“Getting Around Gender”: Would the WNBA Benefit From Getting “Out of the Ghetto of Being a Role Model for Girls?”

I follow women's basketball for one very simple reason:

I love basketball.

The cultural significance of supporting a women's professional sports league is icing on the cake for me.

Summer is the NBA off-season and the WNBA is a perfect counter-balance to keep me fully engaged in basketball for the entire calendar year, schedule permitting.

So I realize that marketing the WNBA to someone like me is simple -- the very idea of extra basketball was enough to get me interested in the WNBA in 1997. The combination of Candace Parker and gloomy Expect Great ads was enough to get me re-invested in the WNBA last summer after taking a long hiatus (moving to cities without WNBA teams).

However, I also realize that most people don't feel the same way about basketball as I do (they might actually have lives). In fact, some people seem to harbor resentment not only for women's basketball, but also that whole gender equity agenda thing that some people still believe is reserved for radical man-hating feminists.

So the very idea of a male women's sports fan is laughable to many people. Sadly, some individuals seem to enjoy going out of their way to demean female athletes and dismiss women's sports as irrelevant. And while I strongly believe that everybody is entitled to their own (defensible) opinion, openly disrespecting individuals who are performing at the top of their profession is just unnecessary.

So when I saw a link to an article on the Soccer Science blog entitled, “One Man’s Struggles With WPS Fandom: Does Liking Women’s Soccer Make You Gayer?” I was at once intrigued and wary of yet another insecure sexist rant.

Of course, I clicked.

Not that I’m afraid of becoming “gayer” by liking women’s basketball (because the very notion of that is ridiculous, as I believe the author intended to highlight). But I was very interested to see how the author – Cyrus Philbrick -- would go about developing his argument. He clearly was not dismissing women’s sports -- he was just trying to express why he’s struggling with it. That’s fair.

The premise of the article is as follows:

I love soccer. And I’m pretty sure I love women. So why don’t I love Women’s Professional Soccer? Or do I, secretly? These are questions I fear to answer because any serious soul-searching might uncover the misogynistic pig within. That, or I’ll end up stripping away a vestigial layer of macho-callous that has kept me straight and largely insensitive to the needs of women through the years. Oh well, here goes…

The article is actually a pretty fair description of some of the challenges that some men might have in making the transition from men’s sport to women’s sport.

However, Philbrick does not merely rehash standard critiques. In fact, he makes a critique that I normally take for granted in all my fervor about the cultural significance of women's sports.

His post ultimately arrives at the conclusion that WPS athletes are marketed as role models for girls, something that may alienate male fans. Which begs the question -- what about the WNBA?

“We need to get out of the ghetto of being a role model for girls,” Andy Crossley, the Boston Breakers’ director of business development, said in a recent New York Times article. “You can’t make dads feel like they’re visiting Chuck E. Cheese’s.”

The problem is I’m not sure if anyone knows how the league can change this. WPS works best as an inspiring example for young girl players. And as millions of them exist in this country, this isn’t a bad selling point. But to draw in the rest of us skeptics remains a challenge that will take a lot more than just innovative social media marketing.

I find this to be an interesting argument.

My knee jerk reaction is that perhaps these dads who feel apprehensive about doing things with their daughters because of how they feel need to get over themselves. But... you know... since I’m not a father…I’m going to suspend that judgment.

So beyond personal hang-ups, I suppose I don’t see being a role model for girls as a “ghetto” to begin with.

Isn’t being a role model for girls a good thing? Isn’t promoting fitness and sport for girls a good thing? And, most importantly, isn’t it somewhat inevitable that female athletes will be role models, given that women’s professional sports are a relatively new (and sometimes contentious) phenomenon?

But for a moment, let’s assume that getting out of the ghetto would indeed help the WNBA…then what? Where exactly would a league like the WNBA go from there?

“Marketing Women’s Sports to Men”

These questions led me to another article on a blog about marketing to women entitled, “Marketing Women’s Sports to Men”. The author – Andrea -- says the following, looking specifically at how NASCAR and figure skating have attempted to transcend gender in their marketing strategies:

Now, the sports realm, overall, has come full circle in the ways that previously pegged “women’s” sports must grow to reach more men.

And, how are they going to do that? By identifying what about the particular sport appeals to a men’s market and highlighting that. If the marketing decision-makers are smart, they’ll likely figure out a way to do so without alienating the women who already love said sport. Now, to clarify: It isn’t necessarily men that the more female-fan skewing sports should be worrying about. Instead, those marketing decision-makers should spend time learning to reach all of the human beings who appreciate the (traditionally) more masculine aspects of the sport.

The suggestion in this article is the de-genderfication of sport – finding the elements of a sport that appeal to all fans and highlight them.

However, given differences in the way men and women play basketball (see "Transition Points" below), “highlighting the masculine aspects” of basketball is almost impossible for the WNBA – at this moment, there is no female athletic equivalent of athletes like LeBron James or Dwight Howard. And part of what people like about the NBA is the almost surreal feats of athleticism. Women’s basketball can’t really provide those particular athletic aspects of the game, that have become prominent.

So if the WNBA is somewhat immune to de-genderfication, what else might a marketing expert suggest?

How about an awareness of third wave feminism, as Andrea suggests in another post?

I’m not saying that all is perfect between men and women now. I’m suggesting it might be a good time to accept that there is no easy answer but to study up on how the women in your market fit into this wave (or not). They might consider themselves feminists, but that could be VERY different from your mother’s feminism. And, today, there may well be a lot more men who consider themselves feminist or identify with the movement (whether they say so or not), and by making assumptions, you could potentially lose trust with them as well, Remember, too - parenthood tends to put most guys into a gender transcending role that changes their behavior in other ways. So, feminism can just creep up on you (in a good way)!

An awareness of third wave feminism is not for women’s studies majors only. Instead, it is a movement that may offer up the insights you need on how/why your consumers live and make decisions the way they do.

If we take Andrea’s posts together, then the challenge for a sport like the WNBA is finding a way to minimize the gendered elements of the sport (that may in fact define it) while simultaneously drawing upon insights from third wave feminism to understand what women might want beyond the antiquated narratives of equal opportunity and representation.

But...

While I understand all these points about ghettoizing women’s sports, de-genderfication, and taking an expansive approach to feminism (that includes men rather than assuming it’s a “women’s only” domain), I also find the approach highly problematic.

Girls still need role models…just like boys have had for decades/centuries/The Big Bang or Genesis. And it's worth playing that up.

There are gender differences in athletics that we should probably learn to appreciate instead of disregarding or rejecting them outright. And it's worth helping people do that.

And while feminism is not only for women’s studies majors and should apply to men, it also seems dangerous for it to become a part of a marketing strategy. Not that the feminist principles would necessarily lose their edge if assimilated as part of a marketing strategy…but…things tend to lose their edge when they are assimilated as part of a marketing strategy.

Nevertheless, the sad fact is that these commentaries may be right – indeed, it may simply not be profitable to market women’s sports as “political”, whether it be in a role modeling capacity, the symbolic promotion of equal opportunity/representation, or a direct challenge to sexist attitudes.

So where does this leave us?

The tension here is that if men want to demean or dismiss women’s sports for being too “Chuck-E-Cheese”, “too feminine”, or “too feminist”, I firmly believe that is their problem, not the problem of women’s professional sports.

But realistically, the market for sports is traditionally the 18-35 male crowd, which is stereotypically proud of being against things labeled as “Chuck-E-Cheese”, feminine, or feminist. And there are certain women (that I’m sure we could all think of and name) who hold the same views.

However, what is most troubling to me is the assumption underlying all of these things: sexism exists and if women’s sports are to be marketable, they have to roll with it rather than going against the grain.

Realistically, most people can’t be bothered with political messages about role models, opportunity, or oppression/discrimination/prejudice while they’re being entertained. They merely want to be entertained.

So that leaves us with the question of where are the people who want to be entertained by women’s basketball? And how does the WNBA reach them?

Does the WNBA need to “Get Around Gender”?

Well, take this insight from another Andrea’s posts entitled, “Getting Around Gender”:

An article in the latest issue of Pink mentioned how the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan got creative in reaching out to women, specifically for their executive MBA programs. Because state law prohibited the school from offering gender-based scholarships, they did the research and realized that a lot of non-profit executives happened to be female. So, Ross focused its scholarship money there. Brilliant. The school figured out a commonality that had nothing to do with gender - and learned how to reach THAT group effectively… My point is that, in a lot of cases, the best marketing to women has gotten around the gender question by serving humans/individuals who may so happen to be women.

In other words, if somebody stepped in and told the WNBA they could not market exclusively to women, what might they do? How might they describe their consumers aside from gender (or sexuality) identifiers?

