Women's sports, here we go again

As a champion for girls and women in sports for more than twenty years, I watched with much interest ESPN's documentary, Branded, Tuesday night. Every ten years or so, ESPN will do a piece on women's sports and why they're not as popular as men's sports. This was just the network's latest offering. I find it amusing that ESPN would rather use its considerable resources to tell us why we don't like female athletes instead of introducing us to female athletes we might like. Just yesterday I saw a delightful 17-year-old named Victoria Duval at the U.S. Open. There's a woman named Alysa Kleybanova who is returning to the court after undergoing cancer treatment. A young woman named Elena Delle Donne is totally renovating the WNBA and soccer player Alex Morgan has everything it takes to be a bonafide super star. If ESPN truly cared about the popularity of women's sports, it would show us features on these women, tell their stories and the stories of so many other outstanding female athletes. But, I digress. Branded came to the same conclusion every other ESPN-produced show has discovered - men don't enjoy watching women play sports. That's true, to an extent, but the real problem from what I've seen in my two decades of covering female athletes is, women don't support female athletes. I can't tell you how often I've heard girls and women say, "I like to watch the guys. I can't stand watching the girls play." I've talked to college-caliber female basketball players who admit they've never watched a WNBA game. They watch the NBA but have no interest in the WNBA, can't name one WNBA player. San Antonio Silver Star Shameka Christon gave a free clinic to girls at El Dorado a few years back. She gave them an opportunity to ask any question they desired. The questions were, "Have you met Tracy McGrady? Have you talked to LeBron? What's Kobe Bryant like?" Not one question about the WNBA. Not one question about her career or what she had to do to get to where she was. I've heard people on TV ask up-and-coming female tennis players who they idolize and, more often than not, the answers are Federer, Nadal or Djokovic. Here's the question ESPN should send to its female audience - if women won't support women's sports, why would you expect the men to support women's sports? Yeah, there's a large segment of the male population who like sex appeal. Hell, I'm a member of that group. I like pretty, athletic females. I liked the Lingerie Football League. Sue me. But, I liked that league in part because of the intensity of the competition. I liked the Lingerie Football League because they were playing football - hard-nosed football. I ain't watching no Lingerie Pillowfight League. But, yeah, sex sells in sports and, fortunately or unfortunately, women are judged as much on their appearance as their athletic skill. That explains some of the lack of male viewership. It doesn't explain why the women aren't watching and that is the question that needs to be answered. If women supported the WNBA the same way they support the NBA and NFL, we'd have a whole different story. But, they don't so we won't and I'm pretty sure that's just the way ESPN likes it.