I tune in when I run out of Her Hoops Stats content to listen to. So I admit I’m not a regular listener, but I think my feedback can still help make this podcast better. I want to like this podcast more than I actually find myself able to like it. If you’re a women’s college basketball fan, you can get the same insights and more from Her Hoops, whose hosts are also more careful and logical in their analysis than this podcast sometimes is. I hate to say it, but sometimes I feel like this podcast is more committed to making women’s sports taste saccharin sweet and nourishing the flames of social media hype for the women’s game than providing accurate analysis of the women’s sports that fans already love, fans who don’t need the game to be sold to them. Apologists for women’s sports are everywhere; I am one of them. We need more apologists, but, to extend the metaphor, podcasts are for the church choir. I want experts employed by a sports media mega-company to teach me new things, to paint a more complex picture, to dig into the nuance. If something is awesome—and women’s college basketball is awesome!—, you don’t have to choose between nuanced discussion and drawing fans in. You’re a better apologist if you don’t sacrifice the nuance, because people will be more inclined to trust you that it’s awesome.
Also, on a more personal note, every time I tune in, I can’t help but think that the hosts want to see South Carolina women’s basketball fail. And don’t think it’s that they’re picking against us in the Final Four, it’s the way they’ve talked about our team and our program in general over the past couple years. I listen to a lot of sports podcasts in the CBS family, and I never perceive that in other cases, even when it’s one of my teams on the receiving end of criticism or being dominant. I want more parity in the sport too, but just please try not to cover us in a less favorable way than other teams just because we’re at the top of the sport right now. We won’t always be. I listened to the latest pod a couple hours ago, and I don’t remember the hosts mentioning a single South Carolina player’s name in the Final Four preview. A Final Four preview merits a level of depth that includes not one but multiple players on each team involved. I feel like this podcast consistently reduces us to “South Carolina’s depth” with little further comment. Even from the pod after we won the title last year, I found myself wanting more substance about the team that won the title. I know how exhausting it can be for fans to have a UConn dominate the sport for years, but dynasties and dominant teams still are filled with interesting stories, stats, and nuggets. There’s an opportunity now to tell the stories of the dynasties in women’s college basketball before they’re a thing of the past.
I understand the challenges that these hosts have to face covering all of the women’s sports that garner attention in the US market. Being a generalist has got to be hard, and the other sports podcasts I listen to focus only on one sport. It would be nice if CBS would invest the resources necessary to cover each women’s sport specifically. But, barring that, I just don’t see myself tuning in very often when I have other, more informative options.
To the hosts: I’m sorry. But I believe in your ability to improve! I say all this because I want to make this a regular part of my podcast rotation some day! So I’ll probably keep checking in from time to time. Thanks for doing what you do.
