After being called out for delivering second-class treatment to women's basketball players, the US National Collegiate Athletic Associaiton is launching an independent review of unequal gender treatment in all sports. NCAA president Mark Emmert said Thursday his group, the governing body for the billion-dollar business of major US collegiate sport, has hired New York law firm Kaplan, Hecker & Fink to conduct an examination of inequalities in all sports. The moves comes after women's basketball players pointed out huge differences in weight rooms and gifts between the men's and women's teams in ongoing "March Madness" college tournaments, including use of the popular term on courts for games. The NCAA moved to upgrade women's offerings but Emmert says more must be done to "address material and impactful differences" in the events. "While many of the operational issues identified have been resolved, we must continue to make sure we are doing all we can to support gender equity in sports," Emmert said. "As part of this effort, we are evaluating the current and previous resource allocation to each championship, so we have a clear understanding of costs, spend and revenue." Emmert said the law firm will examine all championships in all levels to evaluate NCAA practices and policies and recommend ways to improve. "While it is still very early in the process, we hope to have these preliminary assessments in late April, with a final report this summer after all of our championships are completed," Emmert said. js/dj