After Atalanta

Some people I have spoken with don't like Maria Sharapova because they think she's too pretty--and not much else (besides a good tennis player). I think she's pretty smart and has a good sense of humor. I love the way she deals with the corps of media folk who ask her largely inane questions. And Sharapova continued to handle herself well yesterday when asked to respond to Frenchman Gilles Simon's comments about how tennis should go back to the days when women got paid less than men at the Grand Slam tournaments. Simon thinks men's tennis is more entertaining; that the matches are more interesting. Of course he didn't offer any means of how to measure entertainment value. He didn't note that the rest of the year women earn less at their tournaments than the men do at theirs. And he was forced to acknowledge that his straight-set loss at Wimbledon was probably not that entertaining. Simon was recently elected to the ATP Players' Council, which seems to...

Pretty interesting interview with Kathryn Bertine over at the Huffington Post the other day. Bertine is a senior editor at espnW and is trying to qualify for the Olympic Games and has written a book about her attempt to qualify in 2008. ESPN sponsored her quest to do so, but she didn't make it for those games. So she's at it again looking to be a cyclist in London in 2012. Here's what impressed me: her clear recognition of the skewed treatment of female athletes with sport itself and, of course, the media coverage. She gives the example of the lack of prize money in women's cycling, but notes that so few cyclists will speak up because of fear of alienating sponsors. Because there's nothing worse, we know, than an athlete who speaks her/his mind. And it's especially bad if that athlete is a woman who is complaining. I mean, she could be a feminist. Horrors! So Bertine, being the only cyclist from Saint Kitts and Nevis (she got dual citizenship as part of her qual...

Business Week came out with its list of the 100 most powerful athletes . Only eight women made the list (which was based on both on-field and off-field earnings). Only two (Serena and Venus Williams) made the top 50. If only off-field earnings were taken into consideration more women would have made the list--including Annika Sorenstam and Lisa Leslie. But the lack of on-field opportunities in team sports was a major factor. Lack seems to be an understatement actually: women have .037 percent the number of spots on team rosters as men. So when I hear that we don't need Title IX in college sports any more, I think about the professional realm which is not subject to gender equity regulations. And I wonder what things would look like in intercollegiate athletics without it. It would probably be better than .037 percent but how much?

• I n basketball, the $5.85 million per year average NBA salary (in 2008-2009) is 59 times higher than the $99,500 salary of WNBA athletes. • I n golf, the annual prize money for women in the LPGA rose by 234 percent between 2006 and 2008 to $62 million, while the PGA annual prize money for men rose by 310 percent to $214.4 million. • I n tennis, even though five of the top 10 highest-paid players are women, the top-paid male tennis player, Roger Federer, earns $9 million more than the top-paid woman, Maria Sharapova. • I n all sports, the 50 highest-earning athletes in the U.S. (salary, winnings, endorsements, appearances and bonuses) in 2008 were exclusively men. These are stats from The White House Project Report on equity in various fields including sport. The report also notes the lack of leadership and pay equity at various levels of sport, in the US and internationally. In college coaching and leadership, there is a wide salary differential, linked to the gender of the coach an...

Tonight the women of LSU (please find conspicuous the absence of the phrase Lady Tigers) will play against Louisville for a spot in the Sweet Sixteen. It will likely be an uphill battle for LSU but it's been a pretty "upsetting" tourney so far so we shall see... Former LSU superstar Sylvia Fowles will not be there to root on her alma mater. She's in Russia. Moscow specifically playing for Spartak along with UConn alums Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi. Actually most of the stars of the WNBA (well not Parker because she's pregnant and on the cover of ESPN Magazine and all that) are overseas playing this time of year. It's a good gig for most. Better than the one they have here playing for the WNBA. I've talked about this before. But the feature on Fowles reminded me just how lucrative it is there and how...well...not...it is here. (Note the irony--former communist country there, adamant capitalists here...) No one will say how much she is making playing for Spart...

