How a Philadelphia Sportswriter’s Phone Calls Launched Women’s Basketball into the National Spotlight
In the landscape of modern collegiate athletics, where women’s basketball now commands primetime television slots and generates record-breaking betting handles, it is easy to forget that the sport once operated in a media vacuum. The structural foundation of this visibility can be traced back to November 1976, and the dogged persistence of Philadelphia Inquirer staffer Mel Greenberg, whose creation of the first national Top 20 poll fundamentally altered the trajectory of the game.
Before Greenberg’s intervention, women’s college basketball was governed by the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) and was largely a regional affair. While powerhouses like Immaculata University and Delta State drew passionate local crowds, there was no connective tissue linking these programs on a national scale. Fans in the Northeast had little way of knowing how their teams stacked up against squads in the South or West. Recognizing this void, Greenberg utilized the resources of The Philadelphia Inquirer to create a unified standard of excellence.
The “Deep Search” into the logistics of this endeavor reveals a process far removed from today’s algorithmic rankings. Greenberg’s operation relied on a rotary phone and a tireless Sunday ritual. He personally recruited a committee of roughly 30 coaches from across the country, calling them weekly to collect their votes and scores. This manual aggregation of data provided the sport with its first cohesive narrative, giving newspapers across the country a reason to publish weekly updates and fueling the competitive fire between burgeoning rivalries.
However, the establishment of the poll was not without its hurdles and objections. In the mid-1970s, newsrooms were predominantly male and often openly hostile or indifferent to women’s sports. Greenberg faced significant institutional resistance, having to convince editors that women’s basketball merited the column inches and the long-distance telephone budget. Furthermore, early critics of the polling system argued that it suffered from inherent regional biases and a lack of standardized statistical data, making rankings subjective compared to the men’s game. There were also logistical objections from coaches who, operating with shoestring budgets, viewed the media scrutiny as a distraction rather than an asset.
Despite these early frictions, the poll became the catalyst for legitimacy. By organizing the chaos of the AIAW era into a digestible, ranked format, Greenberg forced the sports world to pay attention. The Associated Press eventually adopted the poll, cementing the “Top 25” culture that drives viewership today. As the sport currently enjoys an era of unprecedented popularity, with sold-out arenas and superstar talent, the architectural blueprint remains the work of a single reporter who refused to let the game go undocumented.
