The Most Conservative Sport?

Essayist Chuck Klosterman writes about popular culture as a music critic and sometimes-sports commentator. In a recent article for ESPN, he writes about why he is a football fan. The gist of Klosterman's argument is that football is a sport with an amazing slight-of-hand : it passes itself off as a conservative sport in terms of its values but is actually the most liberal sport in terms of game innovation. As a socially conservative sport, it will always appeal to those who believe in paternalism and macho toughness - as well as what he calls a "reactionary" sports media. (*) However, as Klosterman puts it:

What the NFL has realized is that they have no better marketing tool than the game itself. Every other sport tries to fool us. Baseball sells itself as some kind of timeless, historical pastime that acts as the bridge to a better era of American life, an argument that now seems beyond preposterous. The NBA tries to create synergy with anything that might engage youth culture (hip-hop, abstract primordial competition, nostalgia for the 1980s, the word "amazing," Hurricane Katrina, etc.). NASCAR connects itself to red state contrarianism. Soccer aligns itself with forward-thinking globalists who enjoy fandom more than sports. But football only uses football. They are the product they sell. Unlike David Stern's failed vision for the NBA, the NFL Network does not try to expand its empire by pushing the sport toward nonchalant audiences with transitory interest; it never tries to trick anybody into watching something they don't already like.

Later on, Klosterman answers the question about why he thinks football is so compelling - why someone might like football, as opposed to something else. The important point, however, is that other sports attempt to sell something other than the game itself - nostalgia or some form of social contrarianism. Since the NFL only sells the game, as it were, the game is endlessly reinvented and tinkered with. If the schedule has to be expanded, why not? Instant replay? Why not? Radios in helmets? Why not? (**)

Despite the high-quality writing, what I found most appealing about Klosterman's essay was the dichotomy between the presentation and the actuality: football presents itself as conservative but is highly innovative. You could apply this dichotomy to other sports:

Sport-Presentation-Actuality

Football - conservative presentation, liberal actuality
Baseball - conservative presentation, conservative actuality
NBA Basketball - liberal presentation, slightly conservative actuality
Soccer - liberal presentation (in the United States), conservative actuality

Unfortunately, this implies that football and baseball are exactly conservative in the same way. Maybe we should use a continuum and give football a "10" on conservative presentation and baseball an "8".

Baseball is a little bit less conservative than football in its presentation - how could a sport that has figures like Jackie Robinson and Bill Lee be truly conservative? - but in terms of the rules it is very conservative. The fundamental rules are to be left untouched; interleague play caused a firestorm and they're still arguing about the designated hitter 30 years later.

Basketball would only get a "4" or a "5" on the presentation scale for conservatism. The sport has two contending social groups, those that think that Bob Cousy is the bee's knees and those that think that LeBron is Da Bomb. In terms of a sport, it hasn't changed that much at all. The 3-pointer is the only major innovation in several years in basketball. (***)

Soccer - in the United States anyway - is seen as a sport that threatens the long-standing reactionary order of sports and would probably get a "2 or 3" on the conservatism scale. In terms of the rules, however, the sport would get a hard "9" or maybe even a "10". I can't think of a major soccer rule change since the Dane's head was first kicked across a field in England.



The above led to wonder where women's basketball fits into these scheme. I came to a startling conclusion. Namely, that the WNBA is sort of the "anti-NFL". The NFL presents itself as a conservative sport but is actually a liberal one; the WNBA presents itself as a liberal sport, but might be the most conservative form of basketball there is.

In terms of the WNBA's presentation, it would be hard to think of a sport with a more liberal consciousness. The WNBA can't seem to decide whether to sell the game itself, or to sell "sisterhood is powerful" - so it sells both. The first campaign for the WNBA was "We Got Next" - "we" being "women" in this case - so in the very first ad campaigns, it wasn't so much the game being sold as the fact that women were playing it. Note that it's not the the NBAW but the WNBA - "women" comes before "basketball".

The sport has an active lesbian fanbase and in terms of the major sports, the individual teams probably do more to recognize their gay fanbase than just about any other sport. (Yes, it's a pitiful job, but when compared to the four major sports the WNBA is almost a consciousness-raising group.) The criticism from the reactionary sports media is that the WNBA - and its fans - are freaks, either too mannish or not mannish enough, choosing whichever cudgel they believe will draw the most blood.

However, the sport itself is very conservative, more conservative that football pretends to be. Hell, the WNBA is more conservative than the NBA! The WNBA doesn't have that weird charge arc in the lane. They haven't adapted the "three steps and dunk" traveling rule that the NBA is so eager to try out. For such liberal thinkers, the WNBA's hard core fans are martinet purists when it comes to their sport. Very few of the dimensions of the women's game are scaled down from the men's game. Maybe the 3-point arc is tweaked a little bit but the same court markings are there. The only major concession is the smaller ball, and some fans don't even like that much change.

There have been calls from sources to perhaps lower the size of the rim a few inches or to shrink the size of the court. Most of those calls have come from those who don't follow the sport. (****) These calls are almost unanimously rejected. There are two reasons why these arguments are rejected. The first is that women's basketball fans want the game not be dominated by athleticism and height, and lowering the rims would tilt the game in that direction. The second is that historically authorities have changed the rules of women's basketball in order to marginalize women's sports. As a result, many women want the game to be as much like the men's game as much as possible.

