PHOENIX (AP) — When basketball great Cheryl Miller thinks of the state of the women's game today, she is filled with pride.
Pride with how interest and investment in women's hoops has skyrocketed since her days dominating at Southern California. Pride with how women's athletes are celebrated. Pride with the development in player skill over the years.
“A lot of these players are so dedicated, not just the X's and O's or the physical, their skillset,"
said Miller, who was honored this week as one of the greatest players of The Associated Press women’s basketball poll era, "but taking care of their bodies, the nutrition and sleeping better and what’s provided for them now at certain universities and programs. It’s just the evolution of the game itself.”
Miller and other women's basketball trailblazers, including Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman and former UCLA standout Ann Meyers Drysdale, spoke about the state of college sports at “The AP Top 25 Fan Poll Experience,” which was held at Arizona State’s First Amendment Forum in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix.
Most conversations centered on how name, image and likeness along with the transfer portal are shaping the college game.
The changes in college sports have permeated politics, and ahead of the start of the Final Four for both men and women, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at restoring “order, fairness and stability” to college athletics.
The order directs federal agencies to bolster the effectiveness of key rules on transferring, eligibility and pay-for-play by evaluating whether violations of such rules render a university unfit for federal grants and contracts.
South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, whose team will play Sunday in the national championship game for the fourth time in five years, recently said her conversations with recruits nowadays reflect the new college sports landscape. While Staley's talks with recruits once centered on earning degrees, they're mostly focused now on money, especially with players in the transfer portal.
That's the same adjustment Arizona State coach Molly Miller has been forced to make.
"Recruiting a high school athlete is a lot different than recruiting a portal athlete," Miller said on a panel hosted by the AP on Thursday.
“Their questions are totally different than the portal kids,” she added. "Their questions are, ‘What’s the student-to-teacher ratio?' When you get in the portal they’re like: ‘Am I going to play? What’s the depth chart like, is the culture good and how much (money)?’”
Ackerman, who was the first president of the WNBA, sees tremendous growth in institutional investment in women's college sports, which she pointed out was evident in the success of the Final Four teams — South Carolina, UConn, Texas and UCLA — in Phoenix.
While that growth is paying off in brand value and fan engagement, Ackerman worries that it will lead to a wider disparity between schools with major football revenue and institutions that rely on smaller revenue streams.
“I’m not sure what the future holds,” she said. “I think it’s going to require leadership on campuses and innovation in terms of how to deploy resources that are finite for all sports.”
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AP Top 25 Fan Poll Experience: https://apnews.com/https:/apnews.com/projects/arizona-state-fan-poll-experience/
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Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP mobile app). AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball
