Women’s Basketball Teams Have to Try Harder for Fans : The Personal Touch

In a way, college basketball has carried the weight of the entire women’s sports movement. It was a women’s sport targeted by officials of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. to be highlighted. Basketball, they thought, had potential as a revenue producer. It was telegenic. It could draw fans.

But after more than a decade, no women’s college basketball program makes money. Some women’s programs are outdrawing their men’s teams, but only in odd pockets around the country where the men’s teams are terrible.

Basketball is still a wonderful product for television, but, so far, there are few customers.

All of which has turned the nation’s women’s athletic administrators into hard-working hucksters who go to almost any lengths to woo fans, cultivate boosters and court corporate donors.

Their motto: We try harder. (Because we have to.)

Kay Don, associate athletic director at Cal State Long Beach, said: “The reason we work hard is because we are in the early stages of building.”

Joan Cronan, Tennessee women’s athletic director, said: “To make it work, we can’t drop the ball. We have to walk the extra mile. I hope we always will.”

What has evolved is a consistent base of support for women’s basketball, whose fans and boosters are given special treatment and whose corporate donors are sent thank-you notes and Christmas cards and are invited into locker rooms for pregame talks.

Sonja Hogg, former women’s basketball coach at Louisiana Tech, where she won two national titles, is now the assistant director for marketing and development for women’s sports at Texas.

“Women’s basketball is the (women’s) flagship for the NCAA,” she said. “Women have to work harder for support and funding. We don’t have a football program to lean on.”

If women work harder for fan support, it’s only because they have to. If women take a more personal approach to their work, it’s because the numbers they deal with are smaller. For whatever reason, women’s basketball fans are said to be more loyal and receive more attention than fans at men’s games. For one thing, they are not expendable.

The solution for the women has been to take a personal approach. In a world of big budgets, women’s basketball is still working with a small-time mentality.

Cronan said she doesn’t believe that women athletic administrators are more noble than their male counterparts.

“When you are dealing with a 90,000-seat football stadium and a 25,000-seat arena, there is a time factor involved,” she said. “You don’t have as much time for hands-on with the fans. I hope when our women’s team averages 20,000 people that I’ll be as nice as I am now.”

Having a coach who is willing, and capable, of running the public-relations gantlet is also essential. At Tennessee, Pat Summitt, a former star player and 1984 Olympic coach, agreed when she signed on that promotion was a big part of the job.

“She will do just about anything,” Cronan said. “Bless her heart, she’d stand on a street corner to talk about the program.”

The personal pitch seems to be making a difference in the growth of women’s basketball.

“The fans feel they are more special, they are more likely to be appreciated,” said Lucy Broadston, Iowa’s assistant athletic director for fund-raising. “Our fans and boosters feel they are a part of something, rather than one in a cast of thousands.”

Attendance at Iowa is annually among the highest for NCAA women’s basketball. Last season, the Hawkeyes averaged 5,990 to 7,071 for conference games. They drew 22,000 for their game against rival Ohio State. At Texas, the women have been outdrawing the men since 1986. Last season, the Longhorns averaged 7,663; the men averaged 4,028.

Many schools have established elaborate programs to involve fans directly with the team. Most name honorary coaches for games--fans who go to the pregame meals, watch practices, go in the locker rooms with the teams and sit on the bench during games.

Long Beach began its honorary coach program 3 years ago. Texas may have 10 to 15 for each game. There are at least two of these coaches at each Iowa home game. Players are even accustomed to sharing their postgame locker room with fans.

“They know that after a game they won’t be screaming and shouting in the locker room,” said Tammy Frank, Iowa sports information director. “They either have the coaches in there or they have to go to the Big 10 room to meet fans in a reception.”

Long Beach’s Fast Break booster club travels to some away games and has a reception with coaches and players after every home game. Iowa’s I Club also travels to games. The group got so large that the school turned the organizing over to a local travel agency.

“The women still have the size that we can have that personal touch,” Don said. “I have found that our fans like the personal approach. Some of them get bent out of shape when someone doesn’t say hello. I think it’s good. I hope we don’t lose that along the way. I hope that as we grow and continue to get big-time, we don’t lose that.”

Lose that, many feel, and you lose fans. And who are women’s basketball fans?

“Families,” Iowa’s Frank said. “It sounds a little schmaltzy, but it goes along with the whole idea of family here. There are a lot of kids dancing in the aisles and Girl Scouts in our stands. We schedule games for Sunday afternoons. People in Iowa go to church and then come to our women’s games.”