The problem is that the WNBA is very much like the men's game - the men's game of 1957, before the height of the players had caught up to the dimensions of the court. Furthermore, even though shrinking the size of the court would increasing scoring and not really change the passing game so beloved by WNBA fans, fans want the WNBA's court to remain the size of the men's. (*****)



All right. There are valid arguments for not lowering the rim. There might even be valid arguments for not changing the size of the court. But the reactionary attitude of the WNBA fans to any tinkering at all begs the question: would any change to the WNBA game be welcomed? Is the WNBA going to be like baseball, with its purists fighting off any suggested changes with a flurry of "yes-buts"? It seems that the only criticisms that the WNBA will accepts are ones from "within the academy" so to speak. After all, even your worst enemies might have some good ideas.

Maybe this explains why I like the WNBA so much. What was the sport I was following before I started following the WNBA? Baseball. Maybe, despite my attraction to what I think of as social liberalism, I have a longing for conservative sports.

_____

(*) - There is a ton of discussion - on this blog and others - as to why the WNBA is so slow to gain acceptance in the old media. Maybe the explanation is that "the gatekeepers in traditional sports are reactionary sexist pigs". Frankly, the explanation might need be no more complex than that.

(**) - However, there is something lost in liberalizing the rules of your sport - rule changes and tweaks make it much harder to compare players across eras. It's very easy to compare players across eras in baseball; it's much harder in football.

(***) - The impact of the new charge arc and traveling rules is yet to be seen.

(****) - It appears, unfortunately, that most critics of women's basketball come from the reactionary douchebag school. They'll come up with two or three ideas that might be worth considering, and then torpedo their entire effort with something like "and the players should also all play in lingerie". It's like they have a cognitive version of Tourette's Syndrome.

(*****) - A lot of the arguments that fans use to defend the rules of women's basketball come from cost effectiveness - "We can't change Rule X/Equipment Y because it would be too expensive." The initial arguments against the smaller ball came from the perspective of the bean counter, that it would cothat it would be an unfair costs to high schools and colleges who would now have to purchase separate balls for the women. It's sort of a conservative argument if you think about it.

The Eternal Comparison: Women's Basketball in Spain

Journalist Alejandro Santana, who follows Perfumerias in Spain, writes about media coverage in Spain. Perfumerias is lucky as its home city - Salamanca - has three local newspapers, three radio shows and one television station. However:

But Salamanca’s case is exceptional and the media coverage is not the same in the rest of the country. Women’s sport and especially Women’s basketball, is not treated like it deserves to be treated. Games are almost never broadcast on the national TV. According to the national TV, some other competitions, even if they are from minor sports, are more interesting. The national sports newspapers dedicate to Women's basketball only few lines once in a while. Last season, when Salamanca became the vice-champion of the Euroleague, the media didn't really comment this performance. It seems that they didn't realize what a huge event it was! In fact, they just noticed the importance of the performance. That’s how unfair the media coverage of Women’s basketball in Spain is! That’s why, if you love Women’s basketball, you have to restrict yourself and wait for a piece of news to appear from somewhere. On the contrary, in Salamanca thousands of fans can’t wait to buy a newspaper every day to read everything which deals with Perfumeria Avenida.

It looks Spanish women's basketball fans are like American women's basketball fans - you either have to strip-mine the existing media or invent one of your own to find anything out.

An Answer from the AJC

Shawn McIntosh answered my letter. I don't want to reprint the entire letter - I don't know if that's strictly legal or not - but basically, her answer was that the coverage of the Dream corresponded with the size of the fan base. I think that that's simply a cop-out myself, as high school football teams get more coverage than the Dream and I doubt those teams draw 7,000 fans per game. However, the response was a pleasant one and I'm happy for the quick turn-around.

The important part of the response:

So I'm certainly taking note of your request for more coverage and will pass it on to our editors. They will have to consider the options in the new season, taking into consideration the size of the fan base, the size of the section, the relative interest in the topic and the record of the team.

Record of the team? Hm.

Size of the section? We don't have much control over that.

What we do have control over is the "size of the fan base" and the "relative interest".

Click the AJC links when Dream stories pop up.

Be loud and a little bit obnoxious, but not too much. "The squeaky wheel gets the grease."

And if you've not written Ms. McIntosh, please do so.

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.

Advocating for the Dream: Speak Up!

It appears that the public editor of the AJC is Shawn McIntosh. The e-mail for McIntosh is insideajc@ajc.com.

I believe that the "public editor" of the AJC used to be the position of ombudsman. Looking through Google, it seems that the AJC has gone through advocates like a prostitute goes through tricks. You'd better write Ms. McIntosh quickly; tomorrow it might be somebody else.

There's a profile for Ms. McIntosh on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution web site.

I wish that some of my readers would send Ms. McIntosh a few lines. Hey, we send e-mail all day; why not send out one brief e-mail for a good cause?

Some general guidelines:

1. It should be about one subject: about how the Dream is poorly treated by the AJC, and not about wide issues of the WNBA and media coverage. Ms. McIntosh can't do anything about the latter.

