March Madness Online: Thank you, ESPN, for promoting women

Ok, so March Madness has officially begun.

It’s my favorite time of the year!!

This year, I actually decided to participate (shocking) by filling out brackets and starting Women Talk Sports groups) for both the Men’s NCAA Championships (via CBS Sports.com Facebook application) and the Women’s NCAA Championships (via ESPN’s women’s tournament challenge).

The great gift of social media is letting us not only track our brackets online, but also participate by challenging our friends – in my case, it’s the Women Talk Sports community, and whoever else wants to join.

The first resource I found was via Facebook – a friend had invited me a few days ago.

The application is created by CBS Sports. It’s actually really neat – it lets you customize your bracket, track how you’re doing via your profile widget, pick your favorite teams, start discussions and

actually “trash talk” others’ brackets. Very interactive and fun.

Except for one thing.

THEY DON’T HAVE A WOMEN’S BRACKET.

Like, are you kidding me?

When you say you have “NCAA Basketball Brackets” you’d think it was for both genders. But I guess the women’s teams aren’t good enough for a Facebook application yet.

Ugh.

As far as I know, the only site that is actively letting fans participate online with the women’s tournament is ESPN, through it’s Women’s Tournament Challenge. Although it’s not as great as the one on Facebook (in that you have to create an account and invite people who also have to create accounts), it’s still pretty good.

In fact, the ESPN bracket challenge is an actual contest, in that you could win a $3,000 gift card from Best Buy if you get the most points.

Here’s a little bit of background information from their Web site:

“Welcome to the 2009 Women’s Tournament Challenge. The March to the Arch has arrived and that means it’s time to become part of the madness.

The next step is easy. Just select which teams you think will win each of the 63 tournament games that tip off March 21. You earn points for each game you correctly predict. The point value for a correct pick increases with each round of the tournament, culminating with the NCAA championship game in St. Louis on April 7. All 63 games are on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU or ESPN360.com, so follow along as you pull for your picks to survive and advance.”

So, who do you have going all the way?

You can see my women’s brackets on the ESPN Women Talk Sports group via the ESPN Women’s Tournament Challenge. (Yes, I picked Maryland to upset UConn in the championship – that would be exciting).

You can see my men’s brackets on the Women Talk Sports Facebook group via the CBS Sports Application. (I picked North Carolina beating Memphis for the championship).

If either of these applications had an embeddable widget (which would make sense), you know I’d have it up here. If you find any, please let me know!