This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick, and it is that time of year again,

March Madness, when at least for a month college basketball is the thing in sports.

It's inescapable.

It's butler's with two seconds. He's gotler with two seconds.

He's got to put it up.

And he won six.

The men's game is changing in ways that have been controversial for fans and some disappointing and I'm thinking

about the advent of the transfer portal and the one-and-done stints for student

athletes. It ain't what it used to be. It ain't what I hope it returns to. And I'm not saying I don't want kids to have the same freedom as coaches or sports writers or anybody in the movie. I'm not saying that. All I'm saying is the product

they're good right now.

Meanwhile women's college basketball has emerged as an increasingly

electrifying force on the sports scene it's drawing record ratings and right now Caitlin

Clark of the Iowa Hawkeyes is as well known to fans in the game as

LeBron James and that's not something I would have foreseen in my early days as a sports writer.

So I sat down the other day with the New Yorker's sports writer, Louisa Thomas.

What in God's name has happened to men's college basketball? It used to be a very

exciting thing. March would come around and there would be a pool in every

workplace in America and people have all kinds of opinions and there were established

stars and all the rest and now I gotta say not so much.

I want to note that you just did something that a year ago, two years ago would have been completely

unheard of.

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