Much can be said about the UConn men's program and how unlikely their title run might have seemed. The men's tournament is usually filled with more upsets, more parity, more uncertainty, more chaos! To put things in perspective, according to Yahoo Sports, of the millions of brackets filled out this year, only about 1% had UConn in the Final Four alone, never mind in and winning the final. Similarly, only 2.3% picked the losing Kentucky to be in the Final Four as well. This speaks to the unpredictable nature of the NCAA men's tournament. To some degree, it certainly is madness in March. Not to the fullest, of course. Of the sixty four teams entering the tournament, one can reasonably assume about forty to fifty of those teams aren't really going to win. They might advance further than expected, but it isn't very often that a truly small or unlikely team will go far. It's generally considered a success for an underdog to make it to the Sweet 16, meaning those 11-15 seeds that occasionally advance win all of two games before being unceremoniously knocked out by the truly competitive teams.
From this standpoint, it makes sense on a vague level, why the men's tournament draws more attention. It appears to be more competitive. Sports fans are a bit strange sometimes. We generally love to see dominant players and teams, but if they become too successful, we're quick to hate them. People generally dislike those teams that seem to have a stranglehold on the sport. Take, for instance, the New York Yankees, who won four World Series in the span of five years in the late '90s. The Yankees reputation quite literally precedes them though, as most of their twenty-seven pennants occurred well before most Yankees haters were even born. They've gone through stretches winning three in a row, four in a row, and from 1949 to 1953, they won five in a row! It's been a long time since the Yankees had that kind of grip on the Major Leagues, however. Similarly, the Boston Celtics won eleven NBA championships in the span of thirteen years from 1957 to 1969. They only missed the finals once in 1967 and lost the finals in 1958. The hate for the Celtics has largely vanished with their falling off into a state of disarray for the greater part of the last two decades.
There have been a few sports dynasties in recent years. No team in the salary cap era of the NFL has ever been as successful as the New England Patriots, appearing in five Super Bowls while winning three, making the playoffs in twelve of the past fourteen years, competing in eight AFC championship games, and posting just one losing season in the past fifteen years (notably, Bill Belichick's first year). Still, though they clearly own the AFC East division, they haven't quite owned the NFL. Since winning their last Super Bowl in 2004, they haven't won it since. That's nearly a decade without a championship win.
Another modern age dynasty from a different sport would be the Los Angeles Lakers, who renewed their dominant role in the NBA after years of lackluster seasons. In the eleven years from 2000 to 2010, they won five NBA titles while appearing in an additional two (read: they went to the finals seven out of eleven times). The Spurs might have been considered something of a dynasty for a bit their in the early aughts, but they lacked the staying power that the Lakers had. Certainly if one were to select a team to be the dynasty of the aughts in the NBA, there's no question it's the Lakers.
What impresses me the most about the UConn women's usually quiet ride to the title is the complete dominance with which they hold over the competition. Sure, the women's tournament is often a bit more predictable than the men's, but it's just as worthy to watch given UConn's pure superiority. If a fan watches sports to watch the best, there are few better in modern sports than the UConn women's team. Consider that of the past fifteen tournaments, UConn has come out on top eight times (more than half of them). It's more than that though. Most of the games weren't even close. In the past six years, UConn has won four championships in blowout fashions. Sure, one game was won by six points, but the women won four games by a total of 82 points (winning by an average of 20 points per game).
The competition hasn't been horrible either. This year, UConn blew out a very good Notre Dame squad that was 37-0 on the season and a similarly ranked one-seed. Thing is, no one was even in the same ballpark as UConn. They won their six tournament games by a total margin of 154 points, beating opponents by an average of 25.7 points per game! You don't see that kind of dominance anywhere else, including the men's tournament.
I know few take women's sports seriously for some reason or another. I understand that many find women's basketball to be something of a joke. Still, in all of sports, few programs have been as dominating as the UConn women's basketball team. If you want to see the best of the best, you watch UConn women's team every year. They don't win every year, but they are as close to owning the competition as any sports organization on any level.
