A Difficult Quiz?

From Frisco Del Rosario:

1. Explain how you calculate a pitcher's earned run average.
2. Name five current Lakers other than Kobe.
3. Name all of the golf masters tournaments.
4. Who is the winningest college Division I men's basketball coach and which years was he at the school(s) he compiled that record?
5. Which NFL player recorded the most career touchdowns, what years and who'd he play for?
6. Name the last ten Heisman Trophy winners and where they played in college.

A heads-up: Frisco didn't write this quiz, so we won't blame him for #3, as there are no "golf masters tournaments." There is the Masters Tournament, which is one tournament. Undoubtedly they meant to ask for #3, "name all of the golf Grand Slam tournaments.

The sports information director in charge of women's basketball at the University of the Pacific was given this quiz because she wanted to work at ESPN - before offering an interview, they wanted to test her sports knowledge.

Some comments:

1. It seems that what ESPN cares about is: baseball, pro basketball, golf, men's college basketball, men's college football and pro football. No other sport actually exists as ESPN: I watch women's college basketball on ESPN but virtually nothing else. Aside from poker, I don't remember any other "sports" being represented there. Maybe a few MLS games.

2. How hard are these questions? I can only answer one of them - the pitcher's earned run average question, since I used to follow baseball very closely. (Old baseball, that is.) You would have to follow six sports closely enough to get those questions, and you'd have to follow them in some depth - two questions ask you for the name of more than one person.

I suspect that #1, #4 and #5 might be the easiest, because each asks you to recall one prominent fact. #2 and #3 ask you to have intermediate knowledge about a sport (pro basketball, golf). #6 can only be answered by college football mavens.

3. Was it a fair quiz? Is this one of those cases at Southern polls in the 1950s where one group of voters is asked to spell "cat" and the other is asked when the Edict of Nantes was revoked? That, I don't know. My question: how many of these can you get right? Frisco del Rosario implies that the majority of ESPN talking heads couldn't get all of these right, and I concur - I'd be surprised to meet some that could get three right.

You can get the answers by highlighting the text in white below.

1. Earned run average is simply earned runs divided by innings pitched.
2. Any five of these names will do: Ron Artest, Shannon Brown, Andrew Bynum, Jordan Farmar, Derek Fisher, Pau Gasol, Didier Ilunga-Mbenga, Adam Morrison, Larmar Odom, Josh Powell, Sasha Vujacic, Luke Walton.
3. The Masters, the US Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship. Double points if you call the British Open "The Open". If I were the woman who was asked this stuff, I would have answered the Kraft Nabisco, the LPGA Championship, the US Women's Open, and the Women's British Open and dared the man to claim otherwise.
4. I believe that for coaches who have only coached at current Division I schools, the men's basketball leader is Bob Knight. 1965-71 at Army, 1972-2000 at Indiana, 2001-08 at Texas Tech. I believe this is 42 seasons.
5. Jerry Rice: 1985-2000 at San Francisco, 2001-04 at Oakland and 2004 at Seattle.
6. In reverse chronological order: Mark Ingram Jr, Alabama; Sam Bradford, Oklahoma; Tim Tebow, Florida; Troy Smith, Ohio State; Reggie Bush, USC; Matt Leinart, USC; Jason White, Oklahoma; Carson Palmer, USC; Eric Crouch, Nebraska; and Chris Weinke, Florida State.

Boilerplate

I wrote to ESPN about how much I enjoyed their coverage of the WNBA and that Mechelle Voepel was doing a fine job. This was a few days ago, and ESPN finally sent their boilerplate response: "We got your mail, etc." At least I was "acked" as the Scientologists put it.

Still waiting for that response from the AJC.

More Than Just "Click-Love"

The Women's Hoops Blog and Swish Appeal have both made the request, and now, I'm going to make it.

The following link is the link to the ESPN ombudsman site. This is where you go to (usually) complain about stuff, or (rarely) praise ESPN for what they do.

I believe that ESPN is doing a lot better job at covering women's basketball than the print media is. As a matter of fact, they do a better job of covering the WNBA than the home newspapers of several WNBA teams - I'm looking at you, AJC, although the coverage did get better for the Dream near the end of the season. ESPN also has Mechelle Voepel's reporting, which is very good.

But ESPN isn't going to keep covering women's sports if they don't think anyone is reading it. (ESPN women's basketball articles are frequently and anonymously trolled.) You - yes, YOU, reader - need to go to the link and scribble out fifty words or so, even if it's just "I like your coverage and I want more."

