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Maya Moore is greeted by UConn fans upon returning to Connecticut after the team won its sixth national championship (AP/Jessica Hill).
You may have missed it, but the UConn women’s basketball team just completed what may be the greatest season ever. Not only did they go undefeated, but they destroyed their opponents winning every game by 10 points or more. It’s really nothing new for UConn. The 2009 championship is the sixth they have won in the last 15 seasons and it was their third perfect season.
Yet, the beginning of the baseball season and UNC winning the men's championship on Monday overshadowed the glory of the UConn women. Maya Moore just completed an amazing season where she averaged 19.3 points and almost 9 rebounds a game. She was named player of the year, only the second sophomore to ever win that honor. But somehow, this amazing player from a perfect team is hardly mentioned in the mainstream media.
One can only imagine the press coverage a men’s player or team would receive in similar circumstances. The disparity in coverage and interest between men’s and women’s sports is nothing new, but it doesn’t mean we have to continue that trend. Take a minute and appreciate the accomplishments of Maya Moore. Give thanks that she has two more years of eligibility and therefore two more years for us to watch her. Think about the magnificent season that the Huskies just completed: one where they truly were perfect.
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congratulations to those ladies.
I'm a softie/fetish for women's basketball. I remember just shooting hoops on one end of the gym and all these amazon women practicing on the other end. then I would see them in class wearing hosiery.
Thank you for writing this post. It's ridiculous how little coverage women's sports get in the mainstream media. Since we are a nation glued to the TV and our Internet news, it's only going to be when outlets like Gothamist start actually covering women's sports that people start paying attention. This is a great start; but how about including scores for the WNBA and the new New Jersey/New York WPS (Women's Professional Soccer) team, Sky Blue, with your daily sports scores?
Gothamist does cover the NY Liberty - that is when the season starts. I think in May?
"One can only imagine the press coverage a men’s player or team would receive in similar circumstances."
Depends on the sport. To get big press coverage doesn't take just domination of the sport, it has to be a sport that many people find interesting. Dominate men's lacrosse... will anyone care or report about it? The NCAA hockey tournament just ended (Boston University won its fifth title, coming back from two goals down with a minute left to win in overtime!), and also West Virginia just won the riflery title (overcoming Jacksonville State's early lead in day one!). Does anyone care? No, so it's not reported widely.
Should the press just pretend that people care about women's basketball just because it is a women's sport? The fact is that there are few sports fans in America who finding watching that sport to be enjoyable.
Sure, there are some who do and a couple of them will probably reply here, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a fringe sport just as is men's lacrosse. Both even offer the same hope of eventually making it to a pro league after graduation, where people will continue to pay no attention.
Little public interest brings little media coverage. It's just the way it is and the way it's always been.
But did any of those teams go undefeated and handily beat all their opponents? No. I think if any of them did, they would get about as much coverage as the UConn woman's bball team did this year.
Exactly my point. They would all get "about as much coverage," which is appropriate because they generate about the same amount of interest... which means that coverage the UConn woman's basketball team is getting is appropriate.
Did I move to Connecticut & not realize it? Why is this being covered on gothamist?
The media covers what people want to hear about. The NBA has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the WNBA and it's a complete failure. No one wants to watch women's basketball because its painfully slow and other basketball (both professional and collegiate) is readily available. Additionally, there is zero competitive balance. If UNC runs the table in Men's D1 basketball it's much more of an accomplishment-there are a LOT more good players on a LOT more good teams. I'm not saying this isn't a huge accomplishment. These women work incredibly hard and are just as much an athlete as anyone else. But its just not fun to watch and no one cares.
Painfully slow? Zero competitive balance? Obviously you've never watched a D1 Women's game or the WNBA. There are millions of WNBA fans in this country who appreciate this sport, regardless of the ignorant commentary of misogynists such as yourself.
Listen. Throwing around accusations of Mysogny isn't cool. You want to seriously tell me the competitive balance is the same in Men's and Women's D1 basketball? In the past 25 years the men's tournament has 17 different champions compared to the women's 12. In the last 10 years UCONN has won 5 and Tennessee 2 (and Tennessee has appeared in 3 other final games). The average seed number in the sweet 16 of the women's tournament is substantially lower than the men's. Crazy upsets in the tourney are rare. The top teams beat up on the lesser teams because there aren't as many good teams, similar to the Men's game in the 60s and 70s. As for the pro game, without the NBA's assistance the WNBA would fold. They average about 7,900 fans per game, down from 11,000 1998. Call me what you want, but that's the truth. And as for the speed of the game-to each his (or her!) own, but it seems people agree with me on this one judging by those attendance figures. Or possible everyone else is a mysognist too and we're all holding women down. That could be it.
Clearly you're not especially familiar with the WNBA. Some of the most successful WNBA franchises are those unaffiliated with an NBA team. Further, while you try to make a somewhat coherent argument, you completely lose all credibility when you attempt to connect the speed of the game with attendance figures. So only fast sports have viewers? Someone needs to clue all the people watching the Masters finals on TV today in on that.