2. It should state examples. (It does't have to be footnoted but it should site what I consider particular slights - "Every morning I open the paper and I'm lucky to get a boxscore, buried on the back page.")

3. It should be an argument. "Here's what you did. Here's what you could so. Here's why you should do it."

4. It should be serious enough to demand a response. I think a little anger is warranted given the shabby treatment by the Atlanta media but it shouldn't descend into ad-hominem and cursing.

So here I am, advocating again, wondering if either my readers or the AJC will listen. Please, please, PLEASE send a brief e-mail. A "YOUR DREAM COVERAGE SUX!" e-mail will be better than nothing at all.

I'll close with a snippet from one of my favorite shows:

Jodie: "Daria, if you don't like it, you complain."
Daria: "I don't complain."
Jodie: "That's all you ever do."
Daria: "I mean, I don't get involved."
Jodie: "Then I guess you don't really care that much, do you?"

Leslie, the Media and "Looking Like Women"

Leslie's actual words about both the media coverage and about how women should carry themselves as representatives of the WNBA are available at Swish Appeal. The entire audio of Leslie's post-game comments can now be heard.

Leslie: "And I can tell you, I'm still really disappointed where women's basketball is. I mean, I just have to say, that this is an opportunity for me, but to see how hard we play and to look at the news and not even be able to find out, you know, to see the highlights of what's happening at Detroit and Indiana or to see the phenomenal play that's happened here, you know, with Diana and the Sparks and myself and Candace Parker, her having 18 rebounds and 24 points.

There's just been phenomenal basketball being played in the WNBA and we just cannot get our place, you know, in society and it's unfortunate that this great opportunity is being missed by, you know, I think the world at times. So I just hope that you guys continue to do your job and continue to write about us and support us. Because we deserve to have a place in the media, we deserve to have a place in the news. And when you turn on the sports channels, you should see what happened in the WNBA. We deserve that."



...and her words on WNBA deportment.

Leslie: "Also another important message is how we represent ourselves as women. We need to look like women; it's important how we carry ourselves, how we dress on and off the court. A lot of these things have to be addressed and continue to be addressed because we are the product, and it's important.

People want to see a good product. They do. That's just the bottom line. And you need to be marketable and I think that more women need to understand that here in our league."

She should have said, "we need to look professional" - a message about professionalism is not one about gender roles.

Starting a Pro Sports League

CBS Sports wrote an article four years ago about what it takes to start a sports league from the ground up. Contributing was Rick Horrow, who calls himself "The Sports Professor" and is pretty much a professional sports law commentator.

The first paragraph celebrated three sports events: the Dew Action Sports Tour in Louisville, World Bowl XIII in Duesseldorf, Germany and ArenaBowl XIX in Las Vegas. Only the Dew Action Sports Tour - devoted to "action" or extreme sports - still exists. NFL Europa closed shop in 2007, and the Arena Football League gave up the ghost in 2009.

Despite the fact that the article might not have predictive weight, here are the four factors stated by Morrow:

1. The "niche" sport should have a substantial core of loyal and intense followers. Morrow's example was the Professional Bowlers Association.

2. The start-up league must attract a stable of emotionally and economically secure owners and investors committed for the long term. This time, the example was AVP Pro Beach Volleyball.

3. The long-term business blueprint should maximize television exposure (whether through rights fees or initial start-up investment). Morrow used the Arena Football League as his example.

4. The business plan must rely on a level of consistent support and growth from corporate America. The case studies used are those of the Professional Bull Riders Tour and the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society.

Without looking at how the WNBA fits in as a "niche" sport, let's look at the WNBA as it relates to the development of other major pro sports.

First, does the WNBA have a substantial core of loyal and intense followers? It all depends by what you want to call "substantial". I remember that Val Ackerman said at the foundation of the WNBA that she expected about 4,500 fans per game. I also remember that the goal for the Atlanta Dream when it was founded as a franchise was to have about 1,500 season holders.

We don't have a lot of numbers to look at - just those two, taken from two completely different time frames (1997 and 2008). The questions any sports league has to answer is:

a) how many season ticket holders are there per franchise, and
b) what is the rough mathematical relationship between STHs and regular attendees?

Historically, you would think that the WNBA does have a substantial core of loyal and intense followers - these should be the people who have been following girls high school basketball and women's college basketball. They've been following the sport for two decades. The major men's sports - baseball, basketball and football - all had fans who had been following the sport at an organized level for over two decades before those sports went pro.

On the other hand, you have to wonder how numerous the women's basketball fanbase is - high numbers for Tennessee and Connecticut women's basketball doesn't tell the story. Annemarie Ferrell's paper related the stories of women who watched men's college basketball but didn't watch women's college basketball. Among the many reasons given is that the last time these women watched the women's college game - twenty years earlier - the gyms were virtually deserted.

Women playing professional team sports is only a recent development. If the core isn't substantial enough - so to speak - is there a chance that the size of this core can grow? I feel that part of the reason of the demise of Arena Football was that the sport had no "core" - people were quite willing to attend it but the "core" of its fan base were fans who followed regular season football. There was no core of people who would forsake all other sports - if it came to that - to watch Arena Football. Does the WNBA have a group of people who would put their WNBA experience above following women's college sports if the financial crunch came?

