Win or lose, Gary Blair, the head coach at Texas A&M, likes to complain that Kansas City is a lousy host for the Big 12 women's basketball tournament.
Last year, Texas A&M won the event, and Blair groused about the size of the crowds at Municipal Auditorium and the lack of media attention. After the Aggies lost in the final of this year's tournament, Blair was once again calling for the event to be played somewhere else.
Blair mocked sports fans who think women's basketball is about as appealing as "watching paint dry." He blamed "a lot of male egos" for the disparity in attendance between the women's tournament and the men's tournament at Sprint Center.
Blair clearly has been blessed with the grievance gene. But he made some sense when he suggested that Kansas City is a bad site for the women's event because the teams that go on the deepest runs tend to come from Texas and Oklahoma.
Relaying Blair's comments, The Kansas City Star noted that the best attended Big 12 women's tournaments were held in Oklahoma City or Dallas. The average crowd at the Muni last week was 4,250.
The men's and women's tournaments are scheduled to return to Kansas City in 2013 and 2014. Blair said he'd like to see the events uncoupled if the Sprint Center is going to continue to be the venue of choice for the men's tournament. He told reporters:
Let's try something because we have to grow our game. Don't be afraid. Don't piggyback on the men. Go get your own crowd, get your own following.
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Coach Blair has a real coaching job. And he is right. The Big XII women's AND men's basketball tournaments should be moved around. Like for a while the conference's football championship game alternated between San Antonio and St. Louis, and Houston and Arlington have been recent additions as hosts, so the end-of-season basketball tournaments should be moved around. Kansas City, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Houston, St. Louis.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that if the Texans leave the Big 12, it won't be over Women's Basketball.
And for the record, if a deal could be worked out where Dallas gets the women's tourney in perpetuity, and KC gets the men, well sign me up.
Biggest problem is that Texans hate to come to KC. He should be blasting his fan base, not the locals.
Still, if we don't keep Texans happy, they may leave the Big XII and then there is no tourney.
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