Early Polling is In; Results are Bad

I posed the question to the body of women's basketball contacts -- has the media crisis effected your sport's coverage. The answer, so far, is the one you anticipate -- yes -- but it is also worse.

More when I get a wider sample in, but judging from about 60 emails within 24 hours (do the math, D I has what, about 335 now) I wasn't the only one thinking there is real trouble on the horizon for women's basketball.

Why? Best case, the person who comes out and covers some of the home women's games is worn ragged as the second person on football and the baseball person.

Look, when the Vopels and Greenbergs are gone or limited to on-line -- it bodes poorly for the state of women's hoops media.

Informal comments include a significant drop in traditional media members at the Women's Final Four. This is a decline in real terms, not looking at the participant's media or the increase in television network needs. If more than half of the nation's top 15 metro markets have no reporter there -- relying on AP -- that's a bad sign.

Let me be the first to break the news to my brothers and sisters -- you are the beat reporters now. More so than you ever were before.

I make the point with the sport I've worked for a quarter of a century, but it applies to every women's team, every Olympic sport. Last month at NCAA women's gymnastics, the numbers were down. A real bellweather is coming up in one month when Arkansas hosts the 2009 NCAA Outdoors. We built the press box to service over 100 writers. Anyone want to give me a guess how many seats we'll fill?