Kamala Harris bizarrely claims that women’s college basketball ‘wasn’t allowed’ a March Madness bracket until 2022 – despite first female NCAA tournament taking place in 1982

Kamala Harris may have been among the few to predict Oakland’s upset victory over Kentucky in the ongoing NCAA men’s tournament, but the nation’s first female vice president is apparently less familiar with the women’s tournament.

Speaking to an interviewer in Spectrum News footage, Harris attempted to offer a “little history lesson” about the women’s tournament by falsely claiming that “women’s teams weren’t allowed to have groups until 2022.”

“Think about that,” he said in the interview, nodding. ‘We talk about progress, better late than never. Because what that has done, how much we love March Madness, and even now allowing women to have braces and what that does to encourage people to talk about the women’s teams, to watch them, and now they’re being covered.

“This is the reality, people used to say ‘women’s sports, this isn’t interesting’, well if you can’t watch it, you won’t be interesting.” But when you see it, you go “oh.”

Harris is right about the popularity of women’s basketball, which recently enjoyed its highest-rated game: Monday’s Iowa-LSU Elite 8 clash. However, her strange statement about no brackets until 2022 appears to be an unfortunate combination of several facts.

For starters, the women’s tournament was launched in 1982, 40 years earlier than Harris claimed.

More specifically, Harris appears to be thinking about the ‘March Madness’ trademark, which was only applied to the women’s tournament after being used exclusively by men until 2022.

Adding to the extravagance of her statement is the fact that both she and her husband completed the groups for the women’s tournament in 2021, which were published online.

“So you picked the number one seeds,” Harris wrote on Twitter in response to her husband Douglas Emhoff’s picks. ‘I thought you were a fan of number 2s!’

Despite the awkward wording of her post, Emhoff responded with a smiling emoji, bringing the social media interaction between spouses to a merciful end.

Despite her claim, Harris and her husband completed the women’s tournament groups in 2021.

Social media users were naturally dismayed by Harris’ misinformation and quickly began mocking the Veep.

“When pressed on foreign policy, she proudly shared that Israel defeated Hamas in the Sweet Sixteen,” responded one critic on X.

Another added: “Did you know it wasn’t until this year that they finally cut the bottom out of the peach basket for women?”

The 42nd edition of the women’s Final Four will be played Friday night in Cleveland, where undefeated South Carolina will take on NC State in the opener before Caitlin Clark’s Iowa tangles with Paige Bueckers’ Connecticut in the finale confrontation.