Women's sports not interesting
Daniel Congrave
Issue date: 4/16/04 Section: Opinion
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Now, nothing against women's sports. They can play any sport they want, I'm all for equal rights, even if they did effectively kill most college wrestling programs with that horrible Title IX thing. I just don't want to be forced to have to watch it. It's boring. Not even boring in the way televised poker is boring. With televised poker, the guys at least have cool names like Moneymaker. With women's college basketball, women's soccer, or women's tennis, I'm just bored. If I have to hear one more B.S. line about how they have "great fundamentals," I'm going to punch Dick Vitale in the face, baby.
Here's a fun fact, two years into the WNBA's existence, Lisa Leslie made the first slam dunk in WNBA history. That's right, two years. Two dunkless years, and then everybody finds out that only ONE of them can dunk. Wow, that's some fundamentals. Let's face it, it's boring and nobody wants to watch it. How do I know? The WNBA is the third attempt at a professional women's basketball league. Yes, that's right, the third.
It's not just limited to basketball either. What about soccer? Soccer is probably the third most popular women's sport behind gymnastics and figure skating, and its league folds. Let's face it. The only reason there was a women's soccer league to begin with was because Brandy Chastain took off her shirt after the women's USA team won the World Cup or gold medal or something.
See, I don't even know what they won. All I know is some chick took her shirt off. And they built a league off of that? Wow, that's equal.
I can't even fathom how anyone took that seriously. I know I didn't. And then they made the rule that they can't take off any clothing during or after a game while on field. And that just killed the whole reason for anybody to watch the games. Now it's just a bunch of women running back and forth. And it's not even in slow motion!
Soccer isn't the only league I can't take seriously. The WNBA, it's insanely horrible. Aside from the whole "fundamentals" thing, what else do they have to offer? The women aren't even nice to look at. Rebecca Lobo, former WNBA "superstar" and current... ummm... anyways. Rebecca Lobo looks like a horse. Every time I see her on ESPN with its crack WNBA analysis, I feel like feeding her a carrot or maybe sticking the oats back over her face. It's so bad, that listeners of the nationally syndicated "Jim Rome Show" have taken to giving all WNBA players race horse names. For example, Sue Bird is Suebiscut or Seattle Sue.
Here's the real horrible part. I know more about professional horse racing than I do about women's sports, professional and college. For all I know UOP has the best women's basketball team in the nation, but I can name the winners of the Kentucky Derby for the last three years. I know the names of owners and trainers and jockeys in horse racing. But if you ask me to name one coach in any women's sport, I'll draw a blank. Did you see that reference to Chris Moneymaker earlier? I can name a guy on the professional poker tour off the top of my head, but I had to go to WNBA.com to find the name of Sue Bird in order to turn her name into a horse's name.
I know, you're probably thinking ,"Man, Muff's probably never even watched a women's game all the way through." And guess what? You're right! I tried to watch part of the women's NCAA basketball tournament, and I couldn't make it past five minutes without wanting to gouge my eyes out. It was especially hard because Comedy Central was only one channel away.
The worst part is I'm not the only person not watching. Arco Arena, home of the WNBA's Sacramento Monarchs, is one of the smaller arenas in the NBA. It seats about 17,000 people for Kings games. For the WNBA, they block off the upper deck. Then ENTIRE upper deck is blocked off. So it's all lower level seating. And it still doesn't sell out. They can't get 8,500 people to show up to a live Monarchs game. But the Kings can sell out 200 games in a row, even before they were good. When the Kings were one of the worst teams in the league, they sold out Arco Arena for over a decade. When the King's didn't make the playoffs for 10 years, Arco Arena was still selling out. How do I know? I was there. I had season tickets to the crappy Kings teams. Yet, I'd still much rather watch Mitch Richmond and Tyus Edney go up against Wayman Tisdale and Kevin Johnson than watch one WNBA game.
This is nothing against women. I love women. Nothing against women's sports. They can play all the sports that want. I just don't want to watch them. Put them on ESPN 16 or something. It's not nearly exciting enough to want to watch on regular ESPN. Hell, they have a Spanish ESPN, make a women's ESPN. I'm sure women's basketball does have a miniscule audience that wants to know what's going on with the WNBA or with women's tennis.
You could put that on regular ESPN at 4 in the morning, and nobody would be the wiser. Women could set their alarms and watch a half hour of highlights and that would be that. I'm not sure what those highlights would be though. "Oh look at that great bounce pass. That's 100 percent textbook there. The way she threw it at the floor, and then it hit the floor, bounced, and then came back up and the other player caught it. Wow, that's great fundamentals." On second thought, scrap that idea. The five minutes they give women's sports on regular "Sportscenter" is plenty of time to cover all the exciting things going on in women's sports.