After Atalanta

I have previously blogged about the problems I have with Nancy Lieberman. And when I saw that the Women's Sports Foundation newsletter this month was running a feature on her , I was a little disappointed. It is nothing especially new. She hasn't done something notable of late. The WSF wants to keep lauding women's sports advocates like Lieberman who is a former WSF president. During the feature Lieberman re-states her complaint (that I initially heard at the Title IX conference at Harvard in April) that women are spending their money on Coach and Prada purses and not on season tickets to local women's intercollegiate or professional sports. Apparently this is a line she uses at most of her public speaking gigs. She also seeks to mention her teenage son whenever possible. My diagnosis: Lieberman has an acute case of apologetic behavior. Apologetic behavior is when female athletes essentially compensate for their presence in sports, a traditionally masculine endeavor, th...

Most everyone who follows basketball knows of the huge disparity in pay for NBA and WNBA players. NBA players are averaging salaries of about $5 million, while WNBA salaries are capped at $100,000. Smith , in the column I referenced in part I of this post, writes that the WNBA plays in the NBA off-season . Even as she argues for equality she falls victim to the discourse that the WNBA is the awkward little sis of the NBA who only gets to shine when the "real" players are vacationing. Can you imagine the NBA season being referred to as the WNBA off-season. The reality is that many WNBA players have no off-season. They head overseas to play ball--often for a lot more money depending on where they go. This feature from ESPN details the "off-season" lives of Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi who play for a team in Russia owned by a very generous Russian man who provides them perks usually only experienced by NBA players. The women get free housing--good housing: a villa with a...

I came across this very interesting story about Elena Delle Donne, considered the number one high school basketball player in the country and the top class of 2008 recruit. Burnt out by all the attention from recruiters and the media, who suggested that the battle over getting her was at the center of the recent decision by Pat Summitt to end the UConn-Tennessee regular season match-up, she has decided to take a 2-month hiatus that will end in early September. She is not taking calls, text messages; she is not playing; she gave up the opportunity to play for the USA U19 team. She is spending the rest of the summer volunteering at a school for children with disabilities. Her decision, and her willingness to talk about it, sheds some light on the craziness that is college recruiting--especially when we are talking about high profile sports and players. And perhaps it will lead to stronger and/or more specific regulations. Of course, this story is only news because Delle Donne is the numb...

This column in the OC Register , written in the wake of the the first Wimbledon that awarded male and female players equal prize money, discusses the many professional sports in which pay disparities are common and extreme and some of the reasons behind the disparity. Actually, columnist Marcia Smith cites one reason specifically: the disparate histories of men's and women's professional sports. The two professional sports that offer equal prize money, tennis and beach volleyball, had men and women participating in them from the start, she (and others she cites) argues. Golf and basketball, she says, have different histories in which men had professional opportunities decades before women did. She is correct about the influence of history, but there are numerous other factors as well and certainly history does not explain it all. For example, even though the Open era in tennis came for men and women at the same time, the history of disparity in "reimbursing" players ...

I have been very American-centric lately so I thought I would round up some news from across the globe Check out Women Who Serve for coverage of the Pan-American Games where Milagros Sequera from Venezuela and ranked 50 on the WTA tour won the gold. Also regarding the Pan-American Games, I was watching ESPN2 on Sunday waiting for some tennis when I caught a bit of the women's beach volleyball final between Cuba and Brazil. And it was in Spanish. I know ESPN has a Spanish-language channel but I was surprised to see them import that coverage to ESPN2. I don't speak Spanish but it was pretty easy to get the gist of what they were saying; "Fantastico!!" is not that hard to translate. So kudos to ESPN for doing a Spanish-language broadcast on a "regular" (the apostrophes are there to indicate the problematics with associating regular and normal with English-speaking) channel. In Dubai, the Al Ahli sports club that sponsors football (aka soccer) has formed a commi...

...but you can't be gay. That is what is being hinted at by Brigham Young University athletic director Tom Holmoe. In an article* about the lack of female coaches in intercollegiate athletics, writer Rhiannon Potkey, looks at the situation in Utah. University of Utah has ten women's teams; only three are coached by women--a stat that falls below the national average. AD Chris Hill said that he thinks it is important to get women into head coaching positions but not as important as finding a "qualified candidate...regardless of gender" according to the article. Hill said: ""We owe it to our student-athletes to find the best coach available for them. We have that in mind whenever a position opens in coaching or administration. Sometimes the pool of women candidates we get just isn't that big or doesn't include women who are as qualified as some men." There is no interrogation of this hackneyed excuse about "most qualified" candidate, or ...

