Chauvinist pigs

What a bunch of chauvinist pigs. How else to explain what's going on with college hoops these days?

The March Madness of the NCAA tournament is under way. Justifiably, everybody from the President and billionaires on down to street gangs and the homeless are talking about it. With no clear-cut favorite and all the upsets/bracket-busting that have already happened, this might be the wildest, most unpredictable shoot-em-up tournament there ever was.

But wait a minute. Aren't we forgetting something here? The ladies are playing too, you know.

While the boys have been getting massive media coverage, it appears the girls are once again getting the barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen treatment. Cable stations like TBS, TNT, TruTV, and network giant CBS are all covering mens' hoops. Program your DVR and channel surf at your leisure to catch it all. In the meantime, the entire goings on of the women's tournament have been shuffled off to a single secondary ESPN channel. So what happened to equal rights, Title IX, and all that? Though TV ratings are likely the Superman in the room, is this "madness" so pervasive that we temporarily lose sight of truth, justice, and the American way? Something is seriously wrong with this picture, no pun intended.

Yep. I suspect those dastardly chauvinist pigs are up to their old tricks again.

Thing is, the women's NCAA tournament seems to be just the opposite of the men's. While the guys continue their free-for-all, the gals, as in many other things in life, are much more organized.

#1 seeds in the men's tournament aren't necessarily a lock to reach the Final Four. Far from it. Gonzaga already went down, and Louisville, Kansas, and Indiana are going to face some mighty stiff competition before any can claim a berth in Atlanta. Anything can happen.

Conversely, the Big Four on the women's side seem to be a cut above all the other competition. That would be #1 seeds Baylor, Stanford, Notre Dame, and UConn. It's entirely possible, maybe even probable, that all will arrive safely in New Orleans as the Final Four. Upsets just don't happen as often with the women as they do with the men. They know their pecking order (CERTAINLY no pun intended, ahem). Sure, there are other quality teams in the field like Tennessee, Duke, Cal, and Kentucky, all #2's, and one of them might pull off an upset in the regional finals, but the odds are against it. Barring key injuries, the Big Four are just too good. Beyond that, the other 56 teams have little, if any, shot at getting to the Big Easy.

And if it plays out that way with the #1's, that's when the women would finally face their own little free-for-all.

Baylor's only lost one game all year -- to Stanford.
Stanford's only lost two games all year. One to UConn, and the other to Cal, the latter likely an anomaly.
UConn's lost four games. One to Baylor, and 3 to Notre Dame.
Notre Dame's only lost one game all year -- to Baylor as well.

So if A beat B, and B beat C, but C beat A, and D beat a couple of the others, etc --- then what do you have? Here's how the brackets work out ----

If the Big Four hold serve, then UConn gets Notre Dame again in the semis. The Irish seem to have the Huskies' number.

Baylor would square off again with Stanford, the only team to beat the Bears this year. I would look for Baylor to avenge that loss. At 6'8", Baylor freak and superstar Brittney Griner just keeps getting better and more dominant. Even so, either one of these teams would likely dispatch whoever survived the Notre Dame/UConn game to win the championship.

But in the end, what does it mean? The translation of all the above rhetoric is actually pretty simple. Yours truly has always been a big fan of equal rights.

No more worrying about opening up doors or pulling out seats for a lady. We're equal. They can do it themselves. Thank god, no more of that laying my coat across a puddle so a member of the fairer sex can waddle their size 10s somehow crammed into size 4 shoes over it when they could have walked around the puddle in the first place. Forget that. And the hair thing? Outta here. Hey, they knew it was going to rain. They should have brought their own umbrella. Why should I give mine up? Half the time I never got them back. It's like I signed them over to them or something. Umbrellas aren't cheap, you know? And how many women ever had the common decency to accompany the man home to wipe up the kitchen floor he would leave a water trail across, and wash his clothes -- which, after all, she was responsible for getting wet and soiled in the first place? Geez, what primitive times those were. Personally, I could never figure out how a woman could spent a couple hundred bucks on an ounce of perfume, but couldn't manage a Hamilton to help out with a dinner tab. Sure am glad those days are over.

Yep. We've come a long way baby.

But I'd still like to see more coverage of the ladies' basketball tournament.

Damn chauvinists.