FINAL PODCAST!!!!!

The podcast episode discusses the history of women's professional basketball in the U.S., focusing on the ADL (American Basketball League) as the precursor to the WNBA. The ADL offered higher salaries and faster gameplay than the WNBA, but the NBA, which created the WNBA, had more resources and support, leading to the ADL's eventual fadeout. The treatment of players in the WNBA at the time involved hyper-sexualization and a focus on appearance, but the league has since become more diverse and allows players to choose their own image. Hi, everyone. Welcome to my podcast. I'm your host, Sophie Phillips. In today's episode, we're going to talk about the beginning of women's professional basketball in the U.S. I'll also be discussing the treatment and experience that players face in the WNBA during the time compared to what it's like now. I'm sure everyone watched this year's women's Final Four and National Championship game, or even the 2024 WNBA draft. What made this year so interesting was the big-name players and coaches, as well as the insanely tough match-ups and storylines. It was also the first time a women's National Championship game has outperformed the men in viewership. The entire tournament, the women were breaking viewership records. But how did women's basketball get to this point? History is the key to understanding this growth, as we have learned in SMC 303 this year. Context is what gives the actions meaning. I want to take a much deeper look into the first year of the WNBA and acknowledge that part of women's basketball history that played such an important role in shaping the game into what it looks like today. I will also be joined by Tammy Reese, head women's basketball coach for the University of Rhode Island, later in the episode to hear about her own personal experiences. Something I actually just learned about was the ADL, or American Basketball League, for women. It's not talked about at all, but it was actually the original women's professional basketball league in the U.S. The first season began during the 1996-97 season and lasted through the 1997-98 season. It has a longer season than the WNBA, as it takes place in the winter, while the W takes place in the summer. The ADL also paid double the average salary that the WNBA did at the time. That was actually a really interesting find for me. So basically, the ADL was the precursor to the WNBA, which started in 1997. Ultimately, the WNBA just had a leg up on the ADL, since it was actually created and affiliated with the NBA. The NBA decided to create its own league for women's hoops and ultimately tried to fade out the ADL. Every WNBA game was played in an NBA arena, which really drew more people in. Nikki McCray is a former WNBA all-star and collegiate women's basketball coach. She just recently passed away last year, but she ended her career as an assistant coach for Rutgers University. In a Sports Illustrated article, McCray stated, I have to give props where props are due. I thought the ADL really stepped up with getting that league off the ground full-team ahead. It was very competitive. We had a lot of the top players from colleges playing, the Olympic team. It was just loaded with talent. Everywhere we went, we had really good fan support. People fell in love with our team. It was truly unbelievable. It was, at the time, what we needed. Valerie Still, a former Kentucky women's basketball player and one of McCray's teammates in ADL at the time, said, The ADL wasn't an afterthought. It was the forerunner to the WNBA. We were the main event. You have to pay respect to other leagues, because part of what happens with women's basketball is erasing our history. And if we don't know our history, we can't build on that. The ADL was clearly ahead of its time. Just like Still talked about, it's so important that we remember the past in order to grow for the future. But it's hard to learn from the past when we aren't even aware of it. I am a Division I women's basketball player, and I have never even heard of the ADL before this. That's a problem. Moving forward, as the WNBA gets started in 1997, many of the players believe that the ADL offered better, faster basketball. But there were rule changes in the WNBA, making it a big change for the players. The league had a 30-second shot clock compared to the ADL's 25, which causes a WNBA game to average 39 turnovers. That is a lot of turnovers. Another huge aspect that the NBA changed when creating the WNBA was salary. The WNBA got huge sponsors like Nike, so they decided to put more of its money into ads and marketing, while the ADL focused on giving all of its money to the players. A huge difference between the WNBA and the ADL was, of course, money. Since the NBA created the WNBA, they had the money to outperform the ADL. Julianna Smack, a fan that would attend both ADL and WNBA games at the time, stated in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from 1997, I just wish the ADL had all the money and marketing the WNBA has. The NBA basically tried to slowly make the ADL disappear because of this. Some crazy facts I found in that same Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from 1997 included this line. The NBA sells a league program at its games that includes a feature on the history of women's basketball. A detailed timeline reaches to the 1800s, but the ADL is conspicuously absent. Not one word. This really tells you everything you need to know about why you've never heard about the ADL before. The NBA didn't want anyone to know about it and made sure of it because they had the money and resources to do so. I am joined by the one and only Coach Tammy Reese. Coach Reese spent her four years of college at the University of Virginia, where she was an academic and athletic All-American, and later got drafted in the first round of the first ever WNBA draft, where she spent two years playing for the Utah Stars. She also made stops at Virginia, San Diego State, Cal State Fullerton, and Syracuse as an assistant coach. She is now the current head coach of the University of Rhode Island women's basketball team, where she has completely turned the program around after just completing her fifth year. Coach, that was a mouthful, but thank you for joining me. It's great to be with you, Soph. I'm excited. Can you describe your experience of getting drafted into the WNBA as the first ever draft class? I remember this day vividly because it checked the box off for me as something that I never thought I could attain. When I was in 6th grade, I did a goal shoot. It was like 125 goals. One of them was, no WNBA back then, to be drafted and play in the NBA. That was a goal. I didn't reach it, obviously, so this special day was in Syracuse, New Jersey, in the NBA studio, where they flew a bunch of us in. I was in the green room with