NCAA appears to be ignoring blueprint for success its athletes drew this season

This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

Technically, South Carolina and Kansas won the NCAA's two basketball championships this week. On Sunday, Aliyah Boston and the Gamecocks outclassed the UConn Huskies 64-49 to win the women's title, and the following night the Jayhawks reeled in the fast-starting North Carolina Tar Heels for a 72-69 win in the men's title game.

Figuratively, we can say the NCAA itself won March Madness.

Big.

According to Deadline.com, the men's championship was the most-watched college basketball game in history with 18.1 million viewers. The number's not a shock, given the name-brand programs involved, but a mild surprise in an era of splintered TV audiences, and threats, both credible and made-up, to the NCAA's popularity.

The women's title game?

It attracted 4.85 million viewers, according to Deadline.com. That number represents an 18 per cent increase over last year, when organizers inadvertently put the women's tournament on everybody's radar by treating athletes like second-class sports citizens. Sunday night's TV audience was the biggest for a women's final since 2004.

Most people would take those numbers as evidence that the business of big-time college sports is still thriving. The transfer portal might have turned recruiting into a lower-stakes version of professional free agency, and COVID-19 still threatens to upend events, but the viewership numbers highlight the sustained appeal of a high-stakes game between historically powerful programs, and that women's basketball was a product in need of better placement.

And it all unfolded at the end of the first school year in which