In a move to help close the pay gap between men and women in college sports, the NCAA will now pay Division I women's basketball teams who play in March Madness games starting this year.

The NCAA announced Wednesday that it has created a $15 million women's basketball fund to reward conferences for their teams making and advancing in the

In a historic vote Wednesday at the NCAA convention in Nashville, the organization approved a plan to pay women's basketball teams for making the NCAA Tournament. Men's basketball teams have been reaping the benefits of the same revenue sharing plan for many years.

This was the final step toward a pay structure for women playing in March Madness after the Division I Board of Governors voted unanimously for the proposal in August. NCAA President Charlie Baker joined others in giving credit for the creation of a performance fund to those who came before and helped build women’s basketball.

A new plan unanimously adopted by NCAA members will pay women's college basketball teams playing in the March Madness tournament.

Life is wild. Here we are, a quarter of the way into the 21st century and more than 52 years after Title IX was signed into law, learning that there was a big round of self-congratulatory applause in a Nashville ballroom this week because the NCAA finally did what it should have done years ago.