Second, how economically secure are the owners and investors of the WNBA? I've mentioned the list of owners for the WNBA in the past. Some of the names on that list are billionaires. Some are multi-millionaires, or even "two-digit" multi-millionaires. Some come from fields (real estate) that have taken a hit in the Great Recession, others have seemingly secure sources of income.

For the WNBA, I think the more important question is that of the "emotionally secure" investors. How long have the owners of WNBA teams had their fortunes? How experienced are they as business managers? How likely are they to bail out at the first sign of trouble? I have my doubts about some of the WNBA owners - without naming names, I wonder if some of them really have the nerve - there's no nicer way to say it - to navigate the rough patches.

Part of that question comes from whether or not they expect profit, and if so, how much. Once again, I want to point to the Arena Football League and what I perceive as the emotional instability of its investors. I suspect that a lot of them were operating on razor-thin margins and were looking to get out at the first opportunity. However, the TV contract kept many owners satisfied enough and I'm sure many hoped that the proposed Platinum Equity deal would bail them out of their troubles. When that deal fell through, the league collapsed.

The third question is "television exposure". I think Morrow simplifies the matter greatly in the article - the question is "media exposure". The TV deal for the Arena Football League wasn't enough to save that league, and I doubt that the WNBA's TV deal is much better.

The WNBA has an advantage in having the patronship of NBA TV. Many critics claim that the NBA just props up the WNBA, but many overlook the biggest prop of all - cable television. No matter how far you are away from the WNBA, if you can get NBA TV you are guaranteed to see some of the games, even on weekdays.

On the other hand, the WNBA has the disadvantage of a hostile print media in many of its cities. Sports departments of major newspapers tend to be more conservative, and at least with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the attitude of the reporters (on their AJC-hosted blogs) to the Dream is that of outright scorn. If the reporters feel free to mock the WNBA, what do the editors think? This begs the question "can a sport survive without the partnership of print media?" The Dream and other WNBA teams are certainly trying to do this by embracing the "new media" of the Internet and Web 2.0 applications. Whether this is a successful strategy remains to be seen - there is a chance that the strategy could be successful, given falling newspaper circulation which might simply diminish the scornful voices.

Finally, we look at corporate sponsorship. The WNBA has made some big strides in this area with two teams - Phoenix and Los Angeles - selling jersey sponsorships and the Pacers/Fever entering a long-term deal with Kroger. The detractors claim that the selling of jersey space indicates desperation, but one person's desperation is another person's opportunity. The WNBA hasn't been around long enough to consider its jersey space sacred, and the majority of the WNBA's players plays overseas in the off-season where jersey sponsorship is a given. As far as the WNBA is concerned, not only is there no controversy, it's also a "no-brainer". Indeed, pro leagues are starting to look at selling sponsorship at least on their practice jerseys.

Will the WNBA end up like NFL Europa or the Arena Football League? I think that the WNBA has a few advantages - the existence of a core of followers (even an insubstantial one) and the willingness to seek corporate dollars by doing something different. However, the hostility of the print media is a definite disadvantage. If the WNBA can find solid - and emotionally stable - investors, then I would conclude that the WNBA has a brighter future than either of those two aforementioned entities.

The State of Atlanta Sports Coverage

afoundingfan reports from the Atlanta Dream Message Board about the abysmal coverage of not just the Dream, but of women's sports in general in Atlanta.

"... the coverage in Atlanta by the major news outlets is poor. The AJC is guilty of not having coverage or burying any coverage, as witnessed by the difficulty of finding the Dream tab on its website. As of a few weeks ago, if you could find the Dream page, it still had Betty's picture on it.(*) Basically HS football and the Peachtree Road Race get better coverage by the AJC. I know last year they had an intern cover the team. (**)

I did see where one of the old school ATL TV sports anchors, Chuck Dowdle, is retiring, don't know if it will change things for the better at that station. The best local coverage was by Josh Bagarinsky of Score Atlanta, a free publication....game articles, a blog with insight and questions (particularly about playing time) that went deeper than the AJC's AP-culled blurbs. Maybe he could ask MM about Young if he hasn't already.

Honestly there is a mindset in the ATL area that is very sexist (and I don't throw that term around freely), it is deeply entrenched and it ain't gonna change anytime soon. If you don't have the name Dawg, Braves, Falcons Hawks or Yellow Jackets (ok, even Thrashers), they don't care."

I concur 100 percent with this assessment.

(*) - Betty Lennox, a player from the 2008 Atlanta Dream, now with the Sparks.
(**) - This is true. Jenna Marina reported the games for the AJC; this year they got nobody. And it's not like Philips Arena is a massive distance away from the AJC parking lot.

Your Local Sports Coverage

Every now and then, just for spits and grins, I'll open up a major metropolitan newspaper and see if I can find coverage of women's athletics. I got into it after they stopped printing those "Where's Waldo" books. The name of the paper in question is withheld, as all parties are innocent until proven guilty.

Page 1: Nothing at all. Essentially, there was a human interest story on Paul Johnson, the coach of Georgia Tech. (Did you know he played golf in Scotland this summer?) There was also a report about football camp...high school football camp. The only mention of women in any way, shape or form was a comment that Phil Mickelson was coming back to the PGA tour after taking some time off to be with his wife and mother as they fought breast cancer.

