Prelude to a hot mess

Okay, I'd like to officially put ESPN on blast for its coverage of the 2011 NCAA women's basketball tournament. Because, I'm sorry, it sucks.

This year ESPN has really tried to zazz things up, apparently, but I'm not sure any of the following "enhancements" were good ideas:

The addition of a "social media report" for the Final Four. No, it did not enhance my enjoyment of Sunday night’s national semifinal to know that “buzz1108” thought the keys to a Notre Dame victory were rebounding, shooting, and defense (Are you sure, Buzz? Just those three?). Attention, all people who work in television news: reading people's random, inane tweets on the air is NOT news. (Nor is showing other people’s YouTube videos or sharing the "scientific" results of your online opinion poll, but I digress.)

By the way, if you ARE going to read tweets on air, may I suggest “NCAAWomensBKB,” which offered these actual tweets Sunday night:

What the heck? Where’s the “there’s 54 seconds left in the game” tweet? The "56 seconds left" tweet? I demand a second-by-second live tweeting of the game clock...and NO OTHER game information, dammit. Just observing the passage of time on Twitter is enough to give me a thrill.

Nothing can beat the excitement of tweets that are just hashtags. Fancy!

The appalling addition of halftime player interviews. No college athlete should ever be asked to do an interview DURING a contest. EVER. This is very inappropriate.

The extra-appalling addition of IN-GAME coach interviews. Seriously. In case you missed it, they interviewed the coaches DURING TIMEOUTS in the national semifinal games. What's next? Breaking to interview a player at the line before she shoots free throws? Oh, how I wish I was being sarcastic.

Yes, add these awesome features to ESPN's already-stellar non-biased coverage of women's basketball, and you have yourself an experience that definitely does not make you want to shove a pencil in your eyeball. The UConn-ification of ESPN is no new phenomenon, but Geno Auriemma's success with the Huskie women's basketball program has definitely elevated it to new heights.

Look, Maya Moore is an excellent basketball player. In another life I may have been a great admirer of Moore's, but life with ESPN has made me utterly recoil at the sound of her name. ESPN has clearly decided that people only care about women's basketball because of Moore (and maybe also Brittney Griner) and that it really isn't the network's responsibility to try and expand its viewers' horizons. I spent a full 20 minutes Sunday night listening to Doris Burke assure me that Connecticut wouldn't lose its semifinal game to Notre Dame because it was "Maya's time" and Maya was really "percolating" and that it was "all about Maya Moore, baby."

Well, guess what? It wasn't. Maya did her best and performed well, but there was another team on the court that played AS A TEAM and won the game while Maya was repeatedly forcing up shots. And while that winning team was celebrating its hard-earned victory on the court, ESPN chose instead to show a live on-court interview with the losing coach. Oh, and later broke into SportsCenter to show us that losing team's live press conference. I think the last time I saw anything like this was, well, when UConn lost to Stanford this season. A UConn loss is apparently always more interesting than any other team's victory -- even a victory over UConn.

Hey, I know there are not as many people interested in the women's tournament as there are in the men's tournament. Not even close. And hey, I'm not out to convert those people. But maybe ESPN should be. This year CBS utilized four networks to broadcast the men's championship. ESPN, which has more channels than the Panama Canal, mostly just used ESPN2 to cover the tournament's early rounds -- while typically using its flagship station to show "sports" that can be played while sucking down a Pall Mall. (Looking at you, World Series of Poker and PBA Tour.) In the early rounds, they brought us the "most compelling action" at any given time. Apparently my definition of compelling action doesn't align with ESPN's. The "most compelling action" was almost always a No. 1 seed thumping an opponent. Those of us who are fortunate enough to get ESPN3 on our computers at least had a semi-alternative to being so gosh darned compelled.

So why does ESPN pretend UConn is the only women's college basketball team that exists? Certainly the network's headquarters in the state has something to do with it, but if I take a less cynical perspective on this issue I will freely admit that the Huskies have been dominant. Certainly they have deserved extensive coverage, and probably even more coverage than any other team. But when ESPN only covers UConn, it does nothing but help perpetuate this "image problem" that women's college basketball lacks true parity and helps, frankly, make it come true.

I've been watching games all season, but I'm merely a casual fan. Yet I knew both UConn and Stanford were vulnerable this year -- so why didn't ESPN? And now, we have tonight's national championship game: the thing ESPN most feared -- one without UConn.

How are they going to sell this one? I guess we'll find out soon.