SPORTS WATCH : Equal Time

The college basketball season culminates this weekend in national championship games among the Final Four teams, with the men’s tournament in Seattle featuring UCLA. But let’s not forget the women’s Final Four.

On Saturday Pacific 10 champion Stanford will face an undefeated University of Connecticut team in Minneapolis. In the other game, Tennessee will play Georgia. The two winners will vie for the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. championship on Sunday.

Women play college basketball with as much verve and talent as the men. In fact, Stanford women’s team draws as many fans to its home games as the men. But women’s basketball still gets short shrift at times. Take last weekend’s West regionals, which were played at UCLA. The championship match between Stanford and Purdue was scheduled at 9 p.m., a reasonable time for West Coast viewers but midnight for fans on the East Coast.

Both women’s Final Four games will be broadcast at reasonable hours this weekend. But, again to accommodate television, the women must play their Final Four games back to back, on Saturday and Sunday. The men get a one-day break between games on Saturday and Monday. The reason for this disparity is that men’s games get higher television ratings.

Still, we can’t help but wonder if the ratings for women’s basketball wouldn’t be higher if the games were broadcast in prime time, too. Their games can certainly be every bit as exciting as the men’s. Tune in this weekend and see for yourself.