Job one is regional attendance

When it comes to women's basketball, the NCAA has one main job: Fix the regionals.

The Final Four works great. It's sold out in days, if not hours, after it's announced. It's a big event, a convention for fans and those in the business. It's the foundation for the rest of the tournament to build on.

But so far, not another brick has been laid -- unless of course you count the attendance figures at the four neutral-site regionals. And even when the ticket sales are adequate, the arena is still often empty when the home team, or the team closest to home, isn't playing.

This is more than a financial problem, however (though that can't be passed over with a wave of the hand). No one likes to eat in an empty restaurant, and when ESPN shows highlights that highlight thousands fans disguised as cupholders, it doesn't help the game. It makes it all too easy for non-fans to disregard the sport; it makes ESPN question its investment; and it's a not-to-be-ignored reminder that there the relentless cheerleading about the growth of the game may just be hollow at the core.

So what's to be done? It's beyond the power of the NCAA to cure the Our Girls' Syndrome, which impels fans of women's basketball to care only for their teams and their girls, and pretty much ignore everyone else. This seems to be locked into the DNA of those who buy tickets, and transforming Baylor fans, say, into fans of women's basketball appears to be process that may take a couple generations. But even though OGS will be an issue for the foreseeable future, that's no excuse for continuing to do the things that haven't worked before, and aren't going to work next season, or the season after that.

To begin with, marketing won't get it done. The NCAA went to pre-determined sites in the first and second rounds partly because organizers claimed that they needed more time to market to their communities, and a year would make a big difference in attendance. It didn't, and if anything, attendance went down. (The Pac-10 tournament, also dismally attended, has gone through a marketing firm a year, and the result is always the same: Some Stanford fans (many of whom seem to have risen above OGS, much to their credit), and basically no one else.)

So how can the NCAA grow the regionals? The most obvious, but blatantly unfair, is to play them at home sites. Given only a week, Tennessee could easily sell 15,000 tickets in Thompson-Boling Arena if the Lady Volunteers in town. (Look at Wyoming in the WNIT: The Cowgirls played before huge crowds even though there were only days between games and there was no guarantee they'd be playing in the next round.) If the regionals were held at the arena of the top remaining seed, there would fans aplenty -- but the home court advantage would be enormous.

Here's another thought: Wait until the Sweet 16 has been settled, and then choose the regional sites with an eye to attendance. If Tennessee is in the Sweet 16, for example, and is one of the high seeds, play the regional in Nashville. If it's Connecticut, play it in Hartford, or Bridgeport. If it's Oklahoma, play it in Oklahoma City.

There are, of course, obvious difficulties, even though it would increase attendance. First, arena availability would be chancy, and second, ESPN would find it much more difficult to arrange coverage with only a few days notice -- and ESPN is crucial to growing the game and perhaps one day rising above OGS.

OK, how about this? NCAA softball and baseball have become hugely attended events by being played in the same site every year. Omaha has embraced baseball, and the community buys tickets and rallies around the College World Series. It's a tremendous atmosphere, and adds to the excitement and sense of urgency of the players and media.

For women's basketball, though, the Final Four could continue to move around, but the Sweet 16 could be settled in a permanent home, maybe one with two or three modern arenas (they don't have to seat 20,000; 12,000 would do just fine). That way, fans could purchase airline tickets way in advance, thus cutting costs enormously, and even if their team didn't make it, they could still justify going because of the low cost of the flight, and the presence of the top 16 teams in the country. (To make it really easy, put the Sweet 16 in a destination city like Las Vegas, which has cheap flights, cheap hotel rooms and lots to do.)

With a permanent home, the Sweet 16 could develop local and/or regional sponsorships that would generate income, and over time, local fans would attend in greater and greater numbers. (In some ways, it would be better to locate in a smaller city without a lot of other major events, so that it would be a very high-profile local highlight. Of course, then airline tickets might get more expensive.) It would also be very easy for ESPN to deal with the coverage, as all the teams would be at the same site, and it would be even cheaper for the network to put it on the air.

There are problems with this, of course, as there are with every other idea -- but the main virtue is that it is trying something new instead of sticking with what clearly does not, and will not, work.

The pyramid of success for women's basketball is pretty clear, and it starts with the Final Four. But before worrying about the first two rounds, or the conference tournaments, the NCAA must come to grips with the awful attendance at the regionals. Yes, contracts have been signed for future years, and presumably must be honored, but nothing else should be done until all possible alternatives -- from home sites to sites determined after the first two rounds to a permanent home -- have been investigated.

The Our Girls' Syndrome may not be going away, but there are other avenues to be explored, and other options to be tried. The regionals are broke, and it's time to fix them.