ALTOONA, Pa. -- Does anybody care about Penn State women's basketball? And by that, I mean, does it even bother anybody anymore that the Lady Lions have been so bad for a while now that they've become essentially irrelevant in their sport?
The reality, plus the complete and total apathy, are incredibly sad, given the program's rich history and tradition.
Furthermore, did you know: The women's basketball program at Penn State typically loses anywhere from $3 million to $5 million annually, based on public financials released over the years?
That's right. The program loses millions off the court, while also losing the vast majority of its Big Ten games on the court.
By the way, for those wondering, Penn State men's basketball profits about $4 million a year, thanks to TV contracts. They just don't have lucrative TV deals on the women's side.
Maybe if you've studied women's college basketball a great deal you already knew about these massive losses, but my guess is the average sports fan probably had no clue.
That's where we'll start this week's Friday top 5.
1. The financially sad state of affairs in women's college basketball -- and not just at Penn State
So, here's what happened: I wrote in last week's Friday top 5 about how Penn State needed to keep feeding the cash cow that is the football program, which pays for pretty much the entire athletic department.
This started several conversations -- both in comments sections here and with readers contacting me personally -- about the financial realities of college athletics. In particular, there have been a lot of comments over the past week about Title IX and how to navigate that if college football breaks off into its own entity, which I suggested last week.
I had been planning to write a piece about how Penn State women's basketball has been really bad for years now (more on the specifics in a bit), all the while losing from $3 million to $5 million each year. So, this seemed like a good time to tie a lot of this stuff together.
The program is and pretty much always has been an enormous drain on the overall financials of the athletic department. It at least was acceptable, however, in a lot of ways to deal with the financial hardships when Penn State had a quality women's basketball program.
But when the product itself is bad -- and nobody really even seems to care all that much about it -- then it makes for an even bigger pill to swallow when you find out the program is a drain that loses millions and millions and millions of dollars.
OK, but ...
This is not in any way just a Penn State problem.
I knew women's college basketball programs all across the country struggled financially. But after researching more about it for a few hours, it's clear the situation in the sport is far worse than the average sports fan would imagine.
Even places like UConn lose upwards of $3 million per year, and they've won 11 national titles.
Do even basic-level research, and you'll find that teams everywhere lose lots of money, along with the sport as a whole. Louisville went to the Final Four a few years back and still lost $3.8 million. Here's a story from 2016 that indicated women's college basketball loses $14 million a year overall on the NCAA level.
To be clear, let me state that I'm NOT here to argue that female athletes in college don't deserve every opportunity to participate and succeed in sports.
But I am here to talk about the common sense aspect of it -- or in this discussion, the common cents.
The way Title IX works, colleges are supposed to offer equal opportunities for male and female athletes. But it's absurd that the largest women's sport in this country is one that doesn't even come close to being able to support itself, so it has to be supported by either football, at a place like Penn State, or by other funds from within a given university.
This is the law. And it's a law that's been around for 50 years.
If the law were around in the business world, it would have sunk businesses all over the country, because forcing them to spend vast amounts of money on things that cannot and probably never will do anything but lose money is, well, ridiculous.
But that's how the model works in college athletics.
And the model, in so many ways, seems broken beyond repair.
When you have an entity that is so big such as college football, and it has to pay for everything else in athletic departments, the resulting byproduct is an incredibly unbalanced and unsustainable way of doing business.
Let me put it in the simplest terms: If Penn State Athletics has $100 to spend, why on earth should it spend it on anything other than football? That's the program that makes more than $50 million profit in normal times, so the money should be invested there, not thrown into programs that lose enormous amounts of money.
I'm beating my head up against a wall here, because I realize I'm arguing against laws that have been around for decades. But I just cannot for the life of me understand how these laws make any sense or will continue to make sense as we go deeper and deeper into a world where college football money continues to reach absurd levels.
As I've been saying, college football needs to break off and be its own entity, with its own financial structure to pay coaches, pay players, pay everybody involved. Everybody involved in football, that is.
But once this happens, it would exacerbate the problems that exist in women's basketball, because all of a sudden, athletic departments everywhere would no longer have the football funds to help cover expenses for other programs that lose money.
I don't want women's basketball to fail. But if you're, say, at Penn State, and the women's team is only winning five or six conference games a year and losing $3 million, then how can all that money be justified?
It can't. It just simply can't. With the lone possible exception being that it's allowed by a 50-year-old law that means well but can only exist because the entire industry of college athletics takes advantage of football programs everywhere.
2. The Penn State women's basketball program has become a complete afterthought
I don't say this to be mean. I don't say this to poke fun. I don't say this to stir up controversy.
