The Columbia women’s basketball team plays in an intimate 2,700-seat gym nestled in Manhattan that is nowhere to be found on the national sports landscape. Now the Lions and all the other starry-eyed dreamers in the NCAA Tournament are being serenaded just like former national champions UConn, South Carolina or Tennessee.
And this year, they’re all getting paid to be there.
The star treatment this year goes beyond charter flights, hotel accommodations and coveted swag. For the first time, women’s teams are getting an individual share of the profits, a perk men’s teams have enjoyed for years.
“It should be this way. We should be able to fly charter,” said UNC Greensboro coach Trina Patterson, whose Spartans will take a charter flight to play a game for the first time. “We are all playing in the same March Madness, the treatment for the men and women should be equal. We get a unit!”
That’s correct, each women’s team in the tournament will get a “unit” — money that is paid to conferences when one of its teams appears in the NCAA Tournament. The formula and definition of a unit can be complicated, but the bottom line is conferences will receive $113,000 for each game one of its women’s team plays in the tournament.
