After Atalanta

I decided to write you this letter to try to get my feelings out. I just...I just can't do it aloud. I need to work out some of these thoughts I have in writing. I think a big part of the problem is my own mismanagement of expectations. I mean, I know your history, I know your patterns, and yet my hopes seem to rise despite my best intentions to control them. And them--boom-disappointment. And I hope you don't see this letter as me taking it out on you. But...well...I am. I am. 'Cause I am mad, ESPN. And I am sad. And I am disappointed. I mean, I know Women's History Month is over, and that the attention I experienced last month was bound to wane. But I waited and waited this morning. I waited throughout Sports Center. I watched the segment on Tiger and opening day hoopla. I was pleased to see coverage of the Kraft Nabisco Championships and Brittany Lincicome's first major win. But I wanted highlights. Highlights of all the WPS games this weekend. Highlights of my B...

Bryan Hollister of the Bleacher Report has a " humor" column this week in which he lists and explains the top 15 sports that are not sports. I'm not going to get super uptight about this list. But I do have some things to say about his choices. First, though, it should be noted that the definition of sport is always up for debate--and this is the way it should be. Because a sport does not always involve "blood, sweat, and tears shed through hours of workouts, practices, scrimmages, successes, and failures." Or at least not all those elements all the time. It's a pretty naive definition of a sport, but it's the only one that Hollister offers. I'm not going to comment on all 15 of Hollister's offerings. Check them out for yourself. Here are just some of my thoughts on some of his. Winter sports seem to be especially heavy hit, curling, bobsled, and luge. And if Hollister really thinks that no one has ever said about luge "that's what I wan...

Earlier this week the Women's Sports Foundation held their annual awards dinner in NYC. Nastia Liukin won the 2008 Sportswoman of the Year Award (individual) and Jessica Mendoza won it for a female athlete competing in a team sport. Of course, gymnastics could be considered a team sport as well though there is the individual component of it unlike in softball and other team sports. I was kind of bummed at the choice of recipients. I do like Mendoza and believe she is a good athlete and a good person very much involved in using sport to make change within and outside of sport, but she gets a lot of publicity already. Liukin doesn't really do anything for me and she doesn't appear to have done much outside of gymnastics. The thing most of the articles about the award if touting is Liukin's upcoming guest appearance on Gossip Girl. I myself voted for Ashley Fiolek, the teenager who races motocross (a very male dominated field). And Patty Cisneros for Team Sportswoman of th...

...is USA Today today. There's an article on the new audience demographics in sports that marketers are clamoring for: women. Women are watching more men's professional sports, which has lead specific products for the female fan like better-fitting t-shirts (unfortunately they often come in pink). But marketers are even paying attention to women's sports, like professional basketball, which are starting to be seen as viable advertising venues. And, of course, the Olympics have always attracted more women. Of course the advertisers seem to think all women are the same and want to see the same thing. So when it became clear (like 4 years ago in Athens) that Michael Phelps--a man--was going to be the biggest story in Beijing, the powers-that-be started to put the female spin on it. They introduced his mother. So if you started to get a little annoyed at all the shots of Debbie Phelps, know that they were all for you women. And this woman was indeed over Debbie Phelps by the ...

1. The University of Utah gymnastics team held a "pink out " during a recent meet where they encouraged attendees to wear pink to raise awareness about breast cancer. Those wearing pink got in for free but were asked to donate the usual price of a ticket ($4) to the representative of the American Cancer Society who was at the meet. I've said before that I think such events are part of some weird form of activism (because just wearing pink isn't really doing anything at all especially when only $1 of that shirt you bought for $20 in Target is going to an organization you don't even know the name of let alone what their practices and politics might be) that plays on gender stereotypes. I find it problematic that when women's sports teams engage in such events it's seen as something they're supposed to do. The Utah coach said "since we're a women's sport, it seems like the right thing to do." When men's teams use pink equipment (like...