#78

With their sixth title since 1995 tonight, the UConn Huskies women's bball team is now only 10 wins away from tying the legendary 1970s UCLA Bruins men's bball record of 88-consecutive wins.

March Madness: Pie vs. Cake

Yeah, yeah, it's Final Four weekend. Whatever. Maybe Duke wins another title and everyone in college basketball fandom who didn't go to Duke or grow up near Duke or date someone who went to Duke or have a law school roommate went to Duke or has Reggie Love as a bodyman will be pissed/irritated/generally unconcerned. Or maybe Duke loses, and only those people listed previously are heartbroken, and the rest of us who had our teams get prematurely destroyed in the first round will laugh and say, "Now you know how it feels."

But insofar as "March Madness" perversely enters into April (I know, madness!), it isn't all just about men's basketball, or even the Huskies pursuit of 88 consecutive victories (they can only get to 78 by winning their sixth title on Tuesday, so you'll have to hold your breath until next season). No, my dear friends, March Madness is about much more. It is about the epic struggle between good and evil. Yes, it is about a clash of the titans that does not involve CG giant scorpions and an embarrassingly ethereal Zeus portrayed by Qui-Jon Ginn... I mean Ra's Al Ghul... I mean Liam Neeson. It is about:

Pie versus Cake.

"But hsuper," you complain, "This has nothing to do with sports? Why are you blogging this?" To which I reply with this video, which demonstrates nothing, but may make you hungry:

One Shining Moment: March Madness, Cakes vs. Pies from Jezebel on Vimeo.

Voting concludes Monday 4/5 at 1:55pm EST.

Go Cheesecake!

Does Domination of A Sport Help or Hurt Popularity?

The L.A. Times profiled the UConn Huskies Women's Basketball team, the overall top seeded team in the women's Final Four and three games away from their 6th national championship in 15 years. They are also 13 games away from tying the all-time winning streak record, established by John Wooden's UCLA Men's Basketball team.

The story poses and interesting question: does too much winning hurt a sport's popularity?

Are the Huskies good enough to be considered America's most dominant team? "They're making a case for consideration," Burke said.

But their success raises another question: Are all those blowout victories hurting a women's game that must fight for respect and attention?

Even [TV sports analyst Billy] Packer, who admires their style, concedes: "To be quite honest with you, because so many of the teams they play have no opportunity to be competitive, I don't watch many of their games."

[UConn Coach Geno] Auriemma offers a different perspective. He talks about Microsoft's dominance of the computer software market.

"Eventually, other people have to catch up," he says. "You either compete or get out, so everyone will compete."

It's hard to think of teams that have been as dominant in recent history, but I'd tend to think that assigning low-popularity to over-dominance is a pretty flawed claim. It's not like people stopped watching the NBA during the Bull's two Jordan-led three-peats from 1990-93 and 1995-98. And the dominance of Tiger Woods clearly single-handedly exploded the popularity of golf-as-spectator-sport.