Congratulations to the University of Connecticut Women’s Basketball team(s). Your streak of 89 wins and counting is impressive and you deserve to be lauded and put in the record books. However, I have a slight issue. My problem is not with you or your coach or even your sport, it’s with the media that covers you.
To the media, will you please stop comparing apples to oranges in regard to all sporting feats? Brett Favre’s streak is not the same as Cal Ripken’s. Arguments can be made for both as to which is better and the same goes for the basketball win streak. The UCLA Men’s Basketball teams won 88 straight games and the UConn Women’s team has won 89 now. Yes, 89 is a larger number than 88. However, men’s basketball is not the same as women’s basketball. Sure, the rules are mostly the same and the object of the game is not changed, but there are plenty of differences. The biggest differences are in the style of play and in the athletes that allow for that style of play.
This year’s UConn team has players ranging in height from 5’4” to 6’5”. The 1974 UCLA team featured one of the greatest collegiate basketball players ever in Bill Walton, who was 6’11” and 210 pounds. From the limited research I just did, I couldn’t find a player shorter than 6’3” on that 1974 team. If there was some mystical dimension where these two teams would be able to play against each other, I would be very surprised if the women would score more than 20 points. The two teams are not comparable, so why should their streaks be?
As I said, the media should stop comparing apples to oranges or to be more genitally comparable – bananas to, um, warm-apple pies. I keep seeing articles and commentators saying that the UConn women have beaten the Men’s Basketball record. No, they haven’t, because they aren’t men. They are women; they have a Women’s Basketball record. If you want to compare the two, then just say basketball record. I have no problem with that.
It is not my intention of taking anything away from the Huskies, nor do I mean to belittle their accomplishments. They have achieved basketball greatness over the past 3 seasons. They deserve all of the attention and to get phone calls from the President and to go on the Late Show or Oprah for all I care. Well not Oprah, I don’t like her. Everything else though, go for it.