Does the target audience like particular elements of the in-game experience? Do they like certain player personalities? Is it a particular style of play that a change in rules could really accentuate?

The notion of gender-blindness is problematic, if not downright harmful to me. But that is essentially what this blog is suggesting: gender-blind marketing. And yet, if gender is toxic to sports profit as all these people are suggesting, then maybe that is the strategy… but would a gender blind marketing approach even work for a league that is absolutely gendered?

Hmmmm…

I must fully acknowledge that Andrea is not talking about the WNBA -- she made a reference to NASCAR and figure skating and I'm trying to make a link to the WNBA....

Ultimately, I don't think such an approach would actually draw the fans who have blatantly sexist and dehumanizing reasons for not watching women's sports to begin with. So hiding from such an obvious aspect of the league -- that the women are role models -- just seems counterproductive.

It is important that women's sports leagues exist, if for no other reason "to get females to play" as Mechelle Voepel wrote about on Sunday. But while that is great advocacy for a women's non-profit organization, is it viable for a professional sports league striving to make profit?

But is it so difficult to imagine a world in which people stop judging women by men’s standards and are actually genuinely entertained by female athletes? Is there no way to appreciate women for their athletic feats just as we appreciate men? Why can’t we strive for a higher human standard rather than striving for the lowest consumer denominator?

Naïve, idealistic questions…that I find worth wondering about…

Relevant Links:

When it’s ‘her’ turn to just dive right in (Mechelle Voepel)
http://voepel.wordpress.com/2009/08/02/when-its-her-turn-to-just-dive-right-in/

Marketing Women's Sports to Men
http://learnedonwomen.com/2009/04/marketing-womens-sports-to-men/

Getting Around Gender in Marketing
http://learnedonwomen.com/2009/07/getting-around-gender/


Transition Points:

The argument that first stuck out to me in Philbrick's piece was the one about the speed of women’s soccer – that “It’s inarguably, frustratingly, heart-murmeringly slow.” Ouch. However, one could certainly make the same argument about the WNBA in comparison to men’s basketball…and that of course led me down a much longer path…

This past weekend I probably spent way too much time watching basketball. On Saturday I went to see the Seattle Storm defeat the San Antonio Silver Stars in overtime. Then on Sunday I went to see NBA players with Seattle ties play in the Adonai Hood Tournament, a four-team tournament of local high school alumni. And as I probably need not tell you, the differences between the women’s and men’s game were quite stark.

The men’s game is just faster, more physical, and yes, field goal percentages are typically higher. And for a game that is predicated on putting a ball into a ten foot high hole, the fact that men are taller on average is significant.

The fact is that the women’s game simply does not have athletes like the 5’9” Nate Robinson (NBA player from Seattle’s Rainier Beach High School and University of Washington) – an ultra-quick former NCAA Division I football defensive back who has won two NBA Dunk Contests, including this year’s in which he jumped over the 6’11” Dwight Howard for a dunk (in 2006 he jumped over another diminutive dunk champion, former NBA player Spud Webb).


Taking Robinson as one example of the type of athleticism in the NBA, these games are just different. And as I’ve said before, if you are going to support women’s sports, you first have to accept that they are different from men’s sports (duh…right?) and just appreciate each on their own terms, loving the sport as a sport as well as another form of entertainment.

Tonight: Storm game with a NBA fan who has never been. Should be fun...

(Note: I’m still not entirely sure how watching women’s sports – or anything for that matter -- might make one “gayer”, though many men seem to feel their sexuality is at stake when watching women’s sports. If I was hypothetically operating on such lunkhead male “logic”, it would seem that the opposite would be true – that spending hours watching sweaty men post each other up and pat each other on their firm behinds would make me “gayer”)

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President Obama Describes Why "Money Isn't Everything": How the WNBA Represents an Opportunity to "Release the Imagination"

When President Barack Obama honored the 2008 WNBA champion Detroit Shock today, he once again took the opportunity to mention what the league means to his daughters.

Let me also say something as a father -- I was mentioning it to the team before we came out. It's hard to believe the WNBA has already been around for 12 years. And that means that my daughters have never known a time when women couldn't play professional sports.

They look at the TV and they see me watching SportsCenter and they see young women who look like them on the screen. And that lets them and all our young women, as well as young men know that we should take for granted that women are going to thrive and excel as athletes. And it makes my daughters look at themselves differently; to see that they can be champions, too.

So, as a father, I want to say thank you.

These remarks may strike you as a mundane repetition of the comments he made back in April while congratulating the University of Connecticut championship women’s basketball team.

But it never gets old to me.

Although Obama’s agenda for gender equity may not please everyone, the message he’s sending about the value of female role models is an important one and is worthy of repetition as long as we continue to live in a society with deep gender disparities. What makes Obama’s remarks assume even greater importance is that his daughters are young black girls and the dearth of positive black female role models in the mainstream makes the existence of the WNBA even more important.

Although images of positive black female role models in the mainstream have certainly evolved beyond Oprah and Clair Huxtable – including First Lady Michelle Obama – I would argue that our society could do more to support the dreams and aspirations of black girls. That starts with thinking about how black women are represented in the media.

Unfortunately, mere representation is not enough – it is just as important to consider how black women are represented in the mainstream media (the central dilemma in the controversy surrounding Candace Parker’s ESPN the Magazine cover story). Close scrutiny of how black women are represented in the mainstream media reveals more than mere coincidence or arbitrary action, but a pattern of conscious editorial decision-making that becomes rather troubling in the aggregate.

The fact is that the way in which WNBA women are represented is only one piece of a much larger pattern of decision making that not only includes decisions about representation, but omission. And the invisibilizing of black women often reflects a much more troubling underlying assumption – that black women are not marketable.

If we accept the assumption that black women are not marketable, it seems almost irresponsible not to ask a) why?, b) what are the consequences of that assumption, and c) to what extent are the editorial decisions themselves responsible for perpetuating the problem? Ultimately, the answers to that line of questioning only reinforce the point Chantelle Anderson made in her most recent blog post: Money Isn’t Everything.

The violence of omission

As an example of how these editorial decisions operate beyond sports, Australian young adult literature author and WNBA fan Justine Larbalestier recently blogged about her publisher’s decision to use a cover image of a white girl to represent a black female protagonist for her recent book Liar. Larbalestier points out in her blog that she envisioned the protagonist looking something like Washington Mystics All-Star guard Alana Beard.

Larbalestier’s entire post (click here) is worth a read, but this excerpt seems relevant to the present discussion:

Every year at every publishing house, intentionally and unintentionally, there are white-washed covers. Since I’ve told publishing friends how upset I am with my Liar cover, I have been hearing anecdotes from every single house about how hard it is to push through covers with people of colour on them. Editors have told me that their sales departments say black covers don’t sell. Sales reps have told me that many of their accounts won’t take books with black covers. Booksellers have told me that they can’t give away YAs with black covers. Authors have told me that their books with black covers are frequently not shelved in the same part of the library as other YA—they’re exiled to the Urban Fiction section—and many bookshops simply don’t stock them at all. How welcome is a black teen going to feel in the YA section when all the covers are white? Why would she pick up Liar when it has a cover that so explicitly excludes her?

The notion that “black books” don’t sell is pervasive at every level of publishing. Yet I have found few examples of books with a person of colour on the cover that have had the full weight of a publishing house behind them. Until that happens more often we can’t know if it’s true that white people won’t buy books about people of colour. All we can say is that poorly publicised books with “black covers” don’t sell. The same is usually true of poorly publicised books with “white covers.”

While these editorial decisions may seem distant from sports, consider the consequences of this whitewashing of young adult literature – it not only sends messages of who/what is valued in our society, but also presents a completely skewed version of what our world looks like. Compounding the problem is that publishers, libraries, and bookstores, are actively making decisions that set these books up to fail…which thus reinforces their belief that the books are worth publicizing.

The same goes for women’s professional sports, and particularly the WNBA with it’s large percentage of black women: it is paradoxical to not market something – or even deliberately hide it – and then standby the claim that it’s not worth marketing because it’s not marketable.

While this phenomenon should not come as a surprise, it is troubling to think that we live in a society that deliberately prioritizes profit over the humanity of our youth.

What I love about Chantelle Anderson’s recent blog post is that it captures what is humanly at stake in having mainstream representations of black women that serve as role models. The value of honoring the humanity of our young black girls extends well beyond commodification, marketability, and profit margins toward something seemingly more fundamental to what makes us all human.

Anderson’s articulation of why the WNBA is valuable is a perfect example of why all this talk of representation and role models really matters.

