A Championship Run—and a Reality Check

I’ve been thinking a lot about Emory University’s recent run to the Division III national championship final in men’s basketball, and the attention that came with it.

As an Emory alumna, I felt a real sense of pride watching it unfold. Playing in a national championship tournament is incredibly hard, and making it all the way to the championship game is truly a special accomplishment.  It gutted me when they lost with 0.6 seconds left in the game. 

At the same time, I found myself noticing that the amount of attention surrounding their run felt disproportionate to what I’ve seen for other teams at Emory. I spent years coaching and playing there, and was part of 14 national championship finals myself. I’ve seen what support and visibility can look like across different sports; too often, it depends on which sport you play.  

The coverage for men’s basketball was more robust than it was for the women’s swimming and diving team that competed for a national championship just two weeks earlier, and the women’s soccer team that played in the national championship game four months before that. Let’s not forget women’s golf, which won the whole tournament in May. When it came to the men’s basketball team, there were more social media posts, more conversations around campus, a watch party planned for the final, and even more television coverage. 

My suspicion about that inequity only deepened when I came across a LinkedIn post from an administrator at Emory University claiming that this men’s basketball team was “setting the standard” for Emory athletics. Truth be told, I might have become a bit unhinged for a moment when I saw that. Emory athletic teams have won 34 national championships, and at least that many runner-up finishes. I would argue that those programs set the standard long ago; men’s basketball is just catching up.

So it made me wonder what’s really driving the difference in attention and awareness. Is it simply that basketball is a favored sport? Is it that it’s a men’s sport? Or is it the combination of the two?

The reality is, this dynamic extends far beyond Emory. Men’s basketball (and football too, for that matter) didn’t just become dominant in the United States by chance. Their popularity is the result of a system that has reinforced them at every level—youth, high school, and pro— for decades.

From a young age, these are the sports most embedded in the education system. High school football games become central community events, especially in certain regions, while basketball is played year-round in gyms across the country. By the time students reach college, entire campuses are already conditioned to rally around these sports. Events like March Madness turn college basketball into a national spectacle, and college football Saturdays carry a similar cultural weight.

There is also a clear and visible pathway to the professional level. The progression from youth sports to high school to college, and ultimately to leagues like the NFL and NBA, gives people a clear sense of where this is all headed. When they watch, they’re not just watching a game; they’re watching players they believe they might see again at the highest level.

Both sports are also built for attention. Football provides high-stakes moments where each play carries weight, while basketball delivers constant action, scoring runs, and dramatic finishes. They translate easily to television and highlight culture, which makes them easier to consume and easier to promote.

At many colleges and universities, football becomes the center of school pride and identity.  At schools without football, basketball often fills that role and becomes the sport that represents the institution.

That’s what I see at Emory. Without football, men’s basketball has become the de facto marquee program. I’ve watched the same group of professors (many now retired) show up for men’s basketball for decades; they’ve been waiting  a long time to see this team make a deep championship run. 

In comparison, when I coached women’s tennis, we had a small—let’s say just one—community member who followed us year after year. The success was there, the results were there, but the attention was not. That visibility, or lack thereof, also changes how success feels. 

At a Division III school like Emory, where there isn’t the national spotlight that comes with Division I athletics, men’s basketball making a run to a national championship can feel like the whole  university has finally arrived on a bigger stage.

That feeling doesn’t seem to exist in quite the same way for other sports. Even when other teams reach the same level—or exceed it—the reaction is different. The pride is there, but the broader sense of validation doesn’t land the same way.

The difference in attention isn’t just about performance. It’s about perception—about which sports we’ve been conditioned to see as meaningful, as representative, and as worthy of defining an institution.  And that difference shows up everywhere, not just in media coverage, but in who shows up, who gets celebrated, and what gets talked about after the fact. Not coincidentally, the programs receiving less exposure are often the same ones now fighting for survival as more resources are directed toward football and basketball in this new revenue-sharing era.

In a lot of ways, none of this is new. Women’s sports have been navigating this imbalance for decades, which is exactly why Title IX exists. The need to ensure equitable access, attention, and resources didn’t come out of nowhere; it came from a long-standing reality that some sports, and some athletes, have always had to fight harder to be seen.

At the same time, it’s important to acknowledge that many smaller, non-revenue-generating athletic departments, including Emory, are not the primary culprits when it comes to ignoring Title IX regulations. The larger issue often lives at institutions where football and basketball drive the financial model.

Schools that position themselves as representing a more balanced, education-first model of college athletics have an opportunity—and I would argue a responsibility—to do this differently. They can be more intentional about how attention is shared, how success is defined, and how all programs are valued, not just in words, but in practice.

This run by men’s basketball was absolutely worth celebrating. There’s no question about that. But it should also push us to ask what we are really celebrating and why.  Why we’ve decided that this matters most. If anything, this moment should push us to celebrate what actually defines Emory athletics: the consistent, often overlooked, dominance of programs that have been setting the standard all along.