In sports, being handed a forfeit for not showing up to a game makes common sense–unless you’re the Northwestern University women’s basketball team.
Earlier this year, the team decided against traveling to Southern California for games against UCLA and USC citing concerns surrounding the Los Angeles wildfires. On January 10, the team announced that they would not be traveling to LA for games “Due to concerns surrounding ongoing wildfires affecting the greater Los Angeles area.”
This week, the Big Ten handed down a decision that Northwestern would be forced to forfeit those games for their refusal to travel, citing conference rules.
It’s a rich ruling coming from a conference that just accepted two west coast programs into a conference that is primarily located in the midwest and northeast/central United States after USC and UCLA moved to the Big Ten in 2022. On the football side of things, it is estimated that Northwestern’s team traveled 5,696 miles in 2024 to accommodate the Big Ten’s newest additions.
So not only did the Big Ten impose a ridiculous travel schedule on its teams in accepting two west coast programs, but it did so without any input from the athletes who would be the most impacted. Now, it’s punishing a team for refusing to take a trip out west amid a natural disaster. And it did so while the NBA canceled and rescheduled games because of the wildfires.
Juggling academics, athletics, NIL, and other obligations is hard enough, but throw in regular trips from Evanston, Illinois to Los Angeles, California? That’s a whole other commitment–physically, mentally, and academically. But that’s arguably not the worst of the situation.
The controversy surrounding the Big Ten’s ludicrous decision has not received the media attention it deserves, especially when it comes to sports talk shows. In a closed captioning search, the only mention of the Northwestern forfeit on national television on Wednesday following the breaking news was from Kevin Clark during the closing Face Time segment on Around the Horn.
If this were a men’s team, it’s likely that the situation would have garnered a much greater amount of coverage, with sports media diving into the specifics of the forfeits, the implications for the season, and the broader safety concerns of potentially traveling during a natural disaster, not to mention foaming at the mouth at the opportunity to dunk on a ridiculous policy decision from a NCAA institution. (I can just hear Stephen A. Smith’s voice rising octaves in his segment lambasting the Big Ten over the ruling… had he chosen to cover it, of course.).
Now, let’s be real: Northwestern’s women’s basketball team is having a disastrous season, sporting a 9-19 record overall. Their odds of defeating UCLA and USC, which were (and still are) both ranked top five in the country in January, are close to zero. But the crux of this story goes beyond their win-loss column. It’s a matter of principle: the team made a decision to prioritize their health and safety, which should be commended, not punished. And it’s sports media’s job to be a whistleblower when it comes to issues like this that impact the athletes we cover.
The lack of media coverage highlights a broader issue within the industry — the systemic underrepresentation of women’s sports in mainstream media. Stories like this, involving real risks and complex decisions, should be front and center in sports news, regardless of the team’s performance.
For a comparison on the men’s side, sports media was all over the Northwestern football team’s attempt to unionize in 2014. The team finished their season with a record of 5-7.
As is the case for some of the meatiest stories in sports media, this one goes far beyond the stats of the athletes and teams involved. Coverage of women’s sports has certainly grown in recent years, but this week and the lack of coverage for this story shows there is still a long way to go. The Northwestern women’s basketball team’s forfeits are a testament to the need for better coverage of women’s sports and more robust conversations about the unique challenges these athletes face.