To summarize, Anderson tells a story about a high school girl whom she met after a speaking engagement who was involved in gang activity and had recently quit her basketball team. The coach asked Anderson to talk to the sophomore and presumably convince her to return to the basketball team. Anderson not only inspired the girl to decrease her involvement with the gang, but also help her get to college on a Division I scholarship. Anderson nicely explains the value of WNBA role models in her concluding paragraphs:

I met Tamika when she was a sophomore in high school. As of now, she just finished her freshman year at a Division one university, which she attended on a full ride basketball scholarship. To say that I am proud of her would be an understatement. To say that I believe God used my position as a professional athlete to help save this girls life would be the truth. We hear countless stories about the NBA players that used basketball as a ticket out of the dangerous neighborhoods and broken homes of their childhood. But what about the little girls left in those neighborhoods? Don’t they deserve a chance too?

This was not meant to be some sentimental plea to keep the WNBA alive or garner fan support. It was meant to show that even if countless men don’t value it, professional women’s sports do and should have a place in our society. This story is not a fluke or an isolated incident. Stuff like this happens regularly to myself and other WNBA players; and not just involving kids. I’ve had women tell me watching how hard I work in my workouts helped keep them coming to the gym and eating healthy. And I’ve had men tell me they use me as an example to encourage their daughters to dream. These compliments are such an honor to me; way better than being told I’m pretty, or even smart. But I would hate to turn around and tell those people that none of what they feel deserves validation because women’s basketball doesn’t make enough money. That’s why the WNBA is important.

There’s a lot going on in Anderson’s story, but as an educator and someone interested in the welfare of youth, I want to bring it back to this notion of what it means to honor the humanity of youth.

While removing oneself from gang activity and going to college is an important accomplishment, I would argue that the even more valuable aspect of this scenario is that Anderson helped Tamika see alternative possibilities for herself beyond what the limited perspective she saw in daily life. That capacity to imagine an alternative vision for oneself and act upon the world with that vision in mind is what makes all this talk of representations and role models so important.

Releasing the imagination of young black girls is of the utmost importance.

Educational philosopher, social activist, and teacher Maxine Greene has written extensively about the topic of imagination and I think she can provide some additional insight to the value of thinking more deeply about the value of the WNBA both in terms of representations of black women and mentoring relationships, such as Anderson’s.

First, the reason that these mainstream representations are important to reflect upon is not just a matter of self-esteem, but more a matter of future orientation and self-concept: encouraging young girls to imagine multiple possibilities for society and letting them know they have support in those endeavors. When we as a society make decisions not to help scaffold that imagination with multiple representations of what could be (e.g. deciding black women are not marketable and thus not worthy of representation in young adult literature), we leave the possibility of positive self-concept and self-determination to chance.

In her book Releasing the Imagination, Greene writes the following about this problem:

Far too seldom are such young people looked upon as beings capable of imagining, of choosing, and of acting from their own vantage point on perceived possibility. Instead they are subjected to outside pressures, manipulations, and predictions. The supporting structures that exist are not used to sustain a sense of agency among those they shelter; instead they legitimate treatment, remediation, and control – anything but difference and release.

When I read Anderson’s story about her experience meeting Tamika, that’s what I see – a young girl who without support in imagining the range of future possibilities fell victim to the deceptive pressure of gang activity. After all, gang activity provides everything school and society often doesn’t – a sense of belonging, an identity of agency, and a peer community of mutual support…not to mention additional street cred that many school-based options simply don’t provide.

We are often too quick to condemn youth involved in gangs without attempting to understand the opportunity structure in society that they perceive in front of them. For some, this society does not look like it’s full of opportunity and rhetoric to the contrary is thus all the more alienating.

“Imagination,” writes Greene, is therefore “…the gateway through which meanings derived from past experiences find their way into the present.” To elaborate, imagination is an antidote to the inertia of ill-formed common sense that serves to privilege some ways of being at the expense of others.

To tap into the imagination is to become able to break with what is supposedly fixed and finished, objectively and independently real. It is to see beyond that what the imaginer has called normal or “common sensible” and to carve out new orders in experience. Doing so, a person may become freed to glimpse what might be, to form notions of what should be and what is not yet. And the same person may, at the same time, remain in touch with what presumably is.

As President Obama alludes to, the value of the WNBA is not just in inspiring female basketball players or even female athletes more broadly. What it represents is a small departure from a world in which women were once told there were things they cannot do. It lets them know that there is something beyond what some people still espouse as common sense about women’s limitations.

In my ideal world, we would cease asking whether the WNBA or images of black women are profitable in the mainstream and start asking ourselves what the value of either is to society at large. If what it means is a few multi-millionaires lose a couple of bucks here and there for the sake of millions of young girls worldwide, I’ll gladly go along with it.

For black girls in particular – in a world where some people think of their image only in terms of its toxicity to profit – the WNBA provides a glimpse into a world in which there are a range of positive representations of “blackness” and “womanhood” for them to imagine what has not yet come for themselves.

So I don’t begrudge those who don’t want to watch the WNBA. I begrudge those who go out of their way to demean and dismiss it as some sort of irrelevant sideshow.

Understanding the value of women’s professional sports to our young girls shouldn’t require being a father, brother, or husband. Nor should it limited to radical feminists or political leaders trying to establish themselves as advocates of gender equity.

It’s about respecting the humanity of our youth.

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“Title IX and Sports”: The Impact of a 1974 Memo to President Richard Nixon

If you are a) interested in the education of our nation’s youth, b) interested in civil rights, and c) interested in women’s sports (as I am), you probably took note of the White House’s commemoration of the 37th anniversary of Title IX on June 23rd.

However, lest we assume that 37 years of existence is equivalent to the eradication of sexism in education generally or sports in particular, Cokie Roberts and Steven V. Roberts turn our attention back to the issue of enforcement.

In a recent column entitled, “Title IX a start, but women athletes still seek level playing field” Roberts & Roberts write:

But girls need something more than the encouragement of exemplary women — they need the enforcement of the laws. That’s why a White House birthday celebration for Title IX matters. But it’s only a beginning. Valerie Jarrett, chairman of the president’s Council on Women and Girls, vowed to review every federal program affecting sex disparities with the promise that “we’re not going to rest on our laurels until there is absolute equality.” That’s a tall order, worth studying as anniversaries of other civil-rights bills occur.

As scholars continue to study Title IX, it will be interesting to keep track of the previously withheld documents released from the Nixon archives. A friend of mine brought one such document to my attention that speaks directly to the challenges of achieving full gender equity sports via Title IX.

Memo on Title IX and Sports

In a May 31, 1974 memo responding to concerns about “the potential effects of these regulations on intercollegiate athletics”, particularly concerns raised by the NCAA and Senator John Tower that Title IX would harm “revenue-producing sports”. The memo came 11 days after Senator Tower’s proposed amendment exempting “revenue producing sports” from Title IX regulations was rejected.

Ken Cole, a Nixon staff member, describes a proposed regulation for Title IX to clear up this controversy (link to library here, pdf here):

Finally, and most significantly, the proposed regulation states expressly that, "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted to require equal aggregate expenditures or athletics for members of each sex."

While HEW's [Department of Health and Education Welfare] treatment of athletics in the proposed Title IX regulation is designed to minimize the impact of the statute on competitive intercollegiate athletics it should be recognized that the mere fact that the statute covers athletics will increase pressures on competitive collegiate athletic programs to broaden athletic opportunities for females.

The complete set of regulations did not go into effect until 1979 and included the now famous “three-prong test”. However, it would seem that this proposed regulation from the Nixon administration took the teeth out of Title IX to some extent.

Granted, there is an argument to be made for major “revenue producing sports” like men’s basketball or men’s football to be funded in proportion to the money they bring into the school. Furthermore, consistent with the final HEW Policy Interpretation, differentials in expenditures neither prove nor disprove discrimination – an institution could conceivably fund men’s and women’s sports equally but still engage in discriminatory practices in terms of how funding is allocated.

Nevertheless, what is alarming about this particular memo is the intent to deliberately "minimize the impact" of Title IX. The concern here was clearly not the welfare of female athletes, but protecting the male athletes, which seems to contradict the spirit of the legislation. That it was withheld has to raise an eyebrow as well...

Further weakening of Title IX

And it’s worth noting that Nixon’s was not the last attempt to undermine Title IX. Further weakening of Title IX occurred during the Bush administration, as described by the National Organization for Women:

On March 18, the Department of Education (DOE) released an "Additional Clarification" that greatly weakens Title IX. Under the law, federally-funded schools must provide equal educational opportunities to female students, including equal opportunities to play sports. The education department's regulations give schools a "safe harbor," allowing a school to be deemed in compliance with Title IX if it meets any one part of a three-part test. With the DOE's new policy guidance, schools will now find it much easier to comply, while at the same time restricting athletic opportunities for young women.