Iowa fund-raiser Lucy Broadston agrees. “I was in the stands for a game and I saw a gentleman who used to play football at Iowa. He was there with a bunch of kids. He was entertaining them for the afternoon. I guess his wife wanted the day off. The point is that he could get tickets (at almost half the cost of a men’s game) and he got entertainment for his money.”

Women may draw well, but nationally they don’t come close to matching the attendence at men’s games. That is also a selling point. Fewer people means that fans don’t have to fight for tickets.

“At North Carolina, they have people who donate $10,000 to the (men’s) program who can’t get a good seat,” said Regina Sullivan, associate director of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Assn. “By the time they finish taking care of all their big supporters and their season ticket-holders, the average Joe is going to get a seat in the nosebleed section. With the women, you can sit close.”

Broadston agrees. “They don’t have to punch and shove for tickets,” she said. “They will see a quality event that is done the way it’s supposed to be done.”

Tennessee has 1,200 members of its Boost Her Club.

“You go to football games because you enjoy it and it’s the thing to do,” Cronan said. “Our fans feel they are helping. We took some of our boosters to Rutgers. One man came up to me and said, ‘You came to me for support and I said yes. But after 2 days with this team, I’ve changed. Before, I wanted to be involved to help. Now, I’m committed.’ ”

Tennessee’s boosters are well taken care of. Cronan took 100 of the school’s most generous donors to a tournament in Hawaii in November. The Rutgers trip included 2 full shopping days in New York, in time for the Christmas rush.

Texas is one of the few women’s programs that has studied the demographics of its fans. It found that its fans ages 30 to 60 far outnumber its student fans.

“I think the older people got tired of seeing negative things in men’s athletics,” Hogg said.

The Longhorn Associates, Texas’ women’s booster club, has 1,700 members. The men’s basketball booster club has 200.

The Women’s Basketball Coaches Assn. has commissioned a 40-school demographic study of women’s fans. They hope to use the information to sell a national television package. This season, with help and money from the NCAA, women’s basketball will have a 6-game package on national television, distributed by assorted national and regional cable companies. The NCAA bought the broadcast time and the schools hope to make some money by selling advertising time.

Administrators hope that television exposure will be the breakthrough the sport needs.

“Television is what made the men’s game take off,” Sullivan said.

Yet Hogg said: “We don’t need to make the same mistakes the men made.”

In fact, the atmosphere of big-time basketball may have sent some fans fleeing to the more tranquil world of the women’s game.

“I think they lost perspective of what a student-athlete is supposed to be,” Hogg said. “Young women don’t have a million dollars hanging in front of them when they graduate. Their education is important to them. That appeals to fans, because they like to come out and see what they feel is a clean product, not a meat factory.”

At USC, where the women draw an average of 1,059 at home, Barbara Hedges, associate athletic director, says women’s basketball fans are primarily USC fans.

“I think we are probably more intermingled here than at other programs,” Hedges said. “When your men’s and women’s programs are combined, you rely on each other. The USC person may not be just a men’s fan or a women’s fan. There’s a great deal of pride in all the sports. Tradition plays a part. USC fans come to any USC event.”

Tradition-bound Texas makes the same claim, where the women sold 4,165 season tickets this season. Every game at Texas is on television and radio. An Austin radio station that decided to broadcast a NFL Monday night football game and tape-delay the women’s game was flooded with phone calls.

“People live for the women’s basketball team here,” said David Spangler, Texas sports information director.

George Nokes, a retired lawyer from Austin, tries to sum up the attraction of women’s basketball.

“They take a lot more notice of you and they appreciate what you do for them,” Nokes said. “They respond a great deal. We’ve met most of these kids’ parents since I’ve been here. I also have season tickets for the men’s games. But I don’t even know the coach and I don’t know any of the players. There’s just not that much contact in the men’s programs.”

The Nokes have endowed a scholarship for the women’s team, which costs a minimum of $10,000.

Nokes says he loves the personal approach. Women’s basketball can afford to have that approach. It’s part of what got the fans and part of what keeps them.

But, when or if the women get big-time, will they put on big-time airs?

“That’s something we are really conscious and fearful of,” Broadston said. “We don’t want that to happen. We think that would be a mistake. We try to maintain the good feelings we have established. It’s what got us this far.”