March 27, 2023 — Has the nationwide energy shifted right here, too?

With half of the nationwide Ultimate 4 in Division I girls’s basketball being determined yesterday, there’s a undeniable fact that blew my thoughts when it was broadcast.

For the primary time since 1985, neither Stanford, Connecticut, or Tennessee made the ultimate eight of the ladies’s match. That’s a tremendous determine, given the truth that there was some variety within the ranks of who wins the match. The winners have included the likes of Baylor, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Texas A&M, Purdue, Texas Tech, and Maryland. It hasn’t been the closed membership that girls’s lacrosse has been since 1991.

Nonetheless, the steady and glorious teaching of Tara VanDeveer, Geno Auriemma, and Pat Summitt have turned their respective universities into perennial powerhouses. The teaching staffs didn’t must do a lot with a view to appeal to prime expertise; they had been usually sought out by gamers bold sufficient to seek out the very best aggressive setting.

However as we’ve been seeing in lots of school sports activities, there have been a lot of modifications within the panorama — COVID-19, the presence of sports activities betting and NLI offers, and a few coaches who’ve determined to go away, citing lack of institutional assist.

It’s troubling to ponder; are we going to see an financial elite of sport, with faculties like Alabama, Clemson, Penn State, Notre Dame, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona State, Oregon, Michigan, and Stanford who’re in a position to elevate and spend thousands and thousands of {dollars} on intercollegiate sports activities in any and each endeavor?

Given what we’ve seen within the collegiate world, with some 900 universities in America closing since 2004, it wouldn’t be stunning if a scholarship arms race for prime gamers in each sport has already begun.