We all want better coverage!

No new material right now.  One of the goals of this blog is to put up information that you just can't find anywhere else.  And unfortunately, since women's basketball doesn't have the advantage of big data the way that men's basketball does, fans are forced to collect the data themselves.  So I'm working on some stuff about roster turnover right now.  It should be interesting, but it is time-consuming.

Here are a couple of articles worth reading while you wait.

WNBA President Laurel Richie told USA today that she wants the WNBA to be treated like one of the major sports.

"My wish is that we get covered like any other sports league. I want more coverage and I want more discussion of the game and I want more discussion of our players," Richie said. "I feel like sometimes we get covered as good girls playing a good game of basketball and isn't it good for young girls to see these role models."

Yep, unfortunately that tends to be the trend when MediaMart (like WalMart, but for Media) covers the WNBA.  Either that, or leaping to report all about the latest error/scandal and nothing about the league's accomplishments.  Maybe when sports departments aren't 95 plus percent male, that will happen.

The New Inquiry has an article by Autumn Whitefiled-Madrano called "Watching Women Want". It's definitely worth a read.  The author writes the following about the Women's World Cup:

What moves me is the players’ faces, and watching women want. It’s not hard to find images of women in the public act of doing beyond what’s been allotted by tired stereotypes. We see women legislating, creating, speaking, protesting—images that weren’t available just a couple of generations ago. But we still don’t often see women in the act of wanting. And we need to see this, because when you’re in the act of wanting something badly enough, there isn’t room for self-consciousness. How you look, your stance, your hair, your makeup, whether you appear pretty, your sex appeal: all of these things that coalesce in my brain, and maybe yours, to form a hum so low and so constant that I take it as a state of being—and when you want, they disappear. When you want, the want goes to the fore. The you can take a backseat.

Maybe the WNBA should communicate more of the act of wanting, the screams, the passion, the I-don't-give-a-damn.  I'm not an experts at how the genders are socialized, but it doesn't take a radical to see that a lot of times, people are conditioned not to want for themselves, but to want what other people want.  It's a radical act to stand up and say "I want this!"  We need to see less of WNBA athletes smiling for the camera with perfect hair, and more WNBA athletes in game face glory, without apologies.

So I want better coverage of the WNBA, and I want it now.