Page 2: Michael Phelps. Some hype about an upcoming Marlins game. (Ever notice women's sports never get hyped? Hmmm.) GM is going to end its Buick Open golf deal. A completely woman-free page two.

Page 3: Baseball standings. The ancient Randy Johnson tore his shoulder. I remember reading somewhere that if men were judged by their appearance in the exact same way women are judged in the WNBA for it, Randy Johnson would never have been allowed to leave his house, much less attend a major league baseball game.

Page 4: Four columns above the fold about Brett Favre not playing football. More about on-line clinics for high school coaches and officials and a continuation of the high school article from the front page. In the first four pages of the sports section, there have been a grand total of two mentions of women, and they weren't even athletes.

Page 5: The penultimate page, where you throw in all the crap that didn't fit in anywhere else. In the "Etc." section of "Briefly", the results of the Zvonareva-Koryttseva match and the Schnyder-De Los Rios match in the Istanbul Cup in tennis are mentioned. See if you can say those names three times fast.

In the eyestrain type, a few women got hired for some college spots, like Samantha Huge being named the senior AD at Delaware - and at Point Park University, Katie Mahall was named volunteer assistant softball coach!

The WNBA standings were listed. No boxscores of the previous night's games. The only mention at all of a game tomorrow night is a brief, "Phoenix at Atlanta, 7:30 pm." At least they put Atlanta in bold.

Results from the WTA tour are listed under the "Tennis" section. In the bottom right hand corner - a list of LPGA money leaders.

Page 6: An advertisement for Fry's. Remember who is paying for your sports coverage, folks.

Can Blogging Ever Replace Journalism?

I've recently read the testimony of David Simon to a Senate Subcommittee regarding the state of newspapers in the United States. You don't have to a serious student of journalism to realize that newspapers are having a hard time of it. It seems that a month hardly passes before you read about some newspaper in America either scaling down or going under.

Simon proposes a couple of remedies to the problem. One remedy is to for newspapers to move behind a pay wall, because Simon believes that the present model of giving content away for free isn't working. The other remedy is for newspapers to become non-profit corporations and move away from the news-for-profit model.

He is particularly pessimistic about the internet as a source for news. Since most blogs (including this one) simply repost excerpts from online news sources, he makes the point that the parasites (blogs) are killing the hosts (newspapers). Furthermore, he states that in order for newspapers to be worth the price of an on-line subscription, they're going to have to do what blogs can't do - create original content from investigative journalism, through the cultivation of sources and through the ability to devote themselves to news gathering. Amateur bloggers have neither the time nor the financial freedom to do either.

Simon has some good points. I began to think about Simon's points with regard to the state of the WNBA in particular and the state of sports journalism in general. This led me to think about what it is that exactly sports journalists - or what any kind of journalists - do.

So what is news? Here's my working definition: news is something that you didn't know before and that has happened relatively recently. As a result, sports journalists have to be present at sports events as they happen in hopes of not only presenting the facts at hand - the game results and statistics - but also to prove insight in the form of quotes and speaking to personnel who are unavailable to the general public.

A sport writer is at his or her most useful when he or she can provide information through investigation and cultivation of sources. Which leads to the question: is this what's going on in sports journalism?

I think the answer is "no" for the most part. Most sports writers today don't supply much of anything that isn't readily available elsewhere. They can't be the first with the boxscore anymore. The WNBA (for example) realizes that its fans want statistics. Those are available at the website, sometimes in real time. Sometimes, the league teams will even supply quotes for writers on deadline. There's nothing taking place at a sports event that couldn't be obtained by any of the other writers present - all of them are eating from the same plate, so to speak. All any individual writer is doing choosing what he or she cares to pass on, and all of the writers usually have the same number of choices. A give writer might make the decision that quote A is more important than quote B, or choose to emphasize one fact or ignoring another, but its unlikely that any one writer at the event could supply something that some other writer somewhere wouldn't have picked up. There's no "investigation" in your usual post-game piece.

As a result, bloviation has taken the place of investigation. Since few writers can scoop the others because all are presented the same buffet of facts, the writer can only distinguish himself or herself either through being a better storyteller, or more likely, through writing an opinion piece. The impression I get is that the big money in sports journalism isn't in covering the beat anymore - it's in being a feature columnist like Bill Simmons, or in being a television talking head. (The joke about sports journalism is that every sportwriter has to have an opinion about everything, whether he knows anything about it or not.) The present philosophy seems to be "why not just let the AP cover the games?" Sports journalism is not much more than a collection of "This I Believe" columns, some AP game writeups and a back page of statistics.

Frankly, I don't need to pay 50 cents to read someone's opinion about a game that we both saw with our own two eyes or someone trying to play amateur comedian on Page Two. There are hundreds of guys on the internet giving out those opinions for free, and if I want chuckles there's the Chuckle Hut out on Route 12.

Granted, some journalists have the "name power" to command an interview with the coach or the general manager. In the past, this was a given - sports writers commanded the leverage of an implicit threat: talk to me or I'll just write what I want to. Back in the days of two papers and no television, this power could be used as a cudgel. However, today's media is a mile wide and an inch deep and a multitude of outlets compete for the public's divided attention. Such threats can be laughed off now because few sports writers possess such a powerful platform. There's no more Dick Young in sports.