The new guidance allows schools to show compliance with part three of the test—i.e., that they are "fully and effectively accommodating the interest and abilities of the underrepresented sex"—if they can provide evidence that their female students just aren't that interested in sports. Under the new guidance, this can be demonstrated through email surveys of female students. The result is that it will now fall to female students to show that: 1) there exists interest sufficient to sustain a female varsity team at a school, 2) female students have sufficient athletic ability to sustain an intercollegiate team, and 3) within the school's normal competitive region, there exists a reasonable expectation of intercollegiate competition.

This is not to say that Nixon’s initial weakening of Title IX was is the correct point of attack 37 years later – adding an explicit funding prong would clearly present institutions with a number of challenges and may result in more “gaming of the system” rather than less discrimination.

But it does make you wonder: What would Title IX look like if it provided guidelines for equal– or even equitable – funding? Would a three-prong test that included a concrete standard such as funding equity in addition to more tenuous standards like participation, opportunity, and interest be much stronger?

One major organization that claims to advocate for equal funding for women’s sports is the National Organization for Girls and Women in Sports, but it’s not clear exactly how they advocate an enforceable implementation of that vision.

The Nixon memo should certainly not come as a revelation, but it does provide some insight into how we’ve gotten to this current place with Title IX legislation. It’s a reminder that the struggle against sexism in sports still faces significant challenges at all levels and that these challenges are the result of deliberate action on the part of high-level officials.

In response to the recent announcement of the All England Club to take physical appearance of women into consideration when creating court schedules for Center Court matches at Wimbledon, Dave Zirin of the Nation wrote the following, which seems like an appropriate way to end this little exploration:

We like to think that women's sports can be a avenue for liberation--a place where young girls can sweat, frolic, compete, get healthy and have the safe space to do anything but have to feel "ladylike." I can't help but remember the words of Martina Navratilova who complimented the great Billie Jean King by saying she "embodied the crusader fighting a battle for all of us. She was carrying the flag; it was all right to be a jock." It's long past time for a new generation of women athletes, coaches and sportswriters to grab the flag and say that having a zero-tolerance policy for sexism is at heart about asserting the humanity of each and every participant.

Related Links:

Title IX: A Picture of Dorianna Gray? (A critique of Title IX)
http://www.deepintosports.com/2009/07/07/title-ix-no-gender-equality-women-sports/#idc-container

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“If the WNBA had the gumption to take a more progressive stand…”

When I first watched the All American Red Heads video montage that has been floating around WNBA circles, it was hard to ignore the political impact they might have had in addition to the historical legacy of women’s basketball.

For women to not only get paid to play professional basketball, but also show off and outplay men as they were doing it had to be considered radical for the time. From John Molina’s All American Red Heads website:

When the Red Heads set out on the road, they weren't just playing basketball. They were pioneers to break down all of these stereotypes....and didn't even know it at the time. They were just women that had a great passion to play basketball…

…

They would only play against men and by mens rules. During that time, women were playing 6 on 6 with only 3 players being allowed to cross the court.

There was still much concern at the time, that women shouldn't play the game like a man because they weren't as physical and could hurt their chances to have children.

As Molina implies, even if the Red Heads' players did not consider themselves “activists” or “feminists” but “just passionate athletes”, they were undeniably involved in a highly politicized activity, even if only by challenging stereotypes. And as we know, those stereotypes of gender (or race) have concrete social consequences.

Based upon the type of public statements made about women today, we can probably infer that the concept of women (a) being paid to (b) travel around and play basketball (c) against men (d) with men’s rules and (e) beating them was met with some sort of resistance, if not outright hostility. I would assume that it took quite a bit of courage and strength to even make the decision to participate in such an activity.

As I try to imagine the mainstream response to the Red Heads, I also wonder about their reception by feminist/women’s rights activists of their time – how did representations of women as athletes either fit or deviate from broader feminist agendas of that time?

If movement building is fundamentally about reframing various norms, values, or roles to overcome injustices or social problems, then images of women breaking the stereotypes that perpetuate inequality would seem potentially valuable to a movement.

Even now, in 2009 (*gasp*!!), the repeated statements made about female athletes – specifically those who play “men’s team sports”, like basketball – illustrate that the notion of “female” and “athlete” still creates a measure of cognitive dissonance in the collective consciousness of mainstream society.

So the idea that a women’s professional basketball league is not somehow political strikes me as a complete fiction.

Which means I have to wonder a similar question about the WNBA – how does the league fit or deviate from broader feminist agendas? And if there is a fit, should the league openly embrace those broader agendas?

A former high school sports reporter raised a related issue in the comments of a recent blog on Bitch Magazine. While the story he tells does not necessarily have to be considered a call to action, it’s worth considering as we think about the place of the WNBA in a broader socio-political context.

“…if the WNBA had the gumption to take a more progressive stand toward homosexuality, would it have helped this girl?”

The comment came in response to an article entitled “We Got Lame” in which Bitch Magazine writer Jonanna Widner wrote about how the early marketing of the WNBA turned her off from the game. At the end of the article, she made three recommendations for the WNBA:

1. “embrace the dykes” (referring to fans, not necessarily players)
2. “embrace the rebels”, and
3. “let go of the mommy fetish”

Many of the comments to that post focused on the use of the word “lame” and whether it was appropriate on a feminist website that takes an anti-oppression stance (a subject for another blog post that I believe Widner will address). So Luke, the sports reporter, responded to the article on Widner’s next post about female dunkers:

I covered high school athletics for a community newspaper the past two years, and during this past basketball season there was a scandal on the girls basketball team that absolutely sickened me. To make a long story short, our star player (a dynamite sophomore 5 guard and one of the most exciting athletes in our school, IMO) was forced to quit the team because of a homosexual relationship.

Her own mother forced her to quit two weeks before the end of the season, apparently because someone had seen her kissing another player.

There wee only about 7 girls on the team to start with, and 90% of what the team did was based on feeding her the ball. They lost the last 4-5 straight games of the season, finished outside of the playoffs and cut short a very entertaining season. To make the whole thing worse, she will likely not be allowed to participate in any sport whatsoever next year, since she quit the team before the end of the season.

There is no doubt in my mind that this kid has the potential to be a Division I, perhaps even professional athlete, but it seems as if her own parent's homophobia is going to prevent it. As I was reading your earlier post, I couldn't help but wonder to myself, if the WNBA had the gumption to take a more progressive stand toward homosexuality, would it have helped this girl? Would having openly gay professional athletes featured on television have made her mother more accepting?

First of all, we could easily dismiss Luke's story as trivial; this situation could very easily be reduced to a matter of a family decision outside the reach of a massive corporate sponsored basketball league with a “feminist” agenda. However, I think that’s beside the point.

The point here is that our limited notions of what girls should and could be has significant limiting effects on the daily lives of individuals. It’s not some abstract ranting of a radical feminist who wishes that all men would just drop dead. It’s a matter of honoring the humanity of women.

The WNBA presents an opportunity to contribute to the process of breaking down stereotypes and provide a challenge to dominant culture. And yet the league seems to straddle the fence trying to cram these images of female athletes into the box of existing notions of womanhood rather than challenging the limits of the box altogether.

So Luke’s questions also implicitly beg the broader question of the potential of the WNBA to actively shift the public consciousness around specific feminist agendas. What would it mean for the league to actually serve as a political friend to the girl that Luke describes not just by passively existing, but by actively sending a social justice oriented message?

What is to be done?

The Expect Great campaign is certainly an attempt to challenge dominant narratives. But as has been described ad nausea at this point, the campaign is somewhat ineffective. The problem seems to be that the league wants to challenge the dominant narratives but can’t decide how. Widner opines the following:

This week, the league began its 11th season the same way it has since its first one: In trouble. The league doesn’t make money. Television viewership continues to fade, as does attendance. Several teams have folded. It’s bad—in fact, every season since that first one, the NBA has subsidized the WNBA’s existence, because the latter can’t sustain itself (hmmm…the men supporting the women, because they can’t make it on their own…for all its queerness, I guess there are some things in the league that remain entrenched in hetero tradition). Clearly, the family-oriented marketing, the insistence on tamping down any dyke-ynesss or alternative-ness—these strategies aren’t working.

And yet, still…that insistence continues. The league can’t stop pushing its superstar, Candace Parker (who can dunk too), not because of her strength, smarts, and skills on the court, but because she just had a baby. And the media won’t STFU about it either. Parker landed a coveted “5 Good Minutes” interview spot on the popular ESPN show “Pardon the Interruption” to talk about her baby. How come she didn’t get it when she first dunked in a pro game?

And then there’s this:
http://www.newsday.com/sports/basketball/ny-lsfash1012833678jun08,0,2366...

Yet another fashion spread featuring 6-foot lady ballers from the New York Liberty—the so-called “Glamazons”—couture-clad, posing awkwardly with basketballs.

