Sunday, June 22, 2008
Sports, "Hunt's Grunts"

She will survive

The business of sports is still very much a male-dominated world...

Bill Baptist/NBAE via Getty Images
The Atlanta Dream’s Ivory Latta

By Hunt Archbold

A rather amiable friend of mine who works in sports media recently giggled to me, “I love being a female who works in sports.” The lips from which these words spilled forth were shining with some fabulous pink gloss, and as she continued to revel in the truth of her reflection, I thought to myself that the men she works with must love it, too. After all, she is rather easy on the eyes. And then I almost gagged on my own narrow-minded machismo. The business of sports is still very much a male-dominated world, and it surely can’t always be an easy place for, say, a female. Even if she does have mad skills.

Yet still, as stated in the famous slogan from Virginia Slims, the brand of cigarettes whose sponsorship is often credited for the growth of women’s tennis during the ’70s and early ’80s, “You’ve come a long way baby.’’ Yes, she has. But then again, the road is long, especially if she’s not going it alone.

Last week marked the 33rd anniversary of Title IX. The landmark act states that no person in the U.S. shall be excluded from participation in, be denied benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any education program or activities receiving Federal financial assistance based on sex. When Title IX was enacted, only one in 27 girls in high schools participated in athletics. Today, one in three girls participates. And opportunities for women and girls to participate in such are boundless.

The fight for women in sports has been an Olympus-sized mountain to scale as far back as 776 B.C., when women were excluded from the first Olympics in Ancient Greece. In 1837, there was a public outcry from women after a male author penned “Exercise for Ladies,” which warned women against horseback riding because it would deform the lower part of the body.

Almost a century later, in 1931, baseball commissioner Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned women from professional baseball after 17-year-old pitcher Virne Beatrice “Jackie’’ Mitchell struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in an exhibition game for the Chattanooga Lookouts. Landis voided Mitchell’s contract, claiming baseball was too strenuous for women. In 1965, Olympic swimmer Donna De Varona became the first female sports broadcaster on national TV. And this fall marks the 35th anniversary of Billie Jean King’s “battle of the sexes’’ tennis victory over Bobby Riggs in front of more than 30,000 people and a worl-wide television audience of more than 50 million.

Three years later, UCLA basketball player Ann Meyers became the first female recipient of a full athletic scholarship. Since Title IX, spending on athletic scholarships for women has gone from less than $100,000 to almost $300 million. From Mitchell to all-everything athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias to English Channel swimmer Gertrude Caroline Ederle to track star Wilma Rudolph to King on the tennis courts to auto racing’s Janet Guthrie to horse-racing jockey Julie Krone to hockey goalie Manon Rheaume to college football place-kicker Katie Hnida to golfer Annika Sorenstam to auto racing’s Danica Patrick and on and on, women have and will continue to knock, pound and kick down the doors of sports that for too long have been adorned with a sign that simply reads “Men Only.’’

It was only last year that Wimbeldon and the French Open announced they would pay women players the same as men. Also in 2007, Mexican golfing champ Lorena Ochoa won the Women’s U.S. Open at St. Andrews in the first-ever women’s professional tournament in the club’s 500-year history. The players were given an exception to go in the clubhouse, but the policy of not admitting women (or dogs) remains in force. Currently female ski jumpers from six countries, including Canada and the U.S., are suing the Vancouver organizing committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics for not allowing women to compete in ski jumping. Their lawsuit asks the committee to either hold a competition for women or ban the men’s equivalent event. And sexual harassment lawsuits, such as the one filed recently by Mauricia Grant against her former employer, NASCAR, have lng been commonplace. It’s now been 30 years since Sports Illustrated’s Melissa Ludtke won her lawsuit for equal access in major league baseball clubhouses.

Which brings me to the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream, who went winless in the first 11 games of their existence and already are playing before dwindling crowds. The WNBA has never turned a profit, and the fact is that since the mid-’70s, every female professional sports league, from soccer to softball to basketball and so on, has failed. Professional athletic leagues for men are heads above women’s when it comes to pay, endorsements and media coverage. ESPN is likely to devote more coverage to the National Spelling Bee or the International Hot Dog Eating Contest than to a WNBA game.

Women are more readily accepted into golf, tennis and Olympic sports in part because they are not contact sports, and thus considered less aggressive than team sports. These days, dealing with women athletes and strong, aggressive females in general causes problems for some, like, say, men. The stigma of some of these athletes being gay can’t be ignored, either. But maybe the team sports just aren’t aesthetically pleasing? I asked my female sports media friend, a fine athlete in her own right, what she thought after attending the Dream’s 15-point home loss to San Antonio last week. “Boring,” was her reply.

The reality is that we have to go back to World War II, when the men were off fighting, to find a successful women’s professional sports league in our country: The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League thrived for about a dozen years. But if the absence of men is the key to a flourishing women’s sports league, that can’t be good at all. I mean, who’ll be there to admire all that pink lip gloss?

Happy times … and I hear you roaring, ladies.