Looks like I wasn't the only one interested in the financial figures Jim Calhoun put out there the other day. [Oh, and I was wrong about his salary: it's $1.6 million; not $1.7 million. My bad.] Also, the $12 million he referenced was not, as I hypothesized, the combined men's and women's revenues. I should have known better than to assume the head of the men's program actually knows or cares about what's going on on the other side (unless of course it negatively affects him). According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (h/t to EBuz), Calhoun's $12 million figure comes from the revenues reported in the Equity in Athletics data Act plus the $5 million from corporate sponsorship. This reveals some of the issues with the data collected by the Department of Education. Basically, it doesn't tell the whole story. Obviously the $5 million is income but it doesn't get reported under revenues. Also, as Calhoun himself noted, he earns a lot more than $1.6 ...

So here's an interesting twist on the current economic situation--you know, the one that is affecting almost every state budget, including Connecticut. UConn men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun gets paid $1.7 million a year making him the highest paid state employee in Connecticut. And a reporter called him on it the other day in a post-game press conference and Calhoun was not too pleased with the line of questioning. (See You Tube video below.) There is talk every once in a while (usually around the time that a new million dollar plus contract gets negotiated) about the amount of money coaches make but this seems to be a new lens through which to look at the situation. Not a lens Calhoun was interested in a taking a look through. After he got over his initial lackluster defense (just shut up!) he noted that they bring in $12 million to the university. Of course he meant the combined basketball program. Men's basketball brings in $7.3 million. And its expenses are $2.3 mill...

If you're sick of hearing or depressed about the economy and the myriad of effects--stop reading here. Because there has been a lot of talk about how the recession is affecting sports. I've already mentioned it here . But it seems sports and the economy are the hot topic so I thought I would run down what I have seen so far. Schools, of course, are going through budget cuts (though doesn't it seem that public schools are always in a budget crunch?) and some of the cuts are in athletics. Title IX Blog has a post about how parents are ensuring that female athletes do not receive the brunt of those cuts. USA Today has a piece about the problems non-major sports are having and includes: some concern over how the WPS will fare in this economy; news of Arena Football's suspension; and the loss of the Houston Comets. Of course not everyone is suffering. Men's professional soccer in North America is expanding. The National Lacrosse League had a soldout crowd at it's cha...

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...

Frank Deford, who I go hot and cold on (he's on NPR Morning Edition once a week), published this editorial at Sports Illustrated online on the recent increase in attention to coaching salaries. The gist of it: stop pretending revenue-generating collegiate sports such as men's basketball and football have anything at all to do with education. Like professional sports, Deford argues, these are for entertainment value and the market should determine coaching salaries. I have a healthy amount of skepticism about being able to reform any patriarchal, capitalist system from within and this applies to intercollegiate athletics as well. But Deford's "solution" about separating them out of athletic departments and creating a "department of entertainment" is not the kind of radical system overhaul that I can really get behind. It is a facetious one I realize, but one that just allows Deford to say "stop whining about these salaries" without proffering an...

A serious discussion on coaches' salaries that is. As I mentioned yesterday, the NCAA is looking into ways to control the exponential increases in coaches' salaries that account for a large chunk of athletic department budgets; salaries that cannot be sustained, usually, under current athletic department configurations and thus lead to cuts of both women's and men's teams. Cuts, that Dr. Christine Grant noted, have nothing to do with Title IX but rather poor financial management. This point could not be clearer when looking at the case of Rutgers University . Rutgers has opted to cut 6 athletic teams this year. It is also giving "hefty raises" to its football coaches (plural because football has many coaches). Rutgers president Richard McCormick is not accepting his raise this year--a year where the New Jersey state university is trying to deal with an $80 million budget shortfall. The athletic director defends the raises noting Rutgers football had a successf...

The NCAA is looking into getting an antitrust exemption for college sports. This would allow the association to place caps on coaches' salaries but not limit the money they receive from boosters and athletic wear companies. Apparently this action is one the NCAA has considered for a while now but a meeting (Chronicle of Higher Education--subscription only) of the Knight Commission earlier this week that addressed the issue of coaches' salaries--largely spurred by the recent announcement of Alabama football coach Nick Saban's $32 million contract!!--set the action in motion again. Other happenings at the meeting: discussions about gender equity. Dr. Christine Grant , professor emeritus at University of Iowa and former Director of Women's Athletics spoke, about how the budgets of football and men's basketball have tripled and quadrupled, respectively, in the past two decades. Part of the increase is due to rising coaches' salaries. Also on the agenda, recruiting ...