I have plenty of opinions on civil marriage and even more on the wedding industrial complex. But I blog about sport so I don't get a chance to vent them here. But I heard a story recently--if you'll pardon the pun--that marries the two. A NY NPR member station had on the mayor of Cooperstown who was talking about planning for the tourist influx that occurs in the small town every summer during and around induction weekend. She mentioned that she is marrying two baseball fans next weekend. The groom is wearing a Phillies uniform; the bride is donning a Padres uniform. (Or maybe it's the opposite; I can't remember exactly.) Putting aside the fact of the wedding/marriage, I thought it was a rather bold move in a society in which there are more rules and regulations surrounding weddings than there are in any sport. Good for you, I thought. Far braver than some of my queer friends who joke about how their weddings are the only time they will ever be caught in a dress. Basica...

I've added a new link under my favorite websites: Fairplaynow.org . It's a site sponsored by the National Women's Law Center and is aimed at gender equity in grades K-12. Much of the focus on Title IX enforcement has been on intercollegiate athletics. Recently more attention has been paid to high schools and even lower grades likely because of the successful suit brought by high school basketball coach Roderick Jackson who is featured on the website, and pendin legislation that would require high schools to report athletic department data in ways similar to colleges and universities.

1. As I mentioned previously, there are no nude pictures of Ana Ivanovic here. Neither are there pics or discussion of her armpits. I wondered how anyone found me searching for anything to do with armpits then I remembered that I quoted a journalist who said Nadal's armpits were masculine. 2. I was quite excited to see my average daily hit count up over 30 and then I saw that it's largely because of all the people who want glitter headbands. As disappointed as I was by this attention to female athletes' accessories I did take some heart that the searches were for Jennie Finch or the US softball team and glitter headbands. This means that people were watching the World Cup of Softball last week where glitter headbands appeared to be the new must-have fashion accessory. 3. I liked the search for "odd names for a co-ed softball team" though I really can't think of any at the moment. When I played co-ed softball our team was a now-cancelled TV show reference. Not ...

A letter-writer expressing his displeasure over the sports coverage offered by the TriCities paper in Virginia got called to task in a column by opinions editor Andrea Hopkins. What was the dude's gripe? Too much softball coverage that he felt bordered on obsessive. He not only cited the paper for too much coverage--including color pictures!--of girls' softball but moved on to diss softball in general. He was especially upset by this year's Women's College World Series which he found boring and compared the efforts of the student-athletes to little leaguers. He clearly missed the segment in the recent coverage of World Cup of Softball where ESPN showed American pitcher Jennie Finch striking out every Major League Baseball batter she faced. Apparently only one hitter even got a piece of the ball--the softball, mind you, which is larger than a baseball. And he had been tipped off that Finch likes to throw a change-up on her third pitch so he sat back on it. Hardly Little ...

Depends on who's playing, you say? What if it's women? Say you don't know any women's football teams? That's part of the problem Michelle Riddle, an offensive tackle for the D.C. Divas , a team in the Independent Women's Football League, has found. She wrote a very nice but firm letter to The Washington Post complaining about an inaccuracy in a previous article that stated the soon-to-be resumed Washington Freedom soccer team would be the only professional women's team in the DC area. Riddle points out that the Divas have been in the area for seven years but receive little to no coverage. On the opposite coast, the Seattle Majestics , also part of the IWFL is getting coverage in The Seattle Times . The Majestics, a franchise owned by three current players, won their division this year and hope to win their first IWFL championship. The league, by the way, has 30 teams from the US and Canada. Championship Weekend is the second one in August in Atlanta. If you...

This story has a little more inspiration in it than the previous post, I think. The new soccer mom (a term I actually abhor) actually plays soccer. This article about a group of adult women who started playing indoor soccer a few years and recently started playing outdoors in Kansas is cute. The team, called B4 Title IX , recently entered the Sunflower State Games . It inspired me to add some more adult rec opportunities to my sidebar.