It’s not working. No one is buying it, WNBA, and you’re bleeding money to boot. You are a laughingstock.

And that makes me so, so sad.

If nobody is buying the current line and those that are will show up regardless, why NOT just embrace a more political orientation?

“But it’s just entertainment!”

Of course, the counter-argument is obvious: if the WNBA promoted itself as an advocate for women instead of “just a bunch of passionate basketball players” there is the risk of losing fans. But do we really believe that?

Who is it exactly that would stop paying attention to the league if it took a specifically political orientation?

I’m not suggesting policy advocacy – the fact is, there is not even agreement among feminists or activists about what policy course should be taken. There is not one singular feminist agenda and the idea that there could be seems profoundly anti-feminist. It doesn’t mean showing up at abortion rallies or choosing a health-care platform for the league to sponsor.

There are of course many different ways to serve as an advocate for women. But I agree with Widner -- athletes concerned with makeup, pushing fashion and talking babies just doesn’t seem to be the way to go and in fact, it may even perpetuate the kind of narrow notion of womanhood that Luke is concerned about.

Furthermore, even if the league doesn’t want to frame itself as a political or “feminist” entity, other people seem to enjoy doing so. Take the following statements from a renowned WNBA critic about the WNBA and recently nominated Justice Sonia Sotomayor (I refuse to link to that person’s site, but you can get the text of the piece from the DailyKos):

I called a spade a spade. I correctly pointed out that Sonia Sotomayor a/k/a So-So a/k/a Sonia From the Block a/k/a Justice J-Lo a/k/a Red Sonia has done nothing remarkable, that she got every single place she got for one reason: that she's a female Latina and got affirmative action for it. That she has the same background and life story as J-Lo a/k/a Jennifer Lopez.
But you can't tell the truth in America. Or, at least, you can't tell it without being attacked and savaged by the left in America. So, predictably, the Nazi-funded Media Matters folks, the reconquista illegal alien schlubs at the National Council of La Raza and their friends at the Washington Post, and the WNBA season ticket holding brush-cutted "women" at various feminist groups are all upset about my truth-telling on Justice J-Lo. They say it's prejudiced. Uh-huh.

The WNBA can try to remain neutral and separate from those “rabid feminists”…but in the end, it can really escape its political identity.

“I finally understand what feminism is about”

Rethinking Basketball was sort of established on the premise that the WNBA is a legitimate lens through which to explore the intersection of pop culture representations and gender inequality in the U.S.

And yes, there have been similar posts about the WNBA and politics in the past on this blog.

Yet, it still seems worthwhile to ponder Luke's questions.

That does not necessarily mean there is one answer, but it does seem like there is value in thinking more deeply about the convergence of gender politics and women’s sport.

In that spirit, a post on the Pleasant Dreams blog responding to a post about criticisms of the WNBA from the “13 Teams, 1 Journey” blog comes to mind.

What I will say is this: after following the WNBA for a year and reading the comments that sportswriters and so called "experts" write about it: I finally understand what feminism was all about. I understood it on an intellectual basis, but never on a visceral one. Jesus, nobody should have to put up with that kind of shit on a daily basis. As men, we should all thank the first women we meet - not because of their contributions to history, but in sheer gratitude to the female gender for not killing every man within 15 miles.

While I may not agree that women have reason to kill every man within 15 miles to begin with, I think petrel’s comment does point out that there is some political value to the WNBA regardless of whether it chooses to embrace it.

Certainly the very existence of pioneering women like the All American Red Heads could be considered vital to the creation of the WNBA. And when you consider the Red Heads and the WNBA as part of an extended progression of women’s professional basketball rather than two distinct phenomena, it seems problematic to claim that the political element of the women’s basketball suddenly fell to the wayside.

So given the political legacy of women’s professional basketball that the WNBA is immersed in, you have to wonder what its political legacy could be. After 70+ years of women playing professional basketball, it would be rather surprising to hear a player claim that she was unaware of the political nature of the activity.

If we assume that a large number of women involved in the WNBA – from players to coaches to league officials – are aware of its political nature, then that begs a follow-up question: should the WNBA take on a more overtly political image? And what influence could a women’s sports league have on broader society if it did take a political stand on issues of concern to women?

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How might reductions in local newspaper coverage affect the WNBA?

It's becoming increasingly clear that nobody is safe from the current economic crisis and newspapers have been hit particularly hard.

Newspaper readership has been declining for years now and in the middle of an economic crisis, they are pretty much forced to make staff reductions.

As documented by Michael Arceneaux of theRoot.com, even recession writers (Lou Carlozo of the Chicago Tribune) are being cut in response to the recession. And in a climate where the people covering the recession become victims of he recession, you can bet sports writers will be equally -- if not more -- affected.

Bill Benner of the Indianapolis Business Journal writes about the impact the current economic situation my have on sports journalism:

Nonetheless, I worry that the difficulties facing daily newspapers might force them, here and elsewhere, to use stringers or generic wire copy more often. I worry more that readers won’t notice or care.

Then again, we are transitioning into a new age of information dissemination, one cluttered by blogs, Web sites and 24-hour cable coverage. Sports, long considered the “toy department” of journalism, could be an easy target for cost-conscious accountants and editors.

If sports are considered the “toy department of journalism”, what on earth does that mean for coverage of the WNBA? In that framework, the WNBA would be like a “cereal box prize department of journalism”.

Thus, it stands to reason that what little professional coverage of the WNBA was out there will be cut. And in my one season of really paying attention to media coverage of women’s sports, wire coverage of the WNBA is almost not even worth reading.

So it is not unreasonable to believe that that the economic downturn could have an adverse affect on the WNBA in comparison to men’s sports. Of course, that problem is not new, as described in an AfterEllen.com post last week:

It has been a catch-22 for women's professional sports teams for decades: newspapers and magazines won't waste space on leagues with no fan base; leagues can't expand their fan base without media coverage.

So for a league that desperately needs to promote narratives about women in sports, how might a reduction in newspaper coverage hinder that process? How might blogs, twitter, and other Web 2.0 or social media make up for the lack of newspaper coverage?

I have a few thoughts…but it’s difficult to predict what the future might hold…

Lack of access is not helpful to the WNBA

Whatever you might think about the state of current WNBA coverage in newspapers, professional journalists have one massive advantage that even the most dedicated blogger might have a difficult time matching: a press credential.

Anyone – ahem, me? – can sit at home and spend time writing about watching WNBA games. What we don’t have is that behind the scenes perspective.

Access to press conferences, the locker room, and building relationships with players and coaches are vital to a sport’s ability to construct narratives that include character development as well as reports on the game action that we can all see from the stands, the television or a webcast.

To take a page from sports history, Howard Cosell’s relationship with Muhammad Ali is arguably as important as Ali’s greatness – while Ali performed, Cosell framed the narrative and presented it to the audience (reciprocally, one could argue that Ali is therefore among the most important figures to sports journalism because without him, Cosell would not be the legend he is today).


Cuts in professional journalists covering the teams means equal cuts in the amount of privileged information fans get about the WNBA. I would argue that the stories that we get beyond the action on the court are absolutely essential to building a sports brand. I happen to think print journalists are vital to establishing that. I also think there are alternatives that might help.

The Web 2.0 revolution…will not be televised…but might be on Twitter…

(Please do not forget the brilliant original song)
I have written a few pieces in the past about the role that Web 2.0 media plays in building the WNBA brand, engaging fan voice, and shaping the way we see the game. And the WNBA is definitely making strides in terms of how they use social media, as described by AfterEllen.com:

WNBA teams started their social media blitz earlier this year, offering tickets to people who joined team fan pages on Facebook. They brought it with a league Twitter. They asked each team to set up their own Twitters (see below). And, perhaps most importantly, they encouraged individual players to begin Tweeting about their teams, their lives, their training, their breakfast, anything to forge a connection with fans.

Yet I would argue the WNBA could still do some tiny things to better utilize the social media it is working with. Women’s Professional Soccer is still by far one the leaders in utilizing social media if you ask me.

It’s not just about having a Facebook/MySpace presence or having a YouTube page but making people aware of those things and, you know, actually making them seem like they are an integral part of what the organization does and how it builds community.

Case in point: from the front page of the WPS website, I can find 8 different ways to connect with the league on the main navigation bar. It’s a button even…that says connect.

The WNBA has both a YouTube and Facebook presence but you have to scroll down the page to find out about the Facebook link and after a few minutes of looking, I have yet to find a link to their YouTube page.

The issue here is not just about having these social media opportunities available, but somehow making them visible and easily accessible to consumers…ahem…fans. And to some extent they are doing that, in particular with ticket giveaways on Facebook.

