On Basketball: Crossing The Great Football Divide

Left, Mike Bennett; Errol Anderson

Notre Dame's women's soccer team, left, made a name for itself by winning the 2010 national championship, and Texas A&M won the women's team title at the N.C.A.A. track and field championships for a second consecutive year in 2010. �

When the deserving athletes from Notre Dame and Texas A&M squared off on national television for a championship Tuesday night, the two words indelibly carved into the sporting psyches of these proud universities ? hut and hut ? were nowhere to be heard.

They last played a football game in 2001, with A&M winning, 24-3, but neither university has had much Bowl Championship Series success to bluster about (both did have winning seasons in 2010) since then.

The good news is that the administrative lords in South Bend, Ind., and College Station, Tex., have apparently determined that all is not lost when you fall behind the Southeastern Conference powers-that-be in the sport that simulates war.

To a certain extent, the new-age philosophy reasons: if you can?t beat ?em, then beat ?em at something else.

But before the Irish played the Aggies for the women?s national basketball championship at Conseco Fieldhouse, it wasn?t contextually snide to ask the principals if they thought the game as a news event would outweigh the positional updates that captivate the gridiron crowd on campus every spring.

Such is the religiosity of football that Gary Blair, the entertaining Aggies coach, had to say perhaps not, given how much of a 365-day operation and obsession football is online.

?The hits that go on in spring football and recruiting versus a men?s basketball story or equestrian or women?s basketball, it?s mindboggling,? he said. ?Right now, football is the No. 1 sport in the country as far as that. Let football do its thing while the rest of us are continuing to grow.?

Depending on one?s point of view or agenda, football is the 999-pound gorilla that consumes too much or sustains everything else ? and not just financially.

Here is Muffet McGraw, the Notre Dame coach, on how Big Brother has affected her distinguished program, which was bidding for its second national title Tuesday night:

?We love that Notre Dame is a huge football school and especially now when we?re on the upswing, it?s even more exciting. They?re in the newspaper all the time. We feel like it helps us.?

She added: ?Recruiting takes place mostly on a football weekend. We?re in the first row behind the end zone when the team comes in, the first ones that they see. I think if you don?t like football, you?re probably not going to come to Notre Dame.?

Is that really still the case, or can another one be made that football ? however much revenue it generates ? is the doddering old patriarch of an Irish sports family that has better results from other athletes who generally cast the university in a more positive light.

On the women?s side alone, McGraw?s team was trying to join its soccer and fencing counterparts as holders of a national title. Given the consistent high rankings of its men?s and women?s basketball teams, who says Notre Dame isn?t already more of a basketball school?

?You know what, it almost is this year, right?? said Skylar Diggins, the Irish?s talented point guard. ?The men had a great year. At one point, we were like: ?Are they ranked higher than us? Oh, no, we can?t have that.?�?

Diggins grew up in South Bend, played in three high school state finals at Conseco and agreed with McGraw that Notre Dame?s football fixation ? justified or at this point delusional ? is helpful. But that?s not why she went there.

?I knew that Notre Dame was a place that student-athletes could excel athletically and academically,? she said. ?Also being from South Bend I understood how big Hoosier basketball was.?

Blair didn?t have the luxury of basketball tradition to build on when he inherited a sorry A&M program in 2003. He did have a university president, Robert Gates, who empowered the athletic director, Bill Byrne, to invest in athletic programs across the board and the gender divide.

In an interview, Byrne reported that in addition to the exponential growth of the women?s basketball program, the Aggies women?s outdoor track and field and equestrian teams are ranked No. 1.

He gave credit to Gates, who is now the United States secretary of defense. ?Our philosophy became, no matter what Aggies team took the field, we want them to have the best opportunity to be champions,? Byrne said.

The greater wisdom of our sports-crazed culture is another discussion, but for the purpose of this one, put it this way: if Notre Dame and Texas A&M could invest heavily in women?s sports ? especially during years when their precious football teams were more Rudy than Rockne ? that would seem to be a better gender-equity metric than how many Conseco seats were left empty this Final Four or how much the ratings would sag without Connecticut and Stanford in the final.

?The Floridas of the world, the Texases of the world, have all been the complete package over the years,? Blair said. ?They?ve been good in every sport.?

No one is about to storm the town square and demand full-blown athletics democracy in College Station (or South Bend). But Sydney Carter, the Aggies? feisty guard, said she was encouraged this season when football players, especially the linebacker and likely top N.F.L. draft pick, Von Miller, showed up at her games.

However, she conceded, ?He?s been dating my sister pretty steadily.?

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