I say it as a matter of fact.
I am in contact with many people who love just about everything regarding Penn State sports, and pretty much all of them have grown completely apathetic about the women's basketball program. They're so fed up by it all that they simply don't pay attention to it and don't have the energy to even complain about it.
Obviously, there are passionate fans who do care deeply about the program and want very badly for it to succeed. And it's these people I truly feel badly for, because there doesn't seem to be much light at the end of the tunnel for them.
Kind of like with Pirates fans.
Penn State used to be good, making the NCAA Tournament most years in the '80s, '90s and early 2000s. The Lady Lions went to the Final Four in 2000 and the Elite Eight in 2004 under Rene Portland.
Carolyn Kieger took over a very difficult situation in 2019 after Coquese Washington was fired. Washington, who won three straight Big Ten titles from 2012-14, saw the program go downhill and went 5-13 in the Big Ten her final year.
Kieger went 1-17 in the league her first year, then 6-13 in year two and 5-13 last season.
This year, the Lady Lions are 4-13 and in 12th place out of 14 teams with one game to play. They just lost their last game at Purdue by 24 points (86-62), and that's a Purdue team that Penn State beat by 10 earlier this season.
Penn State started the season 7-0 thanks in large part to a very favorable schedule, and the team is 13-15 overall. The Lady Lions are 89th in the NCAA NET rankings, which isn't all that bad, but they're 0-10 in Quad 1 games, meaning they haven't beaten anybody really good all season.
Here's the bad news.
Penn State is 6-15 since its strong start. The Lady Lions have lost five in a row, seven of eight and 10 out of 12. Things are getting worse, not better, as the season winds down. Kieger hasn't been able to find the right answers in year four to continue turning things around in the program.
Should she be fired after this season? Look, this is where I'll draw a line and admit that I don't really know all the ins and outs of what's going on in the program and if she's doing everything right behind the scenes.
I'm not going to go on and on here diving into a whole bunch of scenarios and what have you, because the bottom line is that there's really no reason to even care all that much about what's going on in the program.
All you need to know is that the team loses a lot of games while also losing a lot of money, and there's not much reason to believe either of those will change any time soon.
3. If you're still reading this ... here's a special note for you:
Thank you!
Look, I realize NOBODY comes here to read about Penn State women's basketball. Football is king, some of you care about basketball and wrestling, and you have little desire to read about a women's hoops program that is way, way down.
But if you actually did read everything I wrote in No. 1 above, you can see how ALL of this stuff does really kind of tie into football and the entire athletic program.
Penn State only has so much money, it STILL needs to spend more on football to make the program as competitive as possible, and so examining how every dollar is spent in the athletic department is a necessary evil to the end goal for football.
4. Men's basketball is back on the bubble, thanks to Jalen Pickett
The guy is just carrying the program on his back down the stretch this season.
Pickett scored Penn State's final 14 points in Thursday night's 75-71 victory over Ohio State in Columbus. The Lions won their third straight game, and they're now 8-9 in the Big Ten with three games left in the regular season.
Joe Lunardi had Penn State as his eighth team out in Thursday's bracketology for ESPN. Maybe the Lions move up a spot thanks to the win, even though Ohio State is terrible (3-14 in Big Ten).
Penn State is home against Rutgers, at Northwestern and home against Maryland down the stretch. Win all three, that would be 11-9 in the Big Ten with a six-game winning streak, and that would get the Lions in the NCAA Tournament. As long as they win at least one game in the Big Ten tourney.
What about a 10-10 record? Well, it depends on how they get there.
If Penn State loses at, say, Northwestern, that would cost the team a chance at an impressive resume-boosting victory. But if the Lions win that one at Northwestern, they might be able to afford to lose to either Rutgers or Maryland.
Regardless, at 10-10, the Lions probably would have to win two games in the Big Ten Tournament. Anything short of that, and they could be susceptible to all kinds of chaos that could take place during conference tournaments.
5. Looking ahead
Be sure to catch my We Are podcast on Sunday morning for a lengthy segment discussing the Penn State wrestling team with Centre Daily Times beat writer Nate Cobler. Also, my Memory Lane podcast next week will examine the hiring of Cael Sanderson in 2009 and how he turned Penn State into a dynasty.
And finally ...
There's a certain rumor going around about a certain well-known Penn State football player. We don't deal with rumors in the media and have to wait until something is confirmed to report it. So far, I've had no one confirm it.
If it does get confirmed at some point, I'll report it and we'll address how it could impact things going forward. Until then, we'll just have to wait and see what information comes out.