People read that stuff at ESPN. You might think they don't, but they do. And after reading 100 comments a day in the range of "You suck!" don't you think they'll be happy to read something positive?

So go to the link, and tell them that you like the job ESPN has doing. If you did, let me know in the comments. Here's an off-season comments thread that we need to get filled up till Blogger breaks!

New Rethinking Basketball Post

Q at Rethinking Basketball has written one of the best articles I've read from him about gender and marketing in the WNBA.

The title is "What Difference a Year Makes: Why Ahistorical Analyses of Sport Perpetuate Misrepresentations of the WNBA". He writes about the recent placement of Candace Parker on the cover of ESPN: The Magazine, about all of the brouhaha about the first paragraph of the article about her discussing her cup size (of all things), and delves into an analysis of basketball and gender narratives.

My comments:

1. From a paragraph:

"However, the big difference this time around is that given all the media attention given to Parker and the Olympics last year, speaking from a place self-imposed ignorance about the WNBA no longer carries much credibility. Parker's arrival on the national (and international) sports scene last summer was one of those special moments in sports history that even the below-average lunkhead male would have had a hard time just ignoring. This does not mean we suddenly have a whole lot of enlightened, gender-conscious WNBA commentary...it's just a new sort of ignorance I guess..."

I concur. I don't think a person can pass themselves off as a sportswriter anymore without at least a basic knowledge of the WNBA. Part of the task of being a sportswriter these days is that you have to know a little bit about everything...or at least, you have to be able to fake it. In the old days, sportswriters were assigned one beat (baseball, or whatever) and rarely wrote about other manners. With the rise of television, with the power of syndicated columns and with cutbacks in press coverage, sportwriters are expected to be a bit more ranging in their knowledge. Even if they're called upon to comment upon golf or tennis, they had better know at least the names of the major names in those sports.

Q believes the days of calling yourself a sportswriter and bleating "I don't know anything about the WNBA" are pretty much over. The W might not make the news that much, but it makes it enough. You'd better know something about the league other than the same old tired arguments before you pontificate about its success or failure, not just "I watched one game and I didn't like it."

2. The back half of the blog post elaborates on two different subjects that aren't so much contradictory as that they have a tenuous connection: first, the idea of women as athletes. Second, the idea that other sports have greater gravitas and therefore deserve more attention.

With regard to the first, Q writes that the problem is not so much that men's basketball is inherently exciting because men can do more with a basketball, but the problem is that for many people - even some females - the concept of "female" somehow does not include "athlete". When some people try to put the two together, you can almost hear the computer in their head smoke and belch, with an electronic voice shouting "Does not compute! Does not compute!"

For those unenlightened (and I choose the word deliberately) persons, female athletic achievement can only be understood in comparison to male athletic achievement. Even when outsiders write about the sports and how to improve the WNBA, they either a) make suggestions so that it becomes a version of the male game played by smaller people - lower the rims, etc., or b) fall back on the baseline definition of female as "someone attractive to men" - wear unitards, etc.

(On most threads filled with comments by the red-bellied-woodpeckers (RBWs) among us, one of the suggestions - term defined loosely - for the WNBA is that everyone should be dressing like the women's volleyball players, bikinis and all. At first, I thought this was just gender-bashing, but with the announcement of an actual season of the Lingerie Football League, I'm not so sure...I'm coming to believe that these RBWs thought they were actually giving rational advice!)

The second part - the part about the legitimacy of a league in the public eye - I've written about before. Particularly, in the first two decades of baseball, basketball and football the new-born leagues were racked with franchise relocations, collapses, and other embarassing failures.

I believe that the acceptance of the WNBA is closely linked to Kubler-Rosses Five Stages of terminal illness - in this case, not so much as an illness as a paradigm shift and the death of an idea that Women Are Supposed To Be In This Box and Never Come Out of It. It's about being forced to expand one's perception not just about athletes and athletics, but about gender roles:

1. Denial: "The WNBA? What's that? Who cares?"
2. Anger: "God, that league sucks! It's nothing but a bunch of lesbians! David Stern should do something about that league! I swear, if ESPN reports one more time about the WNBA, I'll go to CBS Sports!"
3. Bargaining: "You know the WNBA is inferior. Therefore, you should go along with me and no one should follow it." "You can't win. The interests against the WNBA are too entrenched. Give up."

And when that doesn't work, "I'd like the WNBA, but why do they have to shove it down my throat? Why does ESPN have to report on its front page? Why does ESPN have to show this on TV when they could show (soccer, more baseball, D-league)? If the WNBA just wouldn't do (X) I could put up with it."

I expect in the next 20 years, we'll hit the Depression stage.

