That sounds awful, but that's less than 3.333 percent of one year of revenue for the NBA. My guess is it probably hasn't been effective use of advertising dollars? But it doesn't seem like an obviously stupid thing to try. The NBA obviously does pretty well with men and to grow it's market share there it has to compete with football and baseball and to a lesser extent soccer and hockey plus tennis, golf, and basically every professional sport that exists. There's a lot more upside if they can tap in to the female population if they can do it successfully. And at least they have tried to do that in a way that does not alienate their existing fanbase, which is more than most traditionally male entertainment products can say when execs are chasing female viewership.
Just like the best high school football team would beat the WFA champions.
Not exactly earth shattering revelations here.
It all has very little to do with whether any women’s college team could beat a WNBA team.
Generally agree, but with the caveat that there a select few college teams throughout history that probably could beat a WNBA team, but only because they were loaded with future WNBA players.
For example, UCONN’s 2016 team had EIGHT future WNBA players on it, including three that had the following scoring averages in the WNBA this year (2026), of 24 ppg, 21 ppg, and 15 ppg. I would say they could have beaten several WNBA teams, but only because they WERE a WNBA team. And they regularly beat every college team they played by around the same margin you mention above.
That’s almost certainly the best women’s college team ever. And there’s no way to know, but I still don’t think they would beat any of today’s WNBA teams.
Another thing to consider, there are only 15 teams in the WNBA. That concentrates quite a few of the best women basketball players in the world on every WNBA roster.
The worst WNBA team would still beat them. It might be closer but they still would win.
Key word is future. Even the best college players have an adjustment period when they turn pro. That team may have had 8 future players, but they weren't WNBA players yet. Even the worst pro team has 12+ current players.
I’m just curious how many people responding are qualified to answer this question. If you combined all of the time I’ve spent watching WNBA in my life, I doubt it would equal 40 minutes or whatever they play. Are you guys actually watching this stuff?
Heck no. But since when has that stopped any of us from having an opinion and being absolutely certain we're right?
When you add arrogance to your opinionated takes - it's the worst of the worst.
Oh, I guess I should have included **. I figured the comment was so over the top and absurd, it would be clearly seen as joking.
Looks like I am wrong again. This is the first time I have been wrong since 110 minutes ago.
Honestly couldn't' tell there was sarcasm because you opined on a thread steering away from it's original intent which literally happens in probably 80% of topics.
No, I was responding more to the pro team vs college team argument. WNBA is a snoozefest
This is true. There are a lot of players like Hailey Van Lith, who was fantastic in college but just got cut in her 3rd year. Going to the next level is almost like a whole different game.
Those girls on UCONN were fantastic for sure, but some of them would have been bench players in the pros. And their talent level in college was not what it was when they became pros.
Maybe it would have been close, but the pro team would have won.
To anybody that disagrees, I have one question: When we beat UCONN, how many pro teams would we have beaten?
I asked the same question when Johnny Manziel and A&M beat Alabama - the Alabama fan at my work came in and I asked him how many pro teams A&M would beat. He just walked away because he knew the answer.
It’s like there’s no box on the backboard where you aim for the top right or top left of the box depending on which side of the basket you are on.
Look, and I'm saying this with no ill-will. The best 9th grade teams would beat WNBA teams.
There are so many levels to being good at basketball, but at about 9th grade, boys who have continued to play serious basketball to that age are just too physically strong and fast to play against girls. I could take five ninth grade boys from the Jackson area and win the WNBA championship.
But to the point of the original post, WNBA teams would destroy college teams.
Also this thread is remiss without it the discussion of the unfairness of there not being a trans WNBA.
Cue somebody with AI skills to create a prominent trans people playing basketball video.
Is they officially trans? I’ve heard them talk. They sound like a man. Damņ these pronouns. I know these people don’t use these pronouns in real life. It sounds idiotic just reading them I can’t imagine dumb how it sounds actually spoken.
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