So to sum up:

* sports reporting is at its best with investigation and in-depth reporting
* for various reasons, this isn't being done any more
* all writers select from the same pool of facts, and therefore
* opinion sports journalism is now pre-eminent.

So what options do sports bloggers have?

Clearly, the same facts about the game are available to us as to the general press. We can get those facts in real time. Bloggers can't get game quotes, but sometimes the teams will even supply those, and 95 percent of game quotes aren't really "scoops" of any sort. The major advantage print journalists have is that they at least have access to the movers and shakers. Sports bloggers don't, for the most part.

However, sports bloggers can do some things that print journalists can't. The chief advantage is that a print journalist's time is both divided and directed. Print journalists are expected to be able to cover more than one sport these days. Despite the fact that they are paid full time for their skills, how much of that time will be spent thinking about the problems of any specific sport?

The stereotype of internet bloggers being obsessive geeks becomes a strength instead of a weakness. Sports bloggers - writing from the prospective of fans - spend a lot of time thinking about sports. I would dare to venture that I spend much more time thinking about the WNBA in my spare time than the print journalist for, say, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that attends the WNBA game. This is because my plate is free in my spare time, and she only has so many hours in her day. She might have to cover a different sports event every day. How much intellectual firepower can she direct to the WNBA?

Furthermore, her time is directed. She doesn't have the leisure to think about what she wants to. She has an editor who wants to please the bulk of the readership, and that editor tells her what she has to do. This means reporting about "football and spring football" at least in Atlanta. If she becomes really good at her job she might be hired and given a beat, or if she's even better she might be given an opinion column and can write about what she chooses. But without a full time beat or an opinion platform her priorities are set by someone else and her work is closely monitored.

Sports bloggers can set their own priorities. They're not only mavens regarding their chosen sports but they're their own editors. (If you read this blog, you can see how that could be a detriment.) If I want to do a statistical study of the WNBA for a full week, there's no editor to stop me. I only have to please myself. This gives a sports blogger freedom that a reporter might envy.

There is still the disadvantage in that the journalist can speak to the participants directly. Furthermore, there is the strong possibility that newspapers with an on-line presence will move to a subscription-only basis - deny sports bloggers the chance to mooch off free content. The only sources a sports blogger will have would be the statistics and the press releases. Surely, nothing can be done with that, right?

Allow me to mention the second advantage sports bloggers could have over sports journalists. This would involve thinking more like a faux-historian and less like a faux-journalist. I am reminded of the great writer I. F. Stone and his investigative writing. What Stone would do is take a look at the public record and examine the record for gaps and incongruities. A lot can be found in the most pedestrian writing if you know where to look for it.

For example, take the press release about the waiver of Jessica Morrow. The information is combined in the same press release that announces the signing of Marlies Gipson. There's nothing said about why Morrow was waived - most press releases don't do that - but it certainly begs the question of why a third-round draft pick suddenly gets dropped without so much as showing up to mini-camp.

If the release is taken at face value, it just becomes one more available fact out of many. If you examine the information in depth, however, it suggests a mystery. I. F. Stone was great at mining such mysteries, in trying to determine what the press didn't tell you and why it didn't.

Sports bloggers are going to have to become good at mining such pedestrian data sources. It's something that sports journalists can't do, and it could be a real advantage in blogging becoming an alternative media. A good blogger has to bring something to the table that a journalist can't bring - either a skill at statistics, or a grounding in the league's history, or a skill for information analysis. I know several internet bloggers that have taught me more about the WNBA than the WNBA's reporters ever did (or tried to do).

It's not that sports bloggers are going to "replace" journalism. Rather, it's that sports blogging is going to provide a type of content that sports journalists can't (yet) provide. Right now, journalists aren't so much providing content as they are providing opinion. I'm in complete agreement that sports journalists have to give us the content we want - original investigative journalism about our chosen sport, whether that sport be the NBA or WNBA - or readers are going to go elsewhere.

Marynell Meadors Makes the New York Times

From this article in the New York Times, written by the AP:

Oklahoma’s Courtney Paris, Louisville’s Angel McCoughtry and Connecticut’s Renee Montgomery — all of whom will be playing in the Final Four this weekend — are expected to be among the top selections, along with Maryland’s Kristi Toliver and Marissa Coleman.

“I think those are the top five or six players,” said Atlanta Dream Coach Marynell Meadors, whose team has the No. 1 pick in this year’s draft on Thursday.

Okay, so we know the first pick next week will be either Courtney Paris, Angel McCoughtry, Renee Montgomery, Kristi Toliver or Marissa Coleman. That narrows it down.

More words from Meadors regarding the off-season roster changes:

“We’ve gotten pretty good in a short period of time, we just got to get everybody playing together,” Meadors said. “I’ve got to have some young backup people that are ready to step in. We’re mainly focusing on the guard situation first to try to have better players in that area.”

Hmmm. Is Marynell trying to feint everyone out on that first pick?

