• How Come No One Watches Women's Hoops?

  Posted Friday, March 20, 2009 11:26 AM | By Dayo Olopade
  
  
  sponsorship
  
  While I enjoy March Madness for the entertainment of watching the earnest, last-gasp efforts of talented young athletes, I didn’t fill out a bracket for the men’s tournament this year. And even though I consistently watched one of my best girlfriends play hoops throughout college, I didn’t even consider filling out the women’s bracket. Martin Johnson has an interesting piece in the Root telling me why. I pretty much exhausted my knowledge of college basketball while recording our weekly podcast (give it a listen; you can tell). But I buy his analysis—that there is some weird stigma still attached to women’s basketball in particular that is not present for say, women’s tennis, or women’s swimming, or even women’s golf.
  
  Here’s my armchair psychologist’s take: The female players are not overexposed. Call it the Imus effect? Basketball is all long shorts and sweatbands—even male athletes have only their arms (sexy!) to rope with elaborate, distinguishing tattoos. During last year’s Olympics in Beijing, there was much to-do about half-naked women athletes winning press coverage not for their high level of achievement but for their (obviously) slammin’ bodies. And anecdotal experience suggests that hot, female “on-the-court” television anchors are as much of a draw for men’s sports-watching as the games themselves. Perhaps dudes, subliminally accustomed to a little tittilation with their sports fix, take a pass on lady hoopsters, and speculation—and general spectatorship—for the female Final Four falls.
  
  That’s not terribly well-reasoned as much as it's provocative. (Though, searching around to try to pin down how many more men watch sports than women, I found that “Since the 1999 regular season, nearly every NFL team has implemented a series of classes meant to educate female fans. NFL 101 Workshops for Women invites women to increase their understanding of football's history, offensive and defensive strategies and how to decipher game officials' signals.” Nice.) Any other theories?
  Filed under: female athletes, basketball, NCAA tournament
  0 Comments

  Add Yours

  Or join the discussion
  on the Fray