SCALPER'S NIGHTMARE: OVC FINDS EMPTY ARENAS FOR WOMEN

The Ohio Valley Conference's experiment of doing away with playing only doubleheader games for its men's and women's basketball teams has apparently not worked out very well.

In an attempt to give the women's programs somewhat equal billing with the men's programs, the OVC has scheduled about half of its women's league games on week nights when the men are not playing. Saturdays are still reserved for both the women and men.

Previously, the league had scheduled solely doubleheader affairs, with the women generally playing before the men on the same night.

And this change has meant a lot of empty seats around the league -- along with various other problems -- on the nights when only the women are playing.

"It was very well intentioned, but it really just has not worked out very well," said OVC assistant commissioner Rob Washburn. "It's hurt attendance on the women's side. Women's teams just aren't drawing very well when they play on their own nights.

"It's also really stretched the staffs at the various schools. We've had some weeks where schools had games Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. That means sports information workers, concession workers, ticket takers, they all have to be there every night."

It all started when some fans around the league complained they couldn't make it to women's games, which often started before 5:30 p.m.

The U.S. Office of Civil Rights intervened at several schools and ruled the early start times were unfair to women's teams. It told those schools to correct the problem.

So the OVC voted in August to schedule many of its men's and women's games on different week nights, with Saturdays remaining doubleheader nights.

"What prompted this schedule is that, on a lot of campuses, the civil rights office told them they could not start before a certain time," Washburn said. "The main thing is to make everything equal. We could have kept the doubleheaders, but only if we started the games later and only if the women would play before the men half the time and after the men half the time.

"Last year, after the civil rights group intervened, we had some schools starting games at 6:15 and then the men wouldn't tip off until 8:30 or so. That's not good for families with children who were getting home too late and it's not good for our media coverage. Newspapers on the east coast probably couldn't even get our scores in."

Added Washburn, "What we came up with was this schedule and it was approved by the (league's) athletic directors."

Typically, with a couple of exceptions, women's games around the OVC do not draw well. But when the women play before the men, by the second half, there are generally quite a few fans in the stands, most of them having arrived early for the men's game.

For example: Southeast Missouri State University's women have played seven OVC home games so far this year, four on Saturday prior to the men and three on week nights when the men weren't playing. The average attendance for those Saturday games is 1,046 (although there weren't that many fans on hand when the games started, official attendance counts can be taken as late as halftime or early in the second half). But the average attendance for the games on week nights is 435.

Overall, Southeast's women are averaging 672 fans per home game this year, with that figure being tilted upward by those Saturday contests. Last year, when all the OVC games were played prior to the men, the Otahkians' average attendance was 1,022.

Washburn said the league's athletic directors will meet again later in the year to discuss the problem. But he admits there is no easy solution.

"A lot of things have to go into it. It's really a difficult situation," he said. "We can go back to later starting times, or alternate with the women playing first half the time and the men playing first half the time. It all goes back to equal opportunity.

"But we sure don't want to happen what happened Saturday."

On Saturday, almost 4,000 fans watched the Middle Tennessee State men play Southeast but not even 200 stayed to watch the women's game afterward.