WNBA Champs Without Radio or TV Package in 2009

According to a poster at RebKell, there is neither a local radio nor a local TV package in place for the Detroit Shock, the 2008 WNBA Champions. This means that we enter 2009 with the potential of the Shock being completely blacked out in their local area. Furthermore, the WNBA has always offered streaming radio to those who don't live near a WNBA team and it looks like the chances of those fans to follow the Shock live are similarly diminished.

As for the Dream, there are two ways to follow them from a distance. One is through the local Comcast Sports South broadcasts, and the other is on local radio. (The very best way is live. Trust me.) Super Talk 1230 and 1340 AM in Atlanta carry the Dream, with beloved announcer Art Eckman announcing the game. (We love him 'cause he's so clueless at times, it's almost comedy. But we tease Art, we do.)

The Shock will be on national TV at least three times and maybe - just maybe - on Fox Sports Detroit if the Tigers aren't stinking up the channel again.

Clay Kellam wrote, "Given the state of Detroit's economy, it's hard to imagine any media outlet spending any extra money." It's hard enough in Detroit at it is. Maybe we could have Internet radio. Or even Pirate Radio; I'd take either one. I can just imagine someone walking around the Palace at Auburn Hills talking into a paper cup and secretly broadcasting the games without the express written consent of the WNBA.

The Men's Sports Section

An interesting observation at the end of the DC BasketCases blog:

Tuesday Morning Observation . . . Last week, an editorial in the Baltimore Sun wondered why the public does not pay sufficient attention to women's sports. Well, we have at least part of the answer: Monday's Washington Post devoted an entire, separate, 14-page section to the men's NCAA Tournament. Today's paper give's the women's Tournament a few pages inside the sports section. As we said last week, the Sun's editorial made no mention of the role that the media play in this disparity, but it should have.

WNBA Losing National TV Exposure?

From the Sports Media Watch blog:

Only thirteen WNBA games will air on ESPN and ABC during the 2009 season, the first of a new eight-year television agreement. The 13 games is down from 22 last year, and marks the fewest number of national television appearances ever for the WNBA.

After airing eight WNBA games last season, ABC is currently set to air only one game in 2009, an Opening Day matchup between the Shock and Sparks -- the teams who famously brawled during a game last season. ABC is also likely to air the yet-to-be-announced WNBA All Star Game. Meanwhile, ESPN2 will air 12 "WNBA Tuesday" telecasts, down from 14 last year.

Well, that's certainly an emptying of the glass. But you can still look at the full part of the glass - the current TV agreement is an eight-year agreement, and the WNBA still gets national exposure.

Furthermore, there are still the regional networks like CSS and MSG that show games locally.

I'm just surprised that no one on one of the WNBA message boards picked up on this.

Diana Taurasi: "Shut the Hell Up, Melissa Rohlin".

A few days ago, a WNBA hater named Melissa Rohlin wrote a article that had so many flaws in it than it would be a waste of my labor to number then. Astronomers don't come down from telescopes to tell morons that no, the moon is not made of green cheese.

Read Diana Taurasi's response to Rohlin's feature "article". Diana says it better than I could.

The Dream: Last in Wins, First in Fan Loyalty?

This link is from Dream Diary, the official Atlanta Dream Blog. They mention an AP article which was posted on the ESPN website. Read this:

The Dream rank in the top six in three different key categories: average attendance, full season tickets, and individual game tickets. Not so bad for a that finished with a 1-16 record at home this season.

Atlanta averaged 8,500 tickets sold per game and had three sellouts. The league's last expansion team before Atlanta, the Chicago Sky, averaged 3,642 a game in 2006. The Sky play their home games at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion, which holds 6,958.

You think we'll be there next season? Damn straight. Now if only the media will take notice.

AJC Update: Scarab Writes to Mike Knobler

Dream fan Scarab posted the following to the Atlanta Dream Message Board. She sent Mike Knobler an e-mail about the missing Dream article, and here is her message and his response

(* * *)

(Scarab writes)

Here's the response I got about there not being anything in the AJC about our win against the Sparks (FYI, Knobler's done some of the more recent Dream articles in AJC):

From: Mike Knobler [mailto:MKnobler@ajc.com]
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2008 5:02 PM
Subject: Re: What about the Dream win last night?!


There was an Associated Press story about the Dream's victory in the edition of the AJC delivered to my house. It was on page E8. If it was not in your edition, it means that your edition was printed earlier than mine. Los Angeles is on Pacific Time, which means the game finished too late for the story to appear in all of our editions.

Thanks for your interest in our sports section.

