Tammi Reiss Experience

The speaker talks about their excitement of having a picture taken with a jersey and hat. They mention the challenges female athletes faced in the past, such as fighting for equal opportunities and dealing with low salaries and limited TV coverage. They express gratitude for having a league in the United States and not having to go overseas for a career. The speaker mentions how salaries and TV coverage have improved for female athletes since then. They highlight the growth of women's basketball and how it has surpassed men's viewership in some instances, showing the progress of the game. Mal Ackerman, the commissioner, held up the jersey, and I put the hat on, I get to take the picture. And for me, it fulfilled almost a whole life of work to get that to happen. And so that was one of my top three sports moments of all time. Do you see any other similarities or differences taking place for female athletes like that? Of course, you know, back, we were still fighting Title IX and equal opportunity. If you were to look at television coverage, if you were to look at salaries, if you were to look at, we didn't have a union in the first couple years of the league. So where we were, we were just thankful we had a league. We were just thankful we could play in the United States. And you didn't have to leave your family and friends and go overseas to have a career, which all the four founders of women's basketball had to do. And so we were grateful. Some salaries were $8,000. Your 11th man on the team, if you got drafted in the last round, you were making eight grand for four months. The top salaries were like $60,000, where now they're in the 200,000s, obviously. The television coverage was very limited. And now look at the viewership and the coverage of women's basketball, whether it be WNBA or college. Even in college, one game was played in 1985 to about, I think, 82 to 85. One game was televised on CBS. There was no rest day in between. You played back-to-back. And so the changes and the growth in our game from the 80s to even now, we beat the men for the first time in the history. The Final Four, the championship game, the women had more viewership than the men. It has never happened. That's the growth of our game.