Sign of the times...or reason to question

Sitting here at the Notre Dame women's basketball game against Michigan and scanning the crowd, it is a much larger audience than the one that saw the Irish men's basketball team play Eastern Michigan last night.
It could be due to deft marketing by those in charge of the women's tickets or the fact that the women's team is actually playing a BCS team at home in the non-conference, but either way, it is a significant difference.
We're not saying women's hoops has overtaken men's in terms of importance or interest in South Bend, just pointing out that the Irish have a significant following that could rival the men's team.
While it isn't quite sold out, there are certainly more people here than the announced 9,277 for the men's game last night (of course, that is not the actual attendance, more than likely it is the tickets sold on what ended up being a nasty night in South Bend).
Of course, the real test will be to see who draws more people on Jan. 5 -- the women playing host to Tennessee in the afternoon or the men playing host to Connecticut at night.
-By Michael Rothstein of The Journal Gazette