There will always be critics of women's sports such as yourself, just as there were critics of women in business, women in politics, and women doing pretty much anything other than cook, clean and make babies. Those critics were clearly wrong. Hopefully someday you too will realize how ignorant and wrong you are.
Answer this question and please stop telling me this has anything to do with me being some sort of caveman. If the NBA pulled support, financially and otherwise, from the WNBA could the league function (assuming they allowed the league to keep the name)? Why isn't women's basketball more popular? WHY? After a decade of exposure and a huge push, why does it remain unpopular? Is it millions of men holding it down? Women's soccer is awesome. If you took the best women soccer player and put her on a field with the world's best I think she'd hold her own. Softball pitchers can strike out any major league baseball player. That's pretty sweet. If you took Candace Parker and put her on the court with a d1 men's team, or a d3 men's team, she would be destroyed. The point is-it's not the media fault for the lack of coverage of the UCONN women's team. Its the lack of interest by nearly everyone in this country, and I think it's fair to say it has nothing to do with some desire to only see women cook and clean, but a desire to see the best basketball possible.
The NBA owns and runs the WNBA. Every team is benefiting from that affiliation, because money earned on the NBA side is spent promoting the WNBA. WNBA games that are televised are getting even that exposure because of the relationship between the NBA and the networks.
The WNBA is certainly a different type of game. The pace is slower, with more of an emphasis on fundamentals and strategy. There are few fast breaks, fewer dunks, and less showboating in general. Some people may prefer that, some may not, some may not care either way. Stating that such a preference is evidence of whether or not a person is a mysogynist does nothing to further your own argument.
I've watched plenty of women's NCAA basketball; I dated a reserve player on my Big Ten's school's team when I was in college. I don't particularly like watching any flavor of televised basketball, but I enjoy watching the college men's game more than any of the rest. Simply a sports preference. I'd rather watch hockey (which doesn't get a lot of attention in the media: apparently that's misandry rearing its ugly head) than any form of basketball. That has no relationship to my political or social views or to anything about psyche or how I interact with society in general or with any of its subgroups.
To echo previous comments, I think some people here are showing a serious lack of understanding about the WNBA. Yes, the WNBA is still being supported by the NBA, but financially, the league is actually doing *way* better than the NBA. In a recent article about the NBA's current debt problem, NBA commissioner David Stern admitted that "the NBA is far less profitable than the WNBA. We're losing a lot of money amongst a large number of teams. We're budgeting the WNBA to break even this year." If the WNBA were "a complete failure," I guarantee you it would cease to exist. So why hasn't it? It has a far lower budget than the NBA, for one thing...league minimum for a WNBA rookie is currently $35,190, while a veteran can earn a max of $99,500. In the NBA, those numbers are 442,000 and 1.46 million, respectively. But also, why not mention that the NBA also supports the D-league? How much money is *that* endeavor bringing in vs. how much is costing the NBA? Not a lot, I'm sure, and yet it's filled with guys who, by your standard, are way more exciting to watch than women. By your argument, Condor, people should be flocking to the D-league to watch those games, since, after the NBA, they are "the best basketball possible." Can you even name one D-league team?
But I'll also again point out that there *are* many people who very much enjoy women's basketball (among other women's sports). You are perfectly welcome not to watch it! But if you think the game is slower, that's a completely subjective comment. I personally find NBA games, in which defense and hustle are often extremely lacking, way slower to watch than, say, college games, whether men's or women's. Someone also mentioned that they prefer women's softball to hoops. That's great! But when are they ever on television? I don't think there's any doubt that men's sports will always be more popular than women's. I'm just saying that if the media gave women's sports a little more air time, they'd probably find that it can actually be really exciting. Which would raise the success level of the sports, and then even more people would watch. Etc.
"But I'll also again point out that there *are* many people who very much enjoy women's basketball (among other women's sports)."
Of course there are, and I don't see anyone disputing that here. And there are people who enjoy many other "minor" sports. I enjoy hockey, but it doesn't get anywhere near the coverage that baseball, NBA basketball, or football get. I enjoy lacrosse, but forget seeing coverage of that. I love soccer, but coverage is buried. I don't complain about any of that, because I realize that my tastes vary from the mainstream.
The simple fact is that while there are some people who enjoy watching and following these sports, it's a relatively small number of people. It only makes sense that media coverage is correspondingly minor. Can you expect a newspaper to devote column inches to something that most readers will choose to simply skip over? Can you expect them to take the hit on ad revenue, because advertisers won't want their spots on pages that most readers aren't going to look at? Should they add more pages at a financial loss, or should they cut back on coverage of what's paying the bills, what people are picking up the paper for?
Coverage follows interest. Newspaper editors and TV programmers aren't ignoring women's basketball out of any kind of prejudice, they're giving it a low priority as a simple business decision. They're not completely ignoring it; the UConn story was covered by every sports news outlet. Yeah, it didn't get the blanket coverage of a Super Bowl victory but that's for only one reason: the number of people interested is that much smaller.
