Beth Bass, CEO of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, took time recently to discuss the state of women’s college basketball. Bass and her coaching constituency are key stakeholders in trying to improve the sport and enhance the experience of women’s basketball student-athletes.

Q  The NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Discussion Group, chaired by Association President Myles Brand, developed a marketing program that will award grants from $15,000 to $100,000 for Division I institutions and conferences to promote the game and increase attendance at Division I games. How has that program affected the sport?

“I want to applaud President Brand for starting this discussion group for basketball. It put the game’s stakeholders around the table to determine what we can do to move the needle in women’s basketball. It was high-altitude, big-picture thinking out of the box. He allowed coaches, administrators, NCAA staff, and corporate and media partners to be a part of the discussion. The grant program has been incredibly successful, and we received about 70 proposals from campuses. That has created excitement on campus. That’s where it has to start. You have to make sure you have buy-in on your campus before you take it to the community and expand the fan base.”

Q  Speaking of fan base, other initiatives this year have targeted increased attendance, including the NCAA “Pack the House Challenge” that attracted more than 592,000 people to Division I games this year. Talk about some of those efforts.

“We’ve got several exciting initiatives. One is the NCAA working with Hawkeye Sports and Entertainment to increase the attendance in the preliminary rounds of the NCAA tournament. Pack the House is another one. You might be under a rock if you haven’t heard of the WBCA’s Think Pink initiative that centered on North Carolina State coach Kay Yow’s battle with cancer. Some campuses combined Pack the House and Think Pink. We need to consider any way we can to become more main stream, whether it is through Pack the House initiatives or getting into the lifestyle of the fan to find out what makes them want to attend our games. Whatever it takes to get new fans to come see our product on the floor, I am convinced, and so are a lot of people, that once you get them in the house they will keep coming back. Those are all good dashboard indicators of success.”

Q  You took part in women’s mock selections in February. What were your impressions of that exercise?

“Everybody thinks that NCAA committees and even WBCA committees are like the Wizard of Oz. You close the curtain and people wonder who’s pulling the levers. Anytime you can add transparency and education to any process, it is a positive. Our coaches and our membership were included in the mock selections. Theresa Grentz (formerly of Illinois), Joe Ciampi (formerly of Auburn), Marsha Sharp (former WBCA president coach of Texas Tech) and I were able to participate. You could tell the light bulbs were going off in people’s heads. The resources and tools that are used to tee up the committee with information are phenomenal. It is everybody’s responsibility – from the media representatives to the coaches – to go out and educate others on exactly what goes on and dispel some of the conspiracy theories or rumors about how things happen. Anytime you get everybody in the room and add transparency to the process, it is only helpful.”

Q  Is that something you can take back to your membership, and will the message carry more weight coming from you?

“I hope so. I left there saying, ‘Now the education process should begin.’ At our WBCA board of directors meeting last August, we came up with a subcommittee on bracketing, selection and seeding. Bonnie Hendrickson from Kansas chaired it. We delved into it looking at the principles and procedures of the process. Marsha Sharp is actually the spokesperson for the subcommittee, and she goes to the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee to ask questions. Now, Marsha Sharp has a better understanding. It is different when you sit in there sequestered. You see how it unfolds. Marsha will be better prepared to talk to our membership when questions arise.”

Q  The number of women coaching women’s teams is dwindling. Is that a concern?

“It’s not just women’s basketball. The numbers are decreasing across all of women’s sports. That is concerning. In women’s basketball, we definitely need to figure out how to increase that population of assistant coaches who are ready to move up. We’ve had success with our So You Want to be a Coach program. Young minority coaches like Jolette Law (Illinois), Coquese Washington (Penn State) and Tia Jackson (Washington) have all gone through that program and through the Black Coaches and Administrators Achieving Coaching Excellence program. We are seeing such positives with minorities in Division I programs. It’s a great template for us to get assistant coaches into head coaching jobs. The decrease in women coaches is concerning, but we do have some real success with some programs that could be broadened and expanded.”

Q  The Division I Women’s Basketball Championship is a high-profile event. Among the benefits of that success is that coaches in women’s basketball are beginning to receive bigger contracts. Can that influence someone to enter coaching or does it add pressure and detract from work/life balance?

“I get this question a lot. Sometimes the devil is at the bottom of the wishing well. You have to be careful what you pray for. With the success in women’s basketball, the salaries are getting better. I do think it’s going to be a draw for young women to get into coaching. The flipside is more pressure comes with it. If you are getting those kinds of salaries, you have to produce. Like on the men’s side, you see a lot more transitions going on if you don’t produce. There are good sides and bad sides to the success story.”

Q  If you were the czar of the Division I women’s basketball, what would you enhance or change?

“Something as simple as putting the names on the backs of jerseys would help build stories and features. I watch a lot of women’s basketball, and it is hard for me to know these student-athletes. We’re doing all these initiatives like Pack the House and the grant programs. For our student-athletes to be big stories in the media, it would help to have the names on the backs of their jerseys. Whatever we can do for the student-athlete experience to get fans in the arenas would help. There is a lot we can do behind the scenes, and I am convinced that we get a disconnect in the media. Whether it is print beat writers or Webcasters, we just don’t have enough people covering women’s basketball. We’ve got great stories, but we are having disconnects in the media.”