A quick sports rant while I watch this UCONN game wind down. UCONN men’s basketball team will win a championship this season, their 7th since 1999 - most of any team in the country since I was born in Storrs in 1984. UCONN women will win their 13th championship this season - easily the most of any team in the country since I was born in Storrs in 1984. Very rarely does nature hand us such a perfectly controlled experiment: Geno Auriemma and I arrived in Storrs in 1984; Jim Calhoun a year or two later. (technically, I was born in Chicago in August 1984, the summer Michael Jordan came to town, so I left some of my magic there for Michael before bringing the rest the rest to Storrs a week later when I moved there.) When I was 5, 6, 7 years old, neither UCONN team had won a thing, but there I was after every loss, crying my eyes out, when they weren’t even playing for anything - hadn’t sniffed a final four or sweet 16. brick by brick, both programs became elite. dominant. every time I tuned in, they won. i’m not a superstitious guy, but when I look away, UCONN forgets how to play basketball.. feels like a mental illness! 1995, rebecca lobo and jen rizzotti go 35-0 to bring uconn to the promised land for the first time. scott burrell’s football-throw to tate george for a buzzerbeater to make the sweet sixteen! ray allen’s huskies eke out allen iverson’s georgetown on an impossible last-second shot. march/april 2014, year before my first kid was born, i was on vacation in hawaii with my ex-wife and her family. i’d graduated from UCONN 7 years earlier and hadn’t really been following. spent the whole trip in the hotel room watching basketball.. (was that the year Shabazz Napier carried uconn to a 53-48 victory in the ugliest (and most glorious) national championship game ever played? i think so). and of course, both the men and the women won championships that year. But… my takeaway from a lifetime of basketball championships? Women are better athletes than men, and it’s not close.