After a grueling 34-game, 5-month regular season, the
Minnesota Lynx are facing the Indiana Fever in the WNBA Finals. If you like watching sports that will lull
you to sleep, make sure you tune in to catch all of the excitement. If you prefer watching sports that actually
have more fans than players, then stick with football and playoff
baseball.
The WNBA is mired in irrelevance. You have to go to the back page of the sports
section, read the little box scores in fine print, and thumb through stories of
offseason deals and NASCAR controversies before you even get to the WNBA. Their regular-season games are about as
popular as my high-school football games, and the attendance, TV ratings, and
profit margins all attest to the sport’s unpopularity.
Founded in 1996, the league barely made it through its first
decade of existence. During the
mid-2000s, the NBA spent over $10 million per year to keep the WNBA financially
solvent, and teams were losing money.
This year, league attendance is at a paltry 7,400 fans per game, a
number that has been steadily declining since its peak at 11,000 in 1998. Their main sponsor is the cellphone-midget
Boost Mobile, and even with ESPN and ABC TV contracts, average viewership is
only at 270,000 per game. To put that in
perspective, the NBA regularly eclipses 2 million viewers every night.
The WNBA is hopelessly overshadowed by the behemoths of the
industry. The NBA, MLB and NFL all
produce significantly better products than the WNBA. With a season that overlaps each of these
professional sports, women’s basketball does not stand a chance. They are all competing for media attention
and airtime, and the boys always win.
Ladies, I am not a misogynist. I support women’s athletics. Some of my fondest memories are watching Abby
Wambach – the pride of my hometown in Rochester, NY – strike headers into the
back of the net, and witnessing the US women’s soccer team make thrilling runs
in the Olympics and World Cup. I enjoyed
watching our female Olympians compete this summer, especially in gymnastics and
swimming.
So this is not a dis on women. This is a dis on women’s professional basketball.
Maybe I have a weird taste in sports. I like action. I like home-run swings and goal-line
leaps. I like diving headers and swift
footwork. I like 12-6 curveballs and
5-yard pounds up the middle. I like it
when dunks are the norm, not the exception, and I don’t see why people go crazy
every time a 6-foot 8-inch woman with a 7-foot wingspan makes one (Brittney
Griner).
I also like tradition.
I honor legendary figures and respect the records of the past. Excitement keeps us entertained in the
short-term, but history keeps us loyal.
The WNBA is neither exciting nor historical.
Despite the challenges, the WNBA keeps chugging along
resiliently. While it does not make much
money, attract many fans, or make a lot of headlines, was being popular ever
its purpose? Perhaps the league was
created not to profit, but to make a statement.
Just as women are making advances in politics and education,
they are also trying to break the status quo in an industry dominated by
testosterone. “ESPN W,” a new website
dedicated entirely to women’s sports, mirrors this revolution against the
status quo. The website is run by women
writers and analysts, who rarely appear on the parent website. They are creating their own niche in sports
journalism, filling it with stories like the resurgence of Baylor women’s
soccer and the death of an LPGA official with West Nile Virus.
With about as many Facebook “likes” as my own column, they
are not exactly grabbing a lot of attention.
But at least the website exists, right?
The importance of women’s sports transcends their entertainment or
historical value. They are here simply
to challenge the boys.
But that challenge is ultimately a weak one. Ideology and identity statements make for a
nice, fluffy story. Yet, it has created
a sport founded upon sand. When you get
down to the basics, sports are about entertainment, and women’s basketball will
always be less spectacular and less appreciated than any show that the men put
on.
If you want real gender equality, you have to look somewhere
else besides basketball.
