ESPN interviewed athletes and coaches from across women's sports in the Power 5 to gauge their perception of social media promotion for women's sports. Opinions varied by sport, by school and even generationally.

One former coach, when contacted by ESPN, lamented the lack of publicity her team received from her school, only to call back a few days later to say, "Please don't let it come across that I wasn't grateful."

Skylar Wallace, a senior softball player at Florida, said she has seen increased recognition for her sport, better gear and better coaching amid growing fan interest in college softball. She said she's also seen men's sports get more attention on social media. Florida's main athletic department account tweeted about women's sports 43.2% of the time, according to ESPN's analysis. Alabama, on the other hand, where Wallace played as a freshman and sophomore, tweeted about women's sports 53.5% of the time, the analysis shows.

"A lot of time, we were just put out as an athlete, and it was very direct and that was it. It was a one-time thing," she said. "Then you see a football player who's talked about in one tweet, and then they expand on that tweet and then keep expanding, expanding and repeating it. So they're getting a lot more attention than we were getting."

Kiki Rice, a sophomore guard for UCLA's women's basketball team, sees more equality. She said her team works with a creative staff that takes photos, produces videos and cuts highlights to help "display our personalities." According to ESPN's analysis, UCLA's athletic department tweets about women's sports almost as much as it does about men's -- 49.8% of the time.

"A big emphasis of our program is brand and shaping our image. I would say that we do a very good job, and so does the men's team," said Rice, who was one of the nation's top recruits in 2022 and the first college athlete to land an NIL deal with Jordan Brand.

Former TCU basketball player Lauren Heard, on the other hand, said she noticed a difference in the type of social media posts for men and women athletes. For men's sports like football and baseball, she said posts built up to an event, with insider access to training and players mic'd up in practice.

"It always felt like the women, once they accomplished something, then we would know," Heard said. "For the guys, we were taken through the journey."

At TCU, the athletic department's main Twitter account mentioned the men's basketball team three times as often as the women's team, according to ESPN's analysis of the 2022-23 regular season.

"It supports the feeling that we all felt," said Heard, who is TCU's all-time leading scorer and now plays professionally in Australia. "We always aspired to them. We had to look at them to see what else should we ask for. What else should we be pushing to get?"

At Notre Dame, the main athletic department Twitter account mentioned women's teams 18.6% of the time compared to men's teams -- the least often of all the schools in ESPN's analysis.

Olivia Derrico, a member of Notre Dame's lacrosse team from 2019 to 2023, grew up in a family of Notre Dame fans and alumni and said she didn't expect to feel as promoted as the school's historic football team.

"There are other things that Notre Dame did well that I was appreciative of, in terms of gender equity," she said. "I don't care about being famous or things like that. I played lacrosse because I loved it, so I was happy to be there."

But former Notre Dame women's basketball coach Muffet McGraw said coaches of non-football sports noticed how the athletic department's media group produced videos for Twitter "and it was almost all football."

"That was kind of a bone of contention with all the coaches. We're like, good, give football what they need. We want them to do well. We're behind you a hundred percent there. Just help us out a little bit more too," she said.

Aaron Horvath, Notre Dame's senior associate athletics director for media, declined to comment on ESPN's findings or Notre Dame's marketing staff.

At the University of North Carolina, the men's basketball team -- another legacy program with a storied past -- failed to make the NCAA tournament this past season. The women's team made the cut, as it has for the past four tournaments. But during the regular season, the school's main athletic department Twitter account mentioned the women's team 35% of the time compared to the men's team, ESPN's analysis shows.

Former guard Ariel Young, who was a redshirt senior for the 2022-23 season, knew her team had a solid fan base -- the line of students would be out the door and around the side of historic Carmichael Arena when the Tar Heels played Duke. But she still felt the school didn't promote her team as much as the men's.

"If you're a UNC fan of any kind, you have to be a men's basketball fan ... And there's nothing wrong with that," she said. "But let's let some other sports shine."

North Carolina head coach Courtney Banghart has a different perspective. She's confident in the team's social media promotion, fueled by what she calls a dedicated brand management team -- complete with videographer and graphic designer -- with whom she works closely on a weekly basis.

Banghart, who serves as president of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association, said promotion for women's hoops has increased across the board "because the product is so good," starting with better training at the youth level and more active engagement from shoe companies.

She said it's a disservice to the sport to overly promote and get fans at games if the product isn't good.

"And then [fans] watch and they're like, 'No, forget it. I gave women's basketball a try and I don't like it.' ... It's going to be really hard to get them back," Banghart said.

When she learned how often North Carolina's athletic department tweeted about the men's basketball team versus the women's, she invoked the adage, "Comparison is the thief of joy." She said equal social media promotion from the athletic department isn't as important as, say, getting the same type of financial disbursement from the NCAA for tournament games.

As a whole, she said she feels her team is supported, has a voice and has resources, and her players are encouraged to speak up if they see something the men have that they don't.

