By moving selection show, women hope to catch buzz

	Texas A&M coach Gary Blair hopes that the women can grab the spotlight by moving the NCAA Selection Show to Monday. AP

Selection Monday? Not the catchiest of names.

But women's college basketball coaches are hoping it works better than it sounds and that the newest change in their game catches on.

They'll find out in March. For the first time, the women's NCAA tournament selection show will air on Monday instead of Sunday.

"I'm a traditionalist a little bit," Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly said. "Sunday seemed to be a great day, a day full of basketball. Hopefully we won't get lost in the shuffle on the discussion of the men's pairings on Monday, and we really have a chance to have our own day."

That's the goal. But when it comes down to it, the women will always be competing with the men for attention. It's impossible to avoid when both seasons coincide.

So why not give this a try?

"We felt that the natural progression for the development of the women's game was to have our own day," said Joni Comstock, chair of the Division I Women's Basketball Committee. "We felt women's basketball is to the point where we're going to stand on our own. Until we made that transition, we were always going to be locked into it being the second show on our normal Selection Sunday."

By having the Selection Show on Monday night, Comstock said the women are guaranteed a full hour of airtime. In previous years, the announcement of the women's bracket aired on ESPN after the Big 12 men's championship game and before the men's NCAA selection show on CBS. When the Big 12 game runs over, it cuts into the women's selection show.

"Having a full hour, if we can get people to tune in and watch it for an hour, they're going to be so excited," said Comstock, who is also the athletic director at American University.

Many fans should be accustomed to tuning in to the women's game on Mondays. It's been an option all season, since ESPN added women's games to its Big Monday lineup.

Five games have been shown on ESPN2 on Monday nights this season, which have drawn an average rating of 0.4, equivalent to 372,000 viewers. The men's games shown on ESPN in that same time slot averaged 1.1 million viewers. Still, the women's prime time draw is better than the 0.3 rating (251,000 people) last year's spotlighted weekend games received.

Of course, there are drawbacks to moving the Selection Show to Monday (other than a name that isn't as catchy). After all, people have gotten into the habit of watching the brackets revealed on Sunday evening. Fans of the women's game will have to make their travel plans a day later. And you run the risk of being even more overshadowed by the men's tournament, because people are analyzing and filling out their brackets.