Building a massive word-of-mouth campaign...

So I wholeheartedly agree with what Megan Hunter at Because I played sports wrote in her coverage of the WNBA draft about how bloggers could be instrumental in the growth of the game:

While I realize that there is much more research to be done, I know that the most important thing we need to do as ex-players, moms and female athletes is to get people to the games and start taking control of conversations.

We need to create one of the biggest word of mouth campaigns that has ever been created - one that will save WNBA and create opportunities for years to come.

With the economy shaving away at the future of the league, the time is now for us to step up to the plate. Now that the WNBA is open to feedback and willing to engage transparently with the public, I believe we can help turn this thing around.

But the key question for the WNBA is how do they take that energy and integrate it into what they do?

Furthermore, if the next move forward is for the web to become “invisibly present in everyday appliances” (see video below) how can the WNBA be sure to infiltrate the collective sports consciousness? (This by the way is a scary thought to me, but I caution that it’s not George Orwell that will be rolling over in his grave as much as Aldous Huxley – the control of society through learned desires…scary).


Among the many things WPS has done well in terms of its marketing, I would argue that its Fan Corner social media site is an excellent example of an attempt to encourage and formalize fan involvement in the game.

Of particular relevance to the issue of blogging, they have a section on their social media site specifically for fans to create blogs. Of course these blogs aren’t as customizable as your average Blogspot or Wordpress blog, but it provides a space for fan voice that is somewhat unique. Most importantly, it encourages fans to consolidate that voice in one place, without controlling the multitude of voices out there. (Note: the Phoenix Mercury already have a social media site for their team -- Cafe Merc -- with 247 members)

Idea – could the WNBA have a list of blogs they deem valuable listed in some sort of space on their website? Would it be that difficult to have a feed with recent fan blogs aside from the “approved” fan bloggers already there?

I would argue that WPS is leading the way in this social media blitz and the WNBA should follow despite its current progress.

“Nothing from nothing means nothing”


Ultimately, I suppose my message about the impact of reductions in newspaper coverage on the WNBA is as follows (and, yes, partially inspired by Billy Preston):

If newspapers were not widely or consistently covering the WNBA to begin with, then the WNBA does not have much to lose from reductions in newspaper coverage.

However, the increasing reductions just make it imperative that the WNBA does figure out how to use social media effectively and quickly. As “traditional” media becomes even less reliable, you can bet that leagues like the WNBA (and WPS) will get even less publicity.

Of course, this is all uncharted territory – nobody has the perfect solutions for how to use Web 2.0 for marketing a relatively young (niche?) sports league. And that is all the more reason for the WNBA to get as creative as possible with how it encourages and channels the energy of its fans.

Related Articles:

Women’s pro sports: Facebook awaits you
http://becauseiplayedsports.com/2009/04/11/2009-wnba-draft-a-journey-back-to-my-love-for-womens-basketball/#more-1101

Interview With Peter Wilt: WPS Chicago’s CEO Takes One Step Backward For Two Giant Leaps Forward
http://www.amandavandervort.com/blog/2008/04/interview-with-peter-wilt-wps-chicagos-ceo-takes-two-steps-backward-for-one-giant-leap-forward/

The Machine is Us/ing Us
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

Transition Points:

If the WNBA needs coverage, then what of a new women’s league like Women’s Professional Soccer? I’m curious about their outlook given that they are starting up in the middle of a terrible economy. It would be terrible if the league’s ability to succeed was stifled by the unfortunate coincidence of launching when the economy is struggling…

The final “Recession Diaries” blog from Lou Carlozo that was cut from the Chicago Tribune is absolutely worth a read…because if you can figure out what about that blog post led the Chicago Tribune to pull the post, I’d like to know. I’m at a loss.

Fantasy job musings: I was musing with a friend this weekend about how my fantasy job before getting all tangled up in thinking about racial inequality in education was sports writing. And I would gladly drop everything and write for a WNBA team (*cough* ChicagoSky *cough*) this summer if they covered travel and basic living expenses (no nachos and beer, I promise). Yeah, ok, that’s presumptuous – there are probably hundreds of other folks who would “glad drop everything and write for a WNBA team this summer”. And why on earth would someone want a job that is likely unstable and cut more often than created? But hey, worth a try…right?

Response to fantasy job musings: So the logical response from my friend about this fantasy job of being a sports writer was laughter – I mean seriously, leaving graduate school to cover a game? But honestly, my reasoning is simply that I enjoy basketball and as I’ve tried to demonstrate in the past, I do believe that the WNBA is valuable as a tool for challenging gender inequality simply by the way it could shape perceptions of women and what “womanhood” means. I realize that could be trivial – the father of a girl I dated in high school remarked to me the first time I had dinner at their house, “Back in my day we were protesting Vietnam and now the biggest thing you can write about is sports?” OK, fair enough – sports are not the biggest issue in the world. I know that…but everyone has to find their niche right? I like basketball…and think some good could come someday from writing about it…who know

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How Grassroots "Fan Journalism" Could Help the WNBA Grow

How is it that the Washington Mystics are having one of their best years from a business perspective during one of their worst seasons on the court since 2003…and in the middle of an economic downturn no less?

One explanation could be increased exposure.

However, the Mystics didn’t use a national media blitz to boost their revenue – instead they used a combination of local partnerships, longer season-ticket advertising, flexible ticket plans, and doubling their number of sales representatives. All “minor” efforts that ended up reaching an impressive accomplishment for a losing team in a growing league.

So what can we learn about sports business from this example? The Mystics’ success represents the value of increasing exposure at the grassroots level by making connections with fans and giving them what they want.

That lesson is being applied to the launch strategy of the upcoming Women’s Professional Soccer League (WPS), which has taken lessons from the WNBA and the now-defunct Women’s United Soccer League.

WPS plans to start small and grow through grass roots. Teams will be individually owned and operated. League officials estimate teams could break even with 5,000-average attendance.

"It's about local investors in local clubs," Mallett said. "If you can win support on the local level, then you can win nationally."

The grassroots strategy might at first seem inappropriate for the task of building support for a national professional league, but then again…it also seemed inappropriate for the task of winning the democratic nomination for president. Ultimately, when you’re fighting for exposure to make a name for yourself, the long-term strategy of using local exposure to gain broader interest seems to be the strategy of choice for start-up sports leagues.

Might there be a way to extend these lessons about grassroots sports business with the new media political campaign that helped propel Barack Obama to the democratic nomination for president? The answer might lie in a new media “fan journalism” effort, for which the technical infrastructure already exists at an unlikely source.

Overcoming the Exposure Challenge

In Sue F.’s “State of the Game” post at the “They’re Playing Basketball” blog, she cited a 2002 NCAA report that noted the biggest challenge to women’s college basketball is exposure. The same could be said about the WNBA.

The NCAA noted that a potential solution to the lack of exposure is “a grassroots-type campaign…including using posters and fliers on campuses, increase the number of giveaways, and gaining support from the media.”

Since the report was written in 2002, new media technologies -- such as blogging or social networking media -- were not mentioned, but would seem to be reasonable additions in 2008. And given the success of the netroots movement that has united liberal progressives and helped Barack Obama’s presidential campaign immensely, it’s hard to ignore the potential power of blogging to similarly increase exposure for a niche sports league.

I know I’ve written previously about whether the WNBA could leverage web 2.0 strategies to help the league grow, but now I’m thinking of a more bottom-up approach driven by fans rather than the league – how could new media technologies help channel the energy, knowledge, and spirit of individual fans into greater attendance, exposure, and ratings for the WNBA? In other words, could a grassroots new media campaign help mobilize basketball fans in support of the WNBA?

The goal of such a new media grassroots movement in terms of the stages of fanhood laid out by the NCAA report should be to attract fans who know the game and help them establish a connection to a WNBA team. It would then seem that commitment is established by ongoing media exposure and coverage that push the new fan to stay involved with the league even if they are not able to attend games regularly. And it is that ongoing coverage that encourages commitment that the WNBA is lacking right now.

Those goals for a new media sports movement are similar (though probably of a lesser magnitude) to the key elements to the netroots movement, as described by Christine Pelosi in a Huffington Post article: to join a community, send a consistent message to potential voters, raise funds, and mobilize people around a cause.

At the end of her article, Pelosi sort of issues a call of action that would be interesting to apply to people interested in helping the WNBA grow:

If each of us who has concerns about our future, complaints about the system, or cynicism about what is possible takes these 4 steps, a progressive majority is inevitable. Our Netroots All-Stars have stepped up to the plate to battle those concerns, complaints and cynicism in order to build a better future -- now it's up to us to join the team.

Despite the obvious differences between a political campaign and a growing professional sports league, Pelosi’s call to action would be interesting to pose to WNBA fans…and there may already be an infrastructure in place to make it all work.

