They were talking about football playoff expansion, but women’s basketball goes wherever ESPN’s football priorities take it. Same rankings, same protected brands, same March Madness rights.
On the Paul Finebaum Show, guest Michael Bratton cut through the polite framing of a potential 24-team College Football Playoff expansion and Finebaum asked, “Did you not get the ESPN talking points for sure?” Bratton questioned why everyone was pretending the move was really about giving Arkansas, Vanderbilt, or Mississippi State a real shot when the structure mainly protects the same high-value brands. The public language is always “more access.” In practice, it creates more games and more inventory that keeps Alabama, LSU, Texas, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and the rest of the usual suspects in the field even when they have down years. The reaction was loud because a lot of people had already drawn the same conclusion. The expansion talk protects the inventory. The “access” language is just the cover.
NC State women’s basketball has spent years on the wrong side of that same value judgment. A recruit commits to the Wolfpack and the ranking slides. A good team gets treated like a regional story while programs in the preferred circle get the national framing. The McDonald’s All-American process tracks the network’s own lists. Players get buried early only to prove the ranking was wrong later. None of it is accidental. ESPN decides which programs have national value and which ones are treated as secondary, and that decision shapes coverage, recruiting narratives, and the way matchups are sold. The Wolfpack already know what it looks like when the network doesn’t consider you one of the cool kids.
Take Kaleena Smith, 2027 phenom. ESPN has already given her the full NIL treatment, complete with branded content and merchandising while she is still in high school. Where is she going to land? South Carolina? LSU? Texas? It will not be a Big Ten or ACC school. ESPN has too much invested in her as an asset to let that happen. The same institutional logic has shown up repeatedly in women’s basketball coverage. ESPN controls the SC NEXT 100 rankings, produces the highlight packages, and signs top high-school prospects to official merchandising deals while holding a long-term media-rights agreement with the SEC. Rankings and events become content engines that feed the same broadcast windows. Talent pipelines tilt toward the conferences whose games ESPN already owns. The result is a structural advantage for the partnered programs and a higher barrier for everyone else.
The pattern is identical on the women’s side, and the results are hard to ignore. The SEC has won five of the last six national championships since COVID. That is not a coincidence when ESPN holds a long-term media rights deal with the conference, controls the major recruiting rankings, and also owns the media rights to the women’s NCAA tournament. The network that ranks the talent and frames the top programs as the national standard is the same one that broadcasts the games that matter most. A player can sit inside the top 25 with a strong scouting grade, commit to NC State, and suddenly the write-up emphasizes what she still needs to work on. The same traits get treated as strengths when the player is headed to South Carolina, LSU, or Texas. The ranking doesn’t drop because the player got worse. It drops because the destination changed.
Obvious talking point established. Ole Miss gets the No. 15 treatment in the way-too-early after a total portal rebuild and then ends up matched against NC State in the SEC/ACC Challenge. The ranking plants the storyline early so the game can be sold as must-watch instead of a regular December non-conference matchup. The same outlet that ranks the talent, sets the preseason narratives, and broadcasts the games is also the one that profits when the preferred programs stay relevant and keep winning the titles that drive the biggest audiences.
That narrative control matters more than usual right now. The ACC’s exit fees drop to around $75 million by the 2030-31 season, and media deals for the Big Ten and Big 12 are coming up around the same time. People are already talking about what the next round of realignment looks like. Recent reporting has the SEC’s wish list, if they expand again, starting with North Carolina and Virginia. Clemson, Florida State, and Miami aren’t drawing the same interest, since the SEC already has Florida and South Carolina locked in. The cool kids are the ones with the national brands and the markets that move the needle for the networks. Ask yourself, if NC State is not part of today’s narrative, where does that put NC State women’s basketball after 2030?
NC State isn’t on that list now. We never are. ESPN has spent years deciding which programs are worth elevating and which ones get the “also considered” treatment. When the ACC starts to fray and the SEC is looking at North Carolina and Virginia, the story that has already been told (who is a national program and who is a regional one) will do a lot of the heavy lifting. The same outlet that has ranked State’s recruits lower once they committed (Destiny Lunan and Kamora Pruitt. See below), muted coverage of the program’s better teams, and treated the Wolfpack as secondary to the blue-blood reloads is the one that gets to decide who looks like a natural fit and who looks like an afterthought.
The playoff expansion talk is just the football version of the same arrangement. More games, more inventory, more money from the brands ESPN already partners with. On the women’s side, the same incentive shows up every time a ranking drops, a matchup gets framed around someone else’s storyline, or the SEC keeps collecting titles while the network owns the biggest windows, including March Madness. Either way, some schools get treated like they belong at the next level, and the rest are left hoping there’s still room when the teams get picked. NC State women’s basketball has already lived the version where the network decides you aren’t a priority. The realignment window is just the next place that decision will matter.
I personally hope the ACC goes back to being a basketball-oriented conference built around traditional schools like NC State, Duke and UConn, along with some of the other programs that are getting left behind in all this realignment. Let UNC and Virginia get the same treatment Maryland has since joining the Big Ten. Perennial losers.
IE…
Kamora Pruitt’s ESPN rankings :
- Peak ranking: No. 24 overall by ESPN (noted in multiple reports from around mid-to-late 2025). One source also listed her as the No. 5 forward at that point.
- Later ranking: No. 38 by ESPN SportsCenter NEXT 100 (around the time of her NC State commitment/signing in fall 2025).
- Final/signing references: NC State’s official bio lists her as No. 40 overall by ESPN SportsCenter NEXT 100.
Destiny Lunan ESPN rankings :
- Earlier references: Reported as high as No. 57 overall by ESPN.
- Around signing (November 2024): Listed as No. 60 by ESPN HoopGurlz
- Final ESPN / HoopGurlz ranking: No. 65 overall in the final 2025 ESPNW Top 100 (per NC State’s official bio).
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