Mike Knobler

P.S. — Here is the final AP story (even the edition delivered to my house did not have this version, but an earlier one without any quotes):

BC-BKL--Dream-Sparks, 2nd Ld-Writethru,0437

Dream rally for 83-72 victory over Sparks
Eds: Dream 83, Sparks 72; UPDATES with quotes.
AP Photo LAS102, LAS101, LAS103
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Iziane Castro Marques scored 15 of her 23 points in the fourth quarter as the Atlanta Dream rallied for a 83-72 victory over the Los Angeles Sparks on Thursday night, snapping a 10-game losing streak.
Betty Lennox added 21 points and Ivory Latta tied a career best with 10 assists for the expansion Dream (4-29), who avoided breaking the WNBA record for losses in a season. Atlanta closes the season Friday night at Seattle.
"We grew up a lot tonight," Atlanta coach Marynell Meadors said. "L.A. by far has the best talent of anybody in the league. But our team controlled the tempo, especially in the last part of the third quarter and in the fourth quarter. I thought that was the difference."
Candace Parker had 23 points, 11 rebounds, seven assists and four blocks for the Sparks (19-14). DeLisha Milton-Jones added 21 points and Lisa Leslie had 16 points and nine rebounds.
"We knew that this team had nothing to lose," Parker said of the Dream. "But we were very sluggish. When we play bad, it's bad. But when we play good, we're capable of being in the hunt for the championship."
The Sparks held a 63-57 lead with 8:52 to play but scored just eight points during the next 7:54. Meanwhile, Castro Marques scored 15 points in a span of 5:57 as the Dream built a 79-69 advantage with 2:12 remaining.
"I just had open shots off the plays we had," Castro Marques said. "I was more aggressive, too, in taking it to the (basket) on fast breaks."
Los Angeles trailed 49-37 before using a 12-0 surge to force a 49-49 tie with 4:42 left in the third quarter.
Margo Dydek, the WNBA's all-time leader in blocked shots, made her season debut after signing with the Sparks on Aug. 27. The 7-foot-2 Dydek, who gave birth in April, did not score in 2 minutes.


(* * *)

And that concludes this whole shocking tale. We now return you to your regular stations.

CafeMerc: Me Likee

Q over at Rethinking Basketball has an entry about CafeMerc, a social networking site for Phoenix Mercury fans. What's amazing is that the site appears to be hosted off the WNBA's servers.

If anyone from the Dream organization is reading this, I have a question: how do we get one of these? I'd definitely be making blog entries on such a site, even if they were duplicates of the ones on the Pleasant Dreams blog.

New York Times Article about the Dream

Looks like we made the pages of the Grey Lady.

An excerpt:

Meadors was brought on board partly because she had endured W.N.B.A. start-ups as a coach with the Charlotte Sting and director of scouting for the Miami Sol. Prospective players were screened for character. Bolen said a spiritual foundation was not a factor in roster selection, but many of the players said prayer sustained them during the drought, which set a record for W.N.B.A. futility when the losing streak reached 14 games.

“I hate to get all religion on you, but I try to have faith in whatever he has planned for me,” forward Jennifer Lacy said.

A must read, so go read.

P. S. Heads up to the Women's Hoops Blog.

A Small Adjustment

Very funny reading the hater blogs regarding the Candace Parker dunk. Most of these blogs are peppered with references to "chicks" and "broads". (That's one step up from "suffer ye not the witches to live." I'm always looking for the silver lining, you see.)

Anyway, I've been mulling around this 11 percent number in terms of the coverage between men's sports and women's sports. This means that for every column of women's sports coverage, there are about eight columns of men's sports coverage. I wondered if this could account for the disparity in attendance figures between men's pro ball and women's pro ball.

Take the NBA. According to the fine monkeys at Wikipedia, the NBA's total attendance for 2006-07 was 21,841,480. I don't know if this includes the playoffs or not.

The WNBA had 1,702,948 attendance in 2007. That does not include the playoffs.

Now, let's adjust for a universe where the WNBA plays 82 games and has 30 teams, just like the NBA.

WNBA attendance baseline: 1,702,948
WNBA attendance as NBA attendance: 9,475,441

That's pretty damn good. Games played goes up from 34 to 82, and the number of teams goes from 13 to 30.

Compare 21,841,480 to 9,475,441. That's only a 2.3 to 1 advantage the NBA has in warm seats compared to the WNBA. And compared to the 8 to 1 advantage in media coverage the NBA has over the WNBA in media exposure...well, that's freaking fantastic! No wonder they want to expand the W to 16 teams!

Of course, this doesn't account for the fact that the WNBA plays at a time of year where the only competition is baseball and the NBA finals. But the attendance would have to fall to below 2.7 million to say, "hey, the NBA is inherently more popular even accounting how much more media coverage the NBA gets." Like it or, the WNBA is suprisingly popular given both the short season and small number of games. And for the short shrift it gets in the media, the fans must be really seeking out WNBA games.

Now, let's look at television coverage. Your average, typical, run of the mill NBA season game will get an average Nielsen rating of 2.2 on ABC. The WNBA will get an average of 0.2 tucked away on ESPN2. Accounting for media exposure -- remember the 8 to 1 ratio -- that's the equivalent of a 1.6 Nielsen rating if the WNBA were as heavily promoted by the media as the NBA.

That's not very far away. An overwhelming advantage of NBA coverage and beat writers doesn't give much better ratings for the NBA than for the W.

I shudder to think what the numbers would be if the NBA had a 34 game season, only 13 teams, and if 88 percent of the sports page were devoted to women's sports. I can see the headlines:

ODD FORM OF 'DUNKING' BASKETBALL STRANGELY POPULAR AMONG SOME

("Dammit, when are they going to get this @#$# off the air? That time could be used to review the Big South Conference! Rachel Vitale said that Megan Frazee is gonna be AWWWW-E-SOMME, BABBBBBYYYY!!!")