You can theorize that more coverage would generate more interest, but history contradicts that. The NBA has poured millions into promoting the WNBA, but it hasn't paid off. Similarly, networks took a chance on widely televising hockey nationally a few years ago, but it didn't pay off -- only a small percentage of homes in the country now have access to hockey telecasts.
The lack of interest in women's basketball isn't because the players are women (look at tennis, figure skating, golf, and various Olympic sports and you'll see that there can be interest in women's athletics), but simply because the game isn't capturing people. It is what it is. There's nothing more evil about the lack of interest in women's basketball than there is about the lack of interest in men's team handball. It's just another sport that people don't find themselves willing to invest their time in. There are scores of them.
I hear you, jaycjay. I realize it's bigger business for the popular men's sports to receive more coverage. I do get that. But I disagree that all news outlets are there for is to make money (I'm sure the business departments would agree with you, while the staff writers and editors would disagree.) As Mr. Trinkle said in his piece, "The disparity in coverage and interest between men’s and women’s sports is nothing new, but it doesn’t mean we have to continue that trend." Among other things, I don't think adding a few stories on smaller sports/women's sports here and there would kill revenue as much as you imply it would. And I think you underestimate how powerful the media can be as far as shaping what we like and what we don't like, and what we're interested and not interested in hearing about.
"I don't think adding a few stories on smaller sports/women's sports here and there would kill revenue as much as you imply it would."
How did I, or Peter Trinkle for that matter, know about the UConn women's win? We read about it in the newspaper. Their entire season was covered in the local papers, and scores of every NCAA women's basketball are there. WNBA games also get covered.
It all gets covered at a level that's appropriate. The overwhelming majority of readers, though, are looking for coverage of other sports, which are therefore given appropriately greater and more prominently placed coverage.
Reporters cover what the editors assign to them. And editors meet with management, who specify general priorities. Part of an editor's job absolutely involves not squandering resources on topics that are of little interest. If a sports editor at the Post or the News suddenly decided independently to give women's basketball the back page position every day, how long do you think he'd keep that job?
You're definitely putting words in my mouth, my friend (suggesting that women's sports should get the back page every single day). And by the way I am an editor, so please don't tell me "how it is" in the business.
We're supposed to care about women's basketball the same way we're supposed to care about the Special Olympics- even though other people do the sport they're competing in so much better, isn't it special that they TRY!
Wow, TSOL, that's a really sketchy thing to say. Comparing female athletes to Special Olympians? Not to disrespect Special Olympians, but come ON. No one is asking for women to compete against men. But there are plenty of people who actually DO care about and want to watch women's sports. I guarantee you more people would watch if it were on TV and if they were covered in the media. People watch the Olympics, right? There are plenty of women's sports there, and people get just as psyched about those because they actually *get to see them.* If you don't like women's sports, then you're in luck: the TV execs have your back. But to say no one cares about them just because "they suck," rather than no one cares about them because they've never had the opportunity to watch them, is extremely simple minded.
Thanks for writing about this!
Thanks for writing about this!
I second the point that the game is painful to watch. The Stanford-UConn semifinal's first 10 minutes were filled with turnovers and frantic mistakes.
Watching LeBron soar through the air to pin a ball against a backboard is more visually pleasing than watching Jayne Appel lefty scoop from the left block or watching Renee Montgomery toss in a small ball from 20 feet.
Quite simply, the women's game is not as appealing. That doesn't mean we cannot appreciate it and appreciate the best of the best. But when it comes to my attention, I'd rather watch men's games. I'd love to hear why this is misogynist.
"I second the point that the game is painful to watch. The Stanford-UConn semifinal's first 10 minutes were filled with turnovers and frantic mistakes."
Aren't you talking about the Michigan State/UNC men's game? Sheesh, talk about painful.
I think the missing word Chips, is "to me." I find the selfish, no-defense play of the NBA unwatchable. Men with overgrown pit. glands grinding around in a space too small for them and slamming a ball in to a rim too low for them is ... boring. To me.
And, if it's not appealing to me, I simply don't watch it... Like many of the people who don't attend NBA games (look at the stands.)
I do appreciate the thoughtfulness of the discussion, though. Too often an article about women's sports brings out the homophobic neanderthals. :-)
Hope you enjoy the delightful, high quality play of the Knicks and Nets (yes, that was sarcasm). Me, I'm looking forward to the Liberty season and pondering the possibilities of a UConn repeat.
The Celtics D is amazing. The Cavs are pretty complete. The Lakers on O is textbook.
Well as you said, you don't watch basketball and conveniently use the complaint fairweather---and lazy columnists---use: that it's too "me first." Of course the bad teams are sloppy are don't play the game the right way. But if we're comparing the two, it has to be apples to apples---UConn Lady Huskies vs. Lakers/Celts/Cavs
UNC looked great to me.It's preference more than anything, though---like you mentioned. Someone else will think we both have bad taste and watch bowling on a Saturday afternoon over women's, men's, NBA and WNBA basketball. It's been shown that the sports can make their markets so that's all that matters; if you can stay financially viable that shows that the sport has an appreciative fanbase.