The WNBA is in trouble. And it isn't because of attendance or financial woes or the lack of festivities around the All-Star Game --it's because they think Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is an inspiration. Yes, the WNBA gave Rice its 2007 WNBA Inspiration Award Friday at a luncheon with the WNBA all-stars and other figures including Women's Sports Foundation CEO Donna Lopiano. A complete copy of Rice's remarks can be found here . This award (or rather the giving of the award to Rice) epitomizes some of the big issues I have with mainstream sport and with some aspects of women's sports advocacy groups. Rice has a very successful career in an historically male field. She is intelligent and a proven expert in her field. I don't know her entire history but it seems likely she has succeeded in the rich white man's world despite obstacles she, as a black woman, faced. But she is not an inspiration. No one in this administration is an inspiration. In promoting ...

It has been a big summer for Title IX news. In addition to the 35th anniversary last month there have been a couple of prominent cases and/or investigations that the legislation has figured into. One I wrote about earlier this week. Former Fresno State volleyball coach Lindy Vivas won a hefty settlement against her former employer. The follow-up to that story is the interest California state legislators are now taking in gender equity in athletics. This story and accompanying video clip state that legislators plan on looking into the CSU system to see whether this is a bigger problem or if the Vivas incident was an isolated one. Save your time and money: it was not. The other two cases pending that involve former Fresno State female coaches suggests certainly that Fresno has a problem. But even beyond Fresno I think the lawmakers will be shocked to see the crap that female coaches and athletic administrators endure. Also in Title IX news, Florida Gulf Coast University just completed an...

The ESPYs were taped last night. I completely forgot about them this year. Usually I have some critique to offer. Maybe when they air July 15. (Why does ESPN tape the awards show and air it later? It seems silly given that news outlets will report on the event and winners before the show even airs on ESPN.) Anyway, I read an Eonline article about the pre-show festivities and the swag the presenters, et al receive and found this aggravating statement by "Party Girl" (you can deconstruct on your own the use of "girl" to describe an adult professional woman) who covers such star-studded events for E!: "for the past three days, athletes, their wives and sports-loving celebs have been indulging in swag and mojitos at the Mondrian Hotel." So if we follow Party Girl's logic either 1) all athletes are men or 2) all athletes, male and female, date and marry women. Both assumptions of course are problematic. You can comment on the story by following the link abo...

Earlier this week Lindy Vivas, former volleyball coach at Fresno State was awarded $5.85 million by a jury that decided her former employer had discriminated against her. The Vivas trial is actually the first of three by former female coaches at Fresno State. The article linked AP story, also used by ESPN , paints the trial as addressing a single issue: that of retaliation. The suit contended that Vivas was fired despite her successful record because she complained about the lack of gender equity in the department. The other coaches have made like accusations. And from what I hear from California, the jurors certainly saw Fresno State's actions as retaliation against an individual who was trying to get Title IX enforced. But the article leaves out the claims made by Vivas that she was also released because of her perceived sexual orientation: the powers that be thought she was gay. Appalling stories of Ugly Women Athletes Day and of discourse around our team (heteros) and their te...

The International Olympic Committee has been meeting in Guatemala City. Their most notable announcement, of course, was the awarding of the 2014 Winter Games to Sochi, Russia. But the IOC has been doing other things down there as well including overhauling the criteria for adding sports . They have capped the number of summer sports at 28, also setting a minimum of 25. They have also set a maximum of 10,500 participants in a total of 300 events. They have gotten rid of the rule that required 2/3 of voting members to approve the addition of a sport. Unfortunately the article does not say what the new process will be. We do know there will be what are considered "core sports" that are protected from elimination except under extreme circumstances, for example scandals over doping. (Seems like maybe nordic skiing should watch its back, then.) The good news for these rule changes is that softball may be able to get back into the summer games program. Not for London in 2012 but may...

NPR's All Things Considered aired a segment on Friday about The Championships in which host Melissa Block spoke with Bud Collins who was at Wimbledon. There were a few gaffs though in the coverage starting with the brief written explanation on the segment which reads: "Venus Williams beat No. 1-ranked Justine Henin to advance to the women's finals." Not that Venus Williams, winner of the trophy this year, didn't play well but she didn't beat Justine Henin. Poor Marion Bartoli, who had a fantastic tournament didn't get much credit. Also, Bud Collins, who usually does a good job pronouncing players' names (Block also provided correct pronunciations) called Amelie Mauresmo, Amelia. But worst of all was when the two started talking about Venus Williams and Bartoli and the final which would pit a 23 seed against an 18 seed. Block asked about Williams's level of play and noted that she was hampered earlier in the week by pretty severe leg cramps. Wow! Is...