"Instead of focusing on what the men are getting ... are we getting what we need?" Banghart said.

Ask coaches what leads to lackluster social media promotion, and often they'll cite inexperienced and overstretched social media managers and sports information directors -- the people who actually write and post the tweets.

UCLA basketball coach and former Women's Basketball Coaches Association president Cori Close said the quality of a team's social media manager is an issue facing women's sports nationwide. When Muffet McGraw coached women's basketball at Notre Dame -- she retired in 2020 after 33 seasons -- the people who worked on marketing for women's basketball were often less experienced than those working for the men's team, she said.

"The men would have somebody a little higher up who had been there. The guy that did their social media would really be a professional," McGraw said.

Aaron Horvath, Notre Dame's senior associate athletics director for media, declined to comment on ESPN's findings or Notre Dame's marketing staff.

Bebe Bryans -- who coached women's rowing at Wisconsin for 19 years, led the team to the NCAA championships 13 consecutive seasons and sent four rowers to the Olympics -- said her athletes sometimes had to be responsible for their own social media posts. She said her team shared a sports information director with the men's hockey team.

"We pretty much had to take over. So, all the social media stuff, we did," she said, adding that the school posted results and produced a social media package for the team's 50th anniversary.

The quantity and quality of social media managers is one of the criteria federal regulators use to measure Title IX compliance. ESPN asked all then-65 Power 5 schools to provide the names and titles of the people managing the main and team Twitter accounts in their athletic department. Thirty-three schools -- more than half -- declined to answer.

Among the 32 schools that responded, 27 athletic departments had two or more people managing the football account or the men's basketball account. On average, women's teams were more likely than men's teams to share a social media staffer with other teams.

At Cal-Berkeley, 12 people are responsible for 26 accounts, and most had a similar title: associate or assistant director of athletics communications, according to data provided by the school. By contrast, Kansas in May reported having employees with titles ranging from intern, graduate assistant and assistant communications director; the title of social media manager was held only by those managing the men's basketball, football and athletic department accounts. Kansas's women's swimming and diving and softball had one graduate assistant to manage both accounts, whereas men's basketball had a social media manager and an assistant athletics director to manage its account.

"If they're going to be providing social media managers for men's basketball, men's football, then they need to be providing it on the flip side, for women," said Title IX attorney Lori Bullock. "It shouldn't just be the head coach of the women's teams have to manage their own social media, when that's not the expectation for the men's teams."

Social media managers interviewed by ESPN said they intend to give women's teams ample promotion but that fans expect more content from popular and successful programs.

Pitt posted about its women's teams 32.4% of the time, according to ESPN's analysis -- more than two mentions of a men's team for every one mention of a women's team.

But Joseph Lassi, who has been directing Pitt's social media and fan engagement for two years, would argue that ESPN's data don't tell the whole story of the efforts he and his staff make to promote all sports.

"We do have a department-wide strategy, which right now is really to establish and to continue to push that Pitt brand into the national spotlight," he said. "So each team then has kind of their own strategy that fits into that."

Each sport has a different audience and needs different content, he said.

"Now, is it going to lean a little bit toward football and the basketball programs? Probably," he said. "Of course, you still want to tailor to where the clicks or the eyes are going to be, just nationally there's going to be more attention, unfortunately, given to football and men's basketball.

"But we need to make sure that we're doing our job to give it to everybody else," he said.

Megan Crain, who has worked in athletics social media at Nebraska, West Virginia and is now at Michigan State, said of her time at West Virginia that she had ample access to resources -- cameras, equipment, graphics -- but that sometimes staffing was a problem.

"It was always easy to get students who wanted to work a football game rather than like a tennis match. We did our best to make sure everything was covered," she said.

If audience engagement is down, Crain said, the main accounts might push a little more football or basketball. But a post earlier this year on Michigan State's women's rowing team -- on the department's main Facebook account -- generated a buzz, she said.

"We had people commenting things like, 'Oh, it's so nice to see a different sport represented. Thank you for posting this,'" she said. And one of the most engaged posts lately -- with more than 3,000 likes -- was about the women's soccer team getting its Big Ten championship rings. "When I see that, I make note of it. People do enjoy seeing things about the sports that maybe don't get as much attention."

The University of Texas had the highest percentage of women's teams mentions in ESPN's analysis at 57.1%. Caten Hyde, the school's associate athletics director for creative development, said home games and win rates drive social media posts.

Hyde pointed to the success of Texas' women's teams: Since 2020, Texas women have won six national championships across volleyball, outdoor track & field, tennis and rowing. Women's soccer also won the Big 12 regular-season championship.

Also -- and probably a "little more on the subtle or subconscious side" -- Hyde said he and the sports information director both have daughters.

"So, we find ourselves almost gravitating toward women's athletics," he said. "And these women are winning at a really high level."