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See, now I absolutely disagree. And I'm from Tennessee too, arguably the epicenter of women's basketball.
Women's basketball is not being shoved down anyone's throat, IMO. There's a big fan base for the game, at least on the college level. Until very recently, the UT women consistently outdrew the men. The year after I graduated from college (not UT, BTW), some friends and I went to a men's game and were the only ones in our section in the lower level. We went to a women's game (albeit against Louisiana - Monroe who was still sort of a powerhouse) and it was almost sold out.
You mentioned the NCAA's - I was at the opening round on Friday in Chicago, which is the 3rd or 4th largest city in the US, depending on how you measure. Wisconsin played in the second game, but for the first one (UNLV vs. GT) the United Center only had a few thousand people there. It was pathetic. They made it look better on TV, but my guess is that there were only 4,000 people in the stands. How is that any different than what you're saying about the women?
College sports, more than any other sport in the country, is all about team loyalties. If you are a Tennessee fan, you stay a Tennessee fan, even if you move to Gainesville or Athens. The same isn't true of professional sports.
There's also the fact that a lot of basketball fans don't like what's happened to the men's game. Most programs (Texas, Ohio State) "rent" a player for a year so that they can be eligible for the NBA. The rare stars that do stay for four years (Orlando Tucker) are so few and far between as to not worth discussion. The men's college game has, in the past few years, become more and more like the NBA in terms of the egos and possessiveness, which has alienated a lot of my friends here in Chicago. I've heard more than one OSU fan say that they hope for a title this year because next year they (the fan) won't really care because they'll suck so much with Oden gone.
And women's soccer?! Please, the men's game can barely hang on and it doesn't have the stigma that athletes with vaginas have to overcome to make an impression.
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