Fan-journalism: Expanding participation in the journalistic process

As evidenced by a recent effort by New York senator Tom Duane to extend journalistic protections to “journalist bloggers”, the lines between “blogger” and “journalist” are blurring and we still haven’t figured out how to negotiate those boundaries. But with the Netroots Movement and Duane’s proposed legislation, we might be forced to fully engage the dilemma soon.

The problem with blogging that leads some people to disregard it as a form of journalism is the lack of accountability and their limited ability to gather information (lack of press credentials), according to Jonathan Alter of Newsweek. As a result, there’s a tendency to become rumor-mongers instead of truly generating “news”.

However, with fan journalists, there’s a chance to do something more because the games themselves are the most important content and anybody can turn on the television or buy a ticket and provide analysis...which is, of course, what leads to concerns about accountability and quality. Then again, this is definitely a case where any publicity is better than no publicity.

Fan journalists could provide first hand accounts of games that the media don’t cover, statistics analysis that provide additional insight, and give attention to the players that the media typically ignores. But the problem is that many people don’t have the time to maintain a blog, though they might have outstanding content to provide every now and then. And it’s hard for a blog with sporadic posts to get noticed and build a following.

However, there may be a solution to that problem that would allow individuals to contribute to the coverage of a sport without committing to a blog and seems to represent the very spirit of the new media grassroots movement that the WNBA needs – Bleacherreport.com (BR).

Bleacher Report (www.bleacherreport.com) formally launched its community-driven online sports network...providing all sports fans one place to create, critique and consume compelling coverage on their favorite college and professional teams. Bleacher Report’s open, collaborative platform features a peer-editing system that helps ensure high quality fan-generated coverage on the site. While in beta, the site grew to more than 400,000 monthly unique visitors and 2,000 original sports editorials published per month — drastically outpacing similar outlets in both web and print media...

The (founders) shared a belief that mainstream sports media didn’t offer the range or depth of coverage to satisfy diehards, and that some of the most insightful analysis comes from the fans who know their teams best. With Bleacher Report, they created a platform to empower all fans to become fan-journalists, producing high-quality content and sharing it with a built-in readership of hundreds of thousands.

Now for those of you that have spent any time at BR, you probably know that the quality of the articles can range from mindless drivel to quality sports commentary (with articles from this blog somewhere along that spectrum). And the majority of those articles are written by the “average lunkhead male”, which is not a favorable environment in which to write about women’s sports.

However, before dismissing it as a possibility, consider the potential it has to support a new media grassroots movement for the WNBA; in a web-driven world, a site like BleacherReport.com that already has partnerships with Fox Sports and Google News might be the perfect outlet for WNBA fan journalists to provide their own exposure to the game.

Affordances of BleacherReport.com

The use of a reputation system for writers and a peer-review system for rating articles, makes BR more effective for growing a professional sports league than the more insular bulletin boards in two ways. First, the most highly regarded articles and writers are moved to the forefront of the community, which gives non-fans the opportunity to see the best content first. And second, being part of a broader community of sports fans provides the league with more direct exposure to fans who otherwise might not pay attention.

Even more exciting, writer Alan Bass reports that one writer from BR was even given a media pass for a St. Louis Cardinals game. That’s a huge accomplishment for a site like fan-driven site, even if other professional franchises don’t immediately follow suit.

Unfortunately, at this point the BR community has mimicked the imbalance in the mainstream media – whereas the NBA at BR section has 50 articles in the past three days during the slowest part of the off-season, the WNBA section only has 33 articles since the site's inception. As a result, the WNBA section is not even listed on the menu bar on the site, essentially rendering it invisible.

However, WNBA fans cannot blame the league’s lack of visibility on the site’s founders -- as a community-driven site, the burden of producing WNBA articles and making the section more visible lies firmly with the users themselves.

And since the overall culture of the site is not that supportive of women’s sports so people interested in writing WNBA articles probably have to make their work twice as good as others to get noticed. Nevertheless, the opportunity to increase exposure of the WNBA using a platform that has connections to major media outlets is unique and worth capitalizing on for those with an interest in supporting the league’s growth.

BR provides an excellent opportunity for fans to influence the way the sports are covered, but WNBA fans are not yet participating. If they did and the mainstream partners eventually took notice, why couldn't it help the WNBA?

Alternative media coverage could be beneficial to the WNBA

I acknowledge that this whole idea is a stretch – the idea of a fan-driven new media grassroots movement supported by a site that doesn’t promote its WNBA section is a bit idealistic. But for fans who genuinely care about the WNBA and want to influence its growth, this might be the best way to have an impact beyond buying season tickets.

And if the St. Louis Cardinals are willing to provide BR writers with press passes, why shouldn’t the WNBA? The reality is that most media outlets are not going to put their financial resources into women’s basketball (yet). Imagine for a moment if out of the handful of people who read this blog post today, a few in WNBA cities managed to get press passes and cover a team they doesn’t normally receive consistent coverage. It could be a huge benefit to the teams themselves and the fans.

Recently, a few BR writers have written about the value of the site to the sports world and the potential of it gaining credibility. Some writers are even starting to experiment with radio, which would be an even more dynamic step forward. In other words, the site has huge potential…and WNBA fans are not yet involved.

One of the testimonials from Mary Jo Buchannan, a NASCAR writer, really captures the spirit of what BR is good for.

I've also had the privilege of meeting other wonderful writers, many of whom have taken the time to edit my work. Their constructive criticism has shaped my writing and helped me to learn to express myself better than I ever could have imagined.

Bleacher Report has opened up a whole other world for me as well. Who knew there were so many sports that others were equally passionate about as I was NASCAR racing? I've learned more about Olympic events and cricket and F1 in my short tenure with Bleacher Report than I ever would have in a million years of reading about sports in the traditional venues.

Figuring out how to grow fan journalism in the BR spirit could be extremely beneficial for the WNBA and BR has already laid out the technical infrastructure. It’s now up to WNBA fans to take advantage. “Netizens make the Internet,” writes Duncan Cameron at Rabble News. “Top down messaging is not internet friendly, and directive e-mails are deleted.” If the WNBA is going to use the internet to grow, it needs to rely on fans.

Transition Points:

Writing at BleacherReport.com is pretty simple. Go to the site, sign up, and start writing. It's not all that different than signing up for a web forum, like Rebkell. Let the movement begin...

Helen Wheelock has previously written about the use of blogs and podcasting to make up for the lack of media coverage of women’s basketball. It’s worth a read if you haven’t already. An excerpt:

It is encouraging to note that there are those in journalism world who advocate for, and independently produce, coverage of the women’s game. It is also important to note that they face very real resistance. “My colleagues in the media – they make fun of it all the time,” said Kris Gardner of the online site Houston Roundball Review. Initially Gardner covered the NBA, but was drawn to women’s basketball by the passion of the Houston Comets’ fans. “You hear the snide comments from people you hang around with – especially the men. ‘Women’s basketball? Who cares about that? Why should we bother even covering it?’”

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Gardner, “a couple of years ago I was asking myself, ‘Why am I still doing this? There’s no money in it.’ But I’m stubborn. I do it because I enjoy it and I think the athletes deserve some recognition and acceptance. They deserve some respect. If I get an email from a fan saying, ‘Thank you for what you do, I really appreciate it,’ that’s enough for me.”

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Singular Team Nicknames Get Love Too

It seems as if the WNBA has dominated the singular team name market with 8 of 14 teams sporting one.

I have to admit I'm not particularly fond of those, especially when they refer to abstractions (like “Magic” or “Liberty”) or seemingly benign things (there is rarely reason for a Californian to fear the “Sky”).

Anyway, while reading Hoopshype.com for my daily dose of NBA news, I found a comment about Clay Bennett’s distaste for singular names that was somewhat ironic:

Team chairman Clay Bennett has said privately he's not wild about nicknames that don't end in "s.” Names that end in "s” are also more enduring to the community, according to Tom Fugleberg, executive creative director at Olson, a Minneapolis-based branding agency. "I think there's more of a sense of a community when you are a fan of the Blazers and not the Storm,” Fugleberg said. "There's a feeling that you are a part of that.”

Hmmmm… even though I believe the world could do without another singular sports nickname, I’m not sure how Fugleberg came to this conclusion about community.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the way I see it, there was a mini-movement started in defense of both the Sonics and Storm after Bennett’s intentions to move the team were clear. Maybe Fugleberg would argue that the Storm fed off the energy of the Sonics’ movement, but I’m not sure that’s accurate.

If one way to judge the strength of a community is its response to adversity or threats to the very core of their identity, then I’d say there was a pretty strong sense of community around the Storm.