"What ever happened to women at least trying to be attractive? Who could it hurt?"
"Women have completely destroyed sports. It used to be that a man had a refuge."
"Remember the days when you didn't have to put the word 'men's' in front of a sport?"

However, don't lose hope. I suspect a few have moved on to Acceptance. "Acceptance" doesn't mean watching the WNBA, it just means not getting your underwear all wound up about it. In the same way that I "accept" NASCAR. (Sorry, it's just not my thing.)

But I digress. Good blog post. Go read it.

Letter to ESPN Ombudsman

To: Le Anne Schreiber, ESPN Ombudsman

Dear Ms. Schreiber,

I understand that you are the journalistic ombudsman for ESPN. In which case, I would like to register a complaint regarding one of your better-known journalists, Mr. Bill Simmons.

It is my understanding that he made the following quote during a podcast:

"Oh I have some good news for you. WNBA probably done after this year. I don't know if that's good news. Yeah it's not good news, I take that back, cause, you know, it's nice that we have a professional league that girls can aspire to play in. Unfortunately, it loses money hand-over-fist and it's a bad business plan. So at some point...you know...at what point does it just become charity?"

It is implied that Mr. Simmons has some inside information about the status of the WNBA. In which case, why does he not quote a source, or if he wishes to keep his source a secret, then why does he state explicitly that he heard this information from a highly-placed NBA or WNBA insider? Without such quotation, Simmons implies that it's simply common knowledge that the WNBA is "done" -- knowledge so common that sources need not be quoted. And who could foist an argument against that tsunami of hot air that passes for "common knowledge" in the sports world?

In effect Simmons - and ESPN in extension - are influencing the future financial health of a league that has several fans that watch ESPN. With the economic downturn in the United States and the suspension of operations of the Arena Football League for one year, every sports franchise is in financial trouble and small operations like the WNBA the moreso. What effect will Mr. Simmons's pronunciamentos have when the WNBA seeks future advertisers?

In attempting to mix journalism with opinion, he gets the journalism wrong and the less said about his opinion, the better. How important is ESPN's journalistic credibility? If Mr. Simmons is given carte blanche to pass off opinion as fact then my answer would be "not very important, obviously".

Yours,

--Pet

WNBA Bashers Bring You the WNBA on ESPN

Have you heard of Erik Kuselias? He was paired-up with Nancy Lieberman doing coverage for the WNBA on ESPN.

Milton Kent at Sports and the World at Large has some background about this guy. A fan of women's basketball, he ain't.

Here's an idea - instead of giving a hater air time on a women's basketball program, why not put Milton Kent in as announcer? (Instead of the nth iteration of Colin Cowherd.) Ooops...sorry. I was expecting ESPN to do something rational. What the hell was I thinking?

Chat With Ivory Latta

ESPN just posted the results of their chat with Ivory Latta. There are the typical mix of game questions and personal interest questions, but this one stuck out in my mind.

Mike (Washington, DC): Seems like the tempo and fast break game has really picked up the last 5 to 6 games. Has this become a point of emphasis as the season has continued? Or do you think as you've become more comfortable leading this team you've been able to implement Coach Meadors' plans with more success?

Ivory Latta: (11:41 AM ET ) As the games go on, I've become more confident and Coach Meadors has a lot of confidence in me. I definitely love the uptempo game like we had at North Carolina. I like that we're playing this way in Atlanta. The uptempo game allows us to get some easy baskets.

Latta also mentions that there's a need to control the tempo of the game against Phoenix tonight. Phoenix still has a lot of "run and gun" left in the Mercury from the Westhead era.

However, the implied change to an uptempo game makes me wonder if Coach Meadors is adjusting the game plan to fit into Ivory's strengths as a player. If so, good decision.

Ask Ivory Latta

At this link:

http://proxy.espn.go.com/chat/chatESPN?event_id=21314

It's an ESPN chat with Ivory Latta at 11:45 AM, Tuesday July 1st. Be sure to get your questions in.

P. S. WE GET TO ASK IVORY LATTA QUESTIONS! TOMORROW AM!!

No Love for the Dream

ESPN's latest WNBA Power Rankings are out, and there will be no love for the Dream, ranked #14 out of #14:

"The Dream's shooting percentage is anything but. Atlanta is shooting a league-worst 34.7 percent, including Sunday's 29 percent accuracy (21 of 72) against Los Angeles. The Dream, who are shooting 18 percent from downtown, hit just two field goals in the entire second quarter."

Well, the Mystics are ranked #12, with a league low 60.7 PPG. If there's a chance of getting a win, it's tonight.