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A rather ignorant sports fan wrote to Stuart Scott about women's athletics. The question and answer were published in a recent issue of ESPN The Magazine. Mike from Chicago asked ...
Please answer this for me, Stuart, and no PC crap: Why does ESPN insist on putting women's scores on bottom-line tickers? When real sports fans catch a score in passing, they think a major upset occurred, only to find out it was a women's game.Stuart Scott smacked the guy around a bit with his answer.
Mike, I don't do PC jive. You're saying men's college sports are important and women's are not? This is not a matter of your being right or wrong - it's a matter of your being ignorant. How's that for PC?There's a lot to take away from this and I will start with Mr. Scott. Stuart Scott is, simply, the best of the ESPN commentators and at this point I'm not sure anyone else even comes close. In the days following the glory years of SportsCenter, when Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann ruled the airwaves, the majority of the ESPN commentators were a bore. They all seemed to be a clone of one another. Not so Stuart Scott. He brought his personality to the job and was always a joy to watch. Of course, this isn't a sports blog so lets move on.
Mike from Chicago should learn that "importance" does not equal "popularity". As Scott further put it in his answer ...
We report women's scores because they're important. Because, like their male counterparts, the women who play have families who've invested years in their development. We value girls who want to play when they grow up as much as we do boys.In other words, just because a sport that involves men is more popular does not make a sport more important than those sports that involve women. We could talk about equality and its importance, but I fear the subject would be a bore to Mike and he would just fall back on the PC line.
Here's what really got on my nerves about Mike's the question. It's an appearance of our old friend, conservative outrage. ESPN wasn't broadcasting a women's game instead of a men's game. They weren't even treating it as more important. They were simply showing the score at the bottom of the screen. This is worthy of outrage?
Mike reminds me of the guy who calls an automated number and gets upset that they have to press one for English. These people aren't outraged that our government may have tortured people. They aren't outraged that conservative banking interests have brought our economy to its knees. They are outraged because they have faced the most minor of inconveniences. It's sort of pathetic if you think about it.
2 comments:
I'm sorry, but your post just begs the question, why is college women's basketball "important?" Or more to the point, why is women's basketball important, but not women's softball (or college men's baseball, for that matter)? Don't these athletes dedicate as much time and effort to their sports as do women's basketball players? As a spectator sport, we ultimately judge the importance of a sport by popularity. The cynic in me thinks that ESPN is trying to create another major sport for marketing purposes, and not whether or not they think this sport is "important," but that's just one person's opinion....
I agree that if your gauge of importance is popular support, then women's team athletics, and men's collegiate baseball would certainly suffer. I certainly do not believe that a sports television network like ESPN should have to air any sport that isn't popular. Still, if they choose to air women's athletics out of some sense of equality, that's also their right. If they choose to do it in order to try and build a new marketing success, that could end up being a strong business position. Might not. The future will tell.
Of course, the point of the post was to condemn a guy who was upset that they even show the scores of Women's basketball games on the ticker at the bottom of the screen.
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