Although the Storm's attendance has varied from below league average to above average over the years, the community support shown over the past year was impressive. The Save Our Storm group seemed to be pretty effective at rallying the team around the Storm. Then Force 10 Hoops, a group of local businesswomen, stepped up to buy the team.

Seems like they mustered up a solid sense of community to me. Go figure…

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Honoring Force 10 Hoops on Independence Day

As most of you are probably aware, Force 10 Hoops – a group of four women – was responsible for purchasing the Seattle Storm from Supersonics owner Clay Bennett making the Storm the 7th independently owned team earlier this year.

So there is no better time to celebrate this milestone than Independence Day, which comes days after the Sonics move to Oklahoma City was made complete.

As unfortunate as the Sonics’ relocation is, it’s equally exciting that Force 10 Hoops – a group of 4 women – was able to buy the Storm to keep them in Seattle.

The group has received a couple of awards for their efforts –the GSBA Collaboration for Social Change Award and Chairperson Anne Levison received the QLaw Community Leadership award. As whole, the group brings a strong social justice orientation to the WNBA. They’ve also received kudos from bloggers and fans for making history and representing progress in a world still beset by deep-rooted sexism and homophobia.

However, amid all the excitement about this important milestone, journalist Jayda Evans made an important point near the end of an April 20th Seattle Times article that I think deserves another look on Independence Day:

While wanting to do a service to the community, none of the new owners believes they would be truly empowering women without their franchise being a success financially.

Even before taking a position on such a statement, I think it begs a fundamental question: what is empowerment? And then an even bigger question that I think applies to women’s sports and larger political efforts: to what extent is equal opportunity valuable without equitable participation and sustainability?

I don’t ask these questions to minimize the significance of Force 10 Hoops’ accomplishments. On the contrary, I think now that they are officially the only basketball operation in Seattle, it’s worth revisiting the magnitude of this opportunity rather taking its significance at face value.

Before you dismiss these questions as overly abstract and unrelated to the WNBA’s primary endeavor of playing basketball, consider that the WNBA often makes claims of empowering girls and women: providing role models, opening doors that were previously closed to women, and perhaps even helping to shift our definitions of womanhood. It’s relevant primarily because the WNBA makes these claims.

I’m not claiming to have any answers regarding these questions and I understand the problems inherent in addressing the issues as a heterosexual male…and nevertheless I shall proceed because they are extremely pertinent to the WNBA.

Inspiration, opportunity, and access

First of all, an oft-repeated goal of the Storm and many other WNBA teams is to provide role models to demonstrate that indeed new opportunities are available for women. It was explicitly stated in the Storm’s description of the upcoming Women of Inspiration night:

"Part of the mission of the Storm is to provide young girls and boys role models they can look to for inspiration, to show them what is possible to achieve in life when you work hard and reach for your dreams. This night is an opportunity to shine the spotlight on women who have dedicated themselves to helping others and have done so much to give back to the community,'' Seattle Storm CEO Karen Bryant said.

So the Force 10 Hoops ownership group is certainly a very tangible representation of the new opportunities that women have in the U.S. But opportunity and inspiration seem to be only part of that empowerment equation. At some point, there has to be some work done to lower the barriers to accessing those opportunities.

Allowing access includes diminishing discrimination of all types – gender, sexuality, race, class, ability – and giving people a fair shot to pursue the paths they are inspired to take. I would argue the WNBA does that as well, not only by providing role models to inspire, but more recently serving as a pipeline for women to gain access to positions at other levels of basketball. From the NY Times:

“Now you’re seeing the positive impact of Title IX on young women who went through high school, college, then went into the W.N.B.A.,” Beth Bass, the chief executive of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association, said in a recent telephone interview. “Now they’re getting sprinkled into college ranks and bringing a whole new, fresh approach on how to coach the sport.”

Although the coaching ranks in women’s basketball have been male dominated, the WNBA is preparing a new generation of visible women who provide a professional perspective of basketball in the U.S. that has not been readily available previously. That’s important because it provides the young women coming through the basketball ranks with direct interaction with role models who know what the experience is about.

However, this is where the notion of empowerment sometimes becomes problematic – if more women are assuming these positions, but failing to create new opportunities for future generations (e.g. “financial success”, sustainability) then its hard to say anyone beyond the individual with the job is empowered. But even beyond that is the issue of advocacy, something the WNBA seems to constantly struggle with.

Advocacy, participation, and success

The WNBA is a business first and foremost, not a political advocacy group. I understand that. And with that comes certain decisions necessary to make sure you don’t alienate the fan base. But it’s difficult to “truly empower” people without being at least a little political…right?

If nothing else, even making conscious efforts to provide opportunities for women -- making sure to break down barriers of racism and sexuality in the process – is a political act in that it upsets the status quo. So it’s impossible to empower women and be apolitical.

But another issue that I find interesting in the WNBA is the position of advocacy. To what extent should the WNBA take steps to actively shift perceptions of women in society? What kind of statement does it make if they explicitly perpetuate status quo images of womanhood while claiming to empower women? Like when the league provides courses on makeup and fashion? Feministing summed it up perfectly:

So long as "womanhood" means adhering to traditional gender norms. When "womanhood" means being a kick-ass athlete, I guess it's not worth celebrating.

Opportunity and access are most valuable to the extent that they add a broader set of perspectives to group of decision makers and avoid incidents like this. With that broader set of perspectives, you would hope that there would be more voices advocating against such blatantly problematic initiatives. And it’s not just advocating against bad initiatives -- in the case of the WNBA, it means advocating for the women who don’t fit the “ideal” image and taking steps to help them live without the burden of society’s double standards.

And for leaders in women’s sports, empowerment entails many other responsibilities including advocating for better coverage, diversity, and giving all women the tools to recognize and resist biased representations in the media. From the Women’s Sports Foundation, worth quoting at length:

“Creating and sustaining change must involve challenging media to not only increase the amount of coverage for women's sports, but to also extend the range of diversity to include coverage of racial and ethnic minorities, larger women, women with disabilities, and older women. We must support (financially and philosophically) those media who do not objectify women athletes or trivialize their athletic endeavors, but do provide positive role models and celebrate the accomplishments of women from various backgrounds. Finally, we must encourage young girls and women to become educated consumers who will have the power to resist biased media images and incite change at the local and national levels."

To me these points have significant implications for empowerment while not being so political that they alienate the fan base. And this would seem to be a very minimum standard required to consider the WNBA empowering.

From opportunity to responsibility

So returning to the original comment about truly empowering women through financial success, I think to really understand empowerment we have to take it a few steps further. Financial success for the Storm – and the WNBA at large – is only one piece of the empowerment equation that includes challenging the media, shifting the “womanhood” is portrayed in the media, and helping recognize and resist bias in the media.

As I haven’t been in any WNBA boardrooms recently (or ever) I don’t know what if any of this is on their radar. And perhaps Force 10 Hoops is already in the process of addressing some of these things as well. But as a fan, I find it helpful to have a clear understanding of what exactly it means to empower women through sports so that I can appreciate the significance the little actions taken in the name of social justice.

Dawn Trudeau captured the spirit of empowerment with a statement back in March:

Each remembers growing up in the years before Title IX was passed in 1972. "In gym class in grade school, the girls were forced to sit on the sidelines and watch the boys play basketball," Trudeau says. "That is one of the reasons why I'm committed to creating opportunities for women and girls in sports."

To me empowerment in 2008 comes down to a basic principle: equal access to inequitable participation is not social change. With that in mind, I look forward to what the Force 10 Hoops group does with this opportunity.

Related Links:

More Sports and Sexism
http://smartlikeme.wordpress.com/2008/07/04/more-sports-and-sexism/

Transition Points:

- This has to be a bad situation for the Oklahoma City fans. While I’m sure they are happy about the prospect of having a pro basketball franchise of their own, they can’t be happy with the circumstances under which they obtained it. I suppose it’s yet another reminder that this is a business…and Clay Bennett is a businessman, never described as a die-hard Sonics fan.

- Now I’m just tossing fuel on the Sonics fire. From an old article in The Stranger: “The campaign finance records I’ve reviewed show that Sonics/Storm co-owner Tom Ward has contributed $475,000 to Gary L. Bauer’s Americans United to Preserve Marriage.” Wow, learn something new every day…

- The most absurd thing to come out of this is that if Seattle does ever get a new NBA franchise (post-David Stern, I assume??), they will somehow “share” history with the OKC team. From TrueHoop: “Can you imagine being the people at Basketball-Reference.com trying to deal with that? I would hope that, for simplicity, that history would be attached to one club and not the other. Meanwhile, in 2019 when the TBDs win a title, will that be their first or second title in franchise history? And if the New Sonics win the following year, is their first title? Second? Or, after a couple of beers, and too much thinking about shared history, third?”


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