3 points about basketball and data

What was the AIAW and what does it have to do with AI and bias?

I wrote the other day, “If there isn’t a field for something, it’s unaddressable.” Looking at the scoring record broken this week by NCAA phenom Caitlyn Clark, you can see a good example of data failing to reflect reality. What we count, how we count, and why it counts or doesn’t are all factors in generating an official number:

1. On February 28, Iowa Hawkeyes point guard Caitlyn Clark, a senior out of Des Moines, sank a 3-point shot against the Minnesota Golden Gophers, bringing her college scoring total to 3,650 points, one point more than the career record set in 1981 by Lynette Woodard of the Kansas Jayhawks. It’s a historic milestone (and was followed hours later by Clark’s announcement that she would enter the WNBA draft rather than stay in the NCAA).
   
   But when it comes to the official NCAA record, Clark had already broken that two weeks before, when she surpassed the 3,257 career points scored by Kelsey Plum in 2017. Why the distinction between the two records? Because the NCAA doesn’t count Woodard’s numbers in its stats. The official total is missing highly relevant data.

2. When Woodard set that record, the Jayhawks were part of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), not the NCAA. In 1981, the NCAA had only just decided to establish a women’s basketball tournament. March 1982 actually saw two finals in women’s college basketball: the last AIAW final, held in Philadelphia (Rutgers won) and the first-ever NCAA women’s final, held in Norfolk (Louisiana Tech won).
   
   All of Lynette Woodard’s 3,649 baskets dropped through the hoop, but as far as the NCAA’s records are concerned, they remain invisible. Even though, as Caitlyn Clark’s coach said this week, Woodard’s record was “really the one that counts.” The facts are the facts, and the community has a consensus about which facts matter, but the official record is a standard based on policies, not just baskets.

3. Dig deeper into the history of the AIAW and you find a strikingly familiar story about how the establishment sets priorities, and how those who are underrepresented try to adapt. The NCAA was founded in 1906, focused on men’s sports, of course. The women’s athletics organizations born in that era were shaped by leaders like Senda Benson—the PE director of Smith College—who said in 1901, “The spirit of athletics in this country ... that one must win at any cost—that defeat is unspeakable disgrace, must be avoided in women’s sport.”¹ Contrasting views weave through the parallel evolutions of the NCAA and women’s sports groups prior to 1982, including different emphases on intra- versus intermural competition, attitudes about collegiate sports as a business, and, as you’d expect, huge disparities in available resources.
   
   The AIAW emerged as intercollegiate women’s sports gained traction during the 1960’s and ‘70s. It was run almost entirely by women athletes and educators. With the advent of Title IX, the NCAA was forced to incorporate women’s athletics—though resistance was strong, especially from educators who said the requirement to support women’s programs would drain resources from the men’s programs (many of which were income generators for their schools). And it wasn’t only NCAA members who resisted the move. Many of the women in the AIAW correctly predicted demotions for female leaders and a loss of autonomy for women’s sports if their programs were folded into the NCAA.
   
   Hall of Famer C. Vivian Stringer, who coached the Cheyney State Lady Wolves in that first NCAA women’s final, said in 2020, “I would have preferred to play in the AIAW with Texas and Rutgers, but the problem was that there, you would have to pay your own way. Cheyney was a poor school. We didn’t have any money. But my allegiance was to the AIAW, because they were the ones who sponsored tournaments all along. They have given recognition and rise to us.”

What’s the point of this history—besides how good it would be as a streaming series, like “Hidden Figures” meets “A League of Their Own?” When you double-click on a data discrepancy, you often find a policy gap born in structures of unequal power.

The policy reality that makes Lynette Woodard’s achievement invisible to the official record began in a value choice between men’s and women’s athletics. Missing data can reflect and perpetuate longstanding inequities.

For two good posts on addressing invisibilities like these, see Urban Institute, and Development Gateway. And if you want to go down the incredible rabbit hole that is the history of the AIAW, the NCAA and Title IX, I would start with this 2022 article by sportswriter William Rhoden, and also see here.

---

Notes and Afterthoughts

• If you think anything has changed, it was only 30 months ago that the NCAA permitted the phrase “March Madness” to be used for women’s hoops.

• Cheyney State remains the only HBCU to ever appear in an NCAA Tournament final, as far as I can tell.

• Tomorrow, March 3, Caitlyn Clark is likely to beat the men’s all-time collegiate scoring record, set 50 years ago by “Pistol” Pete Maravich of LSU.
  UPDATE: Clark becomes all-time high scorer in college basketball history.

1. Benjamin G. Rader, American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2004), 221. Quoted in Mattheessen, Clara. “A Brief Overview of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.” Fall 2015. Contemporary America, Eastern Illinois University, student paper.