Let’s take a moment to appreciate the accomplishments of the University of Connecticut Women’s Basketball team. What they have done is unprecedented in women’s college hoops, and they definitely deserve the praise they have so well earned.

With that said, let’s now talk about why UConn’s unmatched domination is actually bad for the NCAA and women’s basketball as a whole.

Sports leagues are set up to follow a capitalistic model – sort of. Take the NFL for example; teams are owned by one person – by the fans, in the case of the Packers, and the owner invests money into the team to make economic returns.

The most important aspect of making these economic returns is to do well in the league. The more successful a team is on the field, the more they will sell tickets/merchandise/etc. and make money. According to Forbes, most NFL teams value around $2 billion dollars.

But if a team does not perform well in a particular season, or in several seasons as with some teams, they do not fold due to economic distress.

The Oakland Raiders have been struggling to make money for the past several years, but they do not fold and file for bankruptcy because they are sustained by their share of the NFL’s shared revenue. For the most part, teams successful on the field, like New England, don’t need as much of the shared league revenue to stay afloat.

One of the reasons the NFL is continuing to grow in popularity (even on an international scale) is because it is a very competitive league. The regular season is only 16 games long, and the playoffs are very cutthroat one-and-done competitions. Key injuries, common in American football, can also change the course of a team’s season, giving other teams the opportunity to steal the thunder.

Most importantly, the same team doesn’t continue to win the Super Bowl year after year!

Sure, many teams can be considered “Super Bowl contenders” for decades at a time, but the longest active Super Bowl winning streak still stands at only back-to-back championships – for multiple teams.

Compare this to the NBA where the most dominant team is consistently rewarded with championship after championship, year after year. The Boston Celtics won the NBA championship nine out of ten years in the 1960s. The Chicago Bulls dominated the 1990s, and the Lakers ruled the 2000s.

If you were a fan of any of these teams during these time periods, then you would naturally relish in how dominant your favorite team was, but what about the other teams?

Now, I’m not talking about the teams that don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell cough cough 76ers. I’m talking about the other teams that are considered “contenders,” and yet fall time and time again to the same dominant champions.

Now, before you write me off as a butt-hurt fan of teams that always get so close but lose when it counts the most (looking at you Notre Dame Women’s Basketball), hear me out.

These untouchably dominant teams behave like monopolies in that they absolutely stilt all competition. Competition is the very essence of capitalism, and is a very American principle. Without healthy competition, other fans only have three options.

1. Jump on the bandwagon of the successful team.

2. Watch your favorite team always lose when it matters most.

3. Stop watching altogether. After all, if your team doesn’t even have a chance to win it all every once in awhile, why bother?

I’m not talking about teams that win back-to-back championships. I’m not even talking about teams that win three straight titles. You know the teams I’m talking about: the teams that always win to the point where it becomes mind-numbingly stupid.

Now, the Notre Dame Women’s Basketball program is highly successful. They have made it to the Final Four and competed for the national championship several times over the last six years. But even when ND beats UConn in the regular season, they seem to fall apart come playoff time. Granted, if Notre Dame was the “dominant team” of today, I probably wouldn’t even be writing this article.

The same is true with fans of Alabama football, Bulls fans from the 1990s, etc. When your team is doing well, you’re naturally not going to complain, and that’s understandable. But, it should also be understood that this kind of domination is ultimately bad for the league as a whole.

Since these teams effectively have a monopoly on championships, the league becomes boring, and people stop watching. This is especially bad for NCAA Women’s sports.

Women’s sports have never been as widely popular as they are today. There is still a long way to go, but the last thing Division I Women’s Basketball needs is one dominant team always stifling the competition, and further driving other fans away from watching the sport.

But what should be done about it? We certainly don’t want to punish these successful teams for being successful. But at the same time, having one team win the championship all the time is not good for viewership, and by extension it’s bad for business in general.

There’s also not so much shared revenue within the NCAA to devote to the women’s basketball teams- but the problem isn’t even about financial distress. The problem is people becoming disinterested with the sport because the same team always wins.

It also creates a problem with recruitment. Obviously, college athletes want to be able to win championships and build up their resume for the pros, so it is only natural that many women basketball players would want to go to UConn for school. But what happens when UConn is getting the majority of recruits? Ideally, many of them will not get playing time.

Recognizing this, students will transfer to another school for a starting job, but they may not even be able to compete against the other teammates who have worked their way up off the bench since freshmen year for a place on the floor.

What happens is that UConn keeps only the best of the best, and the less than best- but still pretty good players- end up not being able to play college hoops. It the same principle our economy is facing today. A small portion of the population owns a very large portion of the wealth, and they just get wealthier from there, leaving everyone else to scrounge by in comparison.

What do you think? Is UConn too dominant? Is this dominance bad for women’s basketball as a business? Are there other teams from other leagues that are too dominant? What’s the best way to resolve this issue?