Tina Thompson and the whole draft class, Sue Wicks and all the best of the best, and we were waiting for our names to be called. Parents, everyone was out, media, everyone was out. I was so nervous because I was hoping it would be called in the first round, not the 6th round or 8th round. I remember hearing the words, and the Utah Star select with the fifth pick overall, Tammy Reese. Then I got to walk on stage. It was like a dream. Val Ackerman, the commissioner, I love the jersey. I put the hat on, and I get to take the picture. For me, it fulfilled almost a whole life of work to get that to happen. That was one of my top three sports moments of all time. Next, let's talk about the treatment of the players. The WNBA sees that its target audience is families, so they, along with USA Women's Basketball, created a huge ad campaign with Sears in 1997. The USA Women's Basketball Sears ad literally shows some of the players in sports bras and underwear, some looking in the mirror, putting lipstick on, and then even some holding babies, portraying motherhood. The entire commercial is aimed to hyper-sexualize what a woman should look like and how the WNBA is connected with these values. Patrice, can you talk about the hyper-sexualization of female athletes at the time, especially in the WNBA and the overall view of female athletes at the time? I think when we first started the league, there's a big difference. That was 1997, and here we're in 2024, but when we first started the league, the league was very cognizant of your looks, what kind of product they were presenting on television, and the faces of the league. You saw a lot of women that spoke, number one, very well. Number two, they had a certain look to them. No tattoos, no gold teeth, no braids. Everyone that became the face of the league or was going to be represented in each market was what the league wanted. So you kind of were used for your body image and your looks, and we all knew it, and that's kind of how they presented the league. But now I feel like it's more diversified. We can choose now whether we're going to be hyper-sexualized with our Twitter accounts every day, with the brand we build. We have that opportunity now. Back in 1997, you did not have that opportunity. So, for example, if you see Angel Reese's TikTok and social media and she chooses to hyper-sexualize herself on her own media, that's a choice that's coming from within, and we have those choices now. Whether you want to do a print for the swimsuit issue or those things. And I feel like with how we've grown in women's lift and how we've grown as women, we have that choice of how we want to be presented and marketed and of that nature. But back in the day, you didn't have a choice. You were told because we were trying to break into the media market. In a 2016 Forbes article, it reads, All too often, sports magazines gravitated towards sexualizing or feminizing the athletes, believing that readers would not consume women's basketball coverage unless the players were portrayed in non-active poses. Thus, the stereotypical depictions in print media focused on appearance and framed WNBA players as sexy or pretty, which trivialized their athletic accomplishments and downgraded the seriousness of women's professional basketball. In that same article, I learned 2003 was the first time a WNBA player ever got to be on the front page and it was of Diana Taurasi. The catch? She's literally sitting on the floor holding both her knees to her chest while being completely naked. Or in 2009 when Candace Parker was on the cover of ESPN pregnant, showing her ties to motherhood as opposed to her basketball abilities. And lastly, in her textbook, A People's History of Sports in the United States, Lisa Leslie says, Although today women have more personal freedom on how they want to depict themselves, the media still hyper-sexualizes women in written articles or even social media posts. The issues in the WNBA aren't just limited to hyper-sexualizing women either. The opportunities for these women just aren't the same as it is for the men. There's the extreme salary gap, media coverage, or even not getting chartered flights. This list goes on and on. Coach Reese, do you see any other similarities or differences taking place for female athletes like that? Of course. We were still fighting Title IX and equal opportunity. If you were to look at television coverage, if you were to look at salaries, So why is all of this important? Like I talked about in the beginning of the episode, context is what gives the actions meaning. In order to understand what's happening in women's basketball right now, we need to understand the context from the past. This will also help guide us into shaping the future of women's basketball. Caitlin Clark has been a monumental piece for women's basketball right now, and she will only help grow the WNBA as well as other women's sports. In a recent interview preparing for the WNBA draft, Clark talks about the future of the WNBA and what still needs to change. That's where it can go. Obviously, the new media rights deal that can be negotiated can be life-changing for a lot of players in this league. It's going to be a huge deal. But also, expansion. I think expansion is really important. This is the most competitive league in the world. There's 144 spots, but really there's not 144 spots. It's less than that. I think the biggest thing is just continue to give it an opportunity. Continue to attract fans from the college game. I think that's the biggest thing we've seen in college. When people give it an opportunity and actually watch it, they continue to come back for more. It's the same thing with the WNBA. When you go and buy a ticket or turn on the TV, you see how good it is. Continue to attract fans in. They're going to see how amazing it is and how skilled these players are and how fun it is to support and watch. I think that's the big thing. That'll take it to a place that a lot of people probably can't even imagine. Clark highlights key areas for improvement in the W moving forward, but we can't forget about the past and how far women's basketball has come either. In an article from 1997 in the Associated Press Online, Val Ackerman, the WNBA commissioner from 1996 to 2004, stated, Think how special that is. Finally, for the first time, young girls can be like athletes and they don't have to be like Mike. They can be like Cheryl or Cynthia. Everyone who loves and supports women's basketball should know about the ABL and history of the WNBA because without it, how will change ever continue to happen? The many politics that are involved with the WNBA, like how the athletes are presented, plays a huge role in shaping the view of the WNBA to the public. The future will be based on how these politics are used. Thanks for listening to this week's episode.