I am always curious how those who are not the six regular readers of this blog find it. The search terms that people put together fascinate me. So this is going to be a semi-regular column where I try to address the inquiries all those anonymous readers have made through their searches. 1. I don't know what it was about Arizona Wildcat pitcher Taryne Mowatt's hair accessories but people want to know more about them. Maybe it's the red glitter. But several people have gotten to After Atalanta looking for "Taryne Mowatt's headbands." I don't know where to get them. Sorry. I did notice though that Northwestern pitcher Eileen Canney had a similar glittery headband in purple. 2. No, there are no nude pictures of Wimbledon semifinalist Ana Ivanovic here (or of Taryne Mowatt). And given that she is only 19, I don't think there are any at all. Guess all those searchers will have to get their fix from Amanda Beard. 3. There is an odd and ongoing fascination wit...

Sam Donnellon, columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, seems to start his piece about the new football league for former college players who don't have NFL stuff complaining about the oversaturation of football on television between the aforementioned NFL, Arena Football, Canadian Football League, and NFL Europa. But really he uses the fact that all these are on television to suggest that men make up the viewership of sports, and despite 35 years of Title IX (not noting of course issues such as lack of enforcement and the fact that there is no requirement for equity on the part of media outlets) women's sports just are not that popular--even with women. Donnellon tries to play it safe by using phrases such as "reverse injustice"--rather than reverse discrimination. And does not come out himself and say that Title IX is hurting men's sports but that the discontent is a sign of the times: "It comes in an age - as we say in pro football - of further review, t...

Au revoir, Amelie. We'll miss you on Saturday. I missed about a day of Wimbledon to go camping/hiking but saw the Serena Williams injury drama and some of the Nadal-Soderling 5-setter. And alas I saw Mauresmo collapse against Nicole Vaidisova. I knew this would be a tough match but I thought if Mauresmo continued to play the way she had been, she would tough it out. She let Vaidisova, who was not serving well, off the hook and into the next round. The San Francisco Chronicle sports blog runs down yesterday's happenings where writer Bruce Jenkins gives Serena a hard time for breaking her racket. (I will get to the cries of games(wo)manship that have been swirling more furiously than the London winds in a moment.) I didn't think it was that bad. Certainly I have seen far more egregious behavior from other players--mostly men--who receive far less criticism for their actions. Marat Safin is notorious for bad behavior and I remember once Andre Agassi, in his bad boy days, brea...

Reading the myriad of tributes to Title IX that came on or around the 35th anniversary of the legislation, I came across this one written by Susan Reimer of the Baltimore Sun . It is part movie review ( Gracie ) and part memoir of her own athletic endeavors prior to and post Title IX. Reimer takes the discussion of Title IX in a slightly different direction from other articles I have seen. She talks not about numbers of opportunities and the experience of winning, but of missing the opportunity to build "a real relationship with our bodies." This is a crucial point that often gets overlooked when we talk about things like boys' teams versus girls' teams and legislation and court cases and cuts. Why is it actually important for young women to be able to play sports? Because, as Reimer says, the transition from girlhood to womanhood is a time where bodies have a tendency to "shock[] us or betray[] us or embarrass[] us." And, I would add, that women's bodie...

One of the major complaints by women's sports advocates is the lack of media attention women's sports get. It is a source of major frustration when media owners/administrators charge that people are not interested in women's sports and they don't cover them and we counter that how can they be interested when they are not covered. The newly formed, to be launched in August, Big Ten Network is saying it is committed to providing equal coverge to men's and women's sports. Jim Delany, Big Ten commissioner said the plan is to achieve equal coverage in three years. If it's a brand new network why don't they just start it up with equal programming? Why ease into it? As positive as this committment is, there have been some controversies around the network. First, the network wants cable providers in Big Ten states to add the network to their basic cable packages. The providers are not having it calling the network a "niche" channel that will show secon...

...who aren't watching women's sports. Femmefan.com, a website for the female fan reports on a new study that found the number of American women who consider themselves fans--sometimes "avid" fans--of professional sports (and they mean men's sports) growing. But the bemoans the fact that sports franchises and sports media fail to acknowledge the female sports fan or to know what she wants (because, the author assumes, the female fan must innately want something different). I have problems with the all women are inherently different argument, but I agree that most sport media ignore women because they can't figure out how to talk to them. She makes a good point when she critiques magazine marketing. One can walk into any bookstore and find any number of publications about sports--some very specific. But in the "women's" section there are mags about marriage and fashion and homemaking. Unfortunately the author inadvertently raises a point that actu...