ESPNU? ...Where's ESPNW?

Professional sports have a history of male dominated broadcasting. Recently, we have seen female journalists wielding the microphone on the sidelines, but does this mean that the male dominated industry is balanced? The short answer is no, not really. While it is refreshing to hear the female perspective, there is still some discrimination when it comes to sports broadcasting. If you take a closer look, you will see that for the most part, female analysts and journalists are usually only seen on the sidelines during timeouts and between quarters while the male broadcasters enjoy hours of airtime doing pre-game, play by play, half-time and post game reports.

Reading about this particular issue in pro sports, I was astounded by the personal accounts of women who dared to enter the male dominated industry. In an article written for ESPN.com, Kate Fagan describes a scenario where she felt she was discriminated against. Fagan was waiting for an athlete to finish his shower, as he likes to do, before doing the post game interview. She was the only one in the locker room when she approached him, still in his towel, to ask questions. Instead, she was asked if she enjoyed walking up on half naked men. Minutes later all the other male journalists walked in to interview the athlete, still in his towel, without any smart remarks. These kinds of things are more prevalent than one might think. In a more recent example of discrimination, ESPN broadcaster Brent Musburger made remarks about the attractiveness of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron, and suggested young Alabama males should pick up a football so they too could attract a beautiful woman. Now this concept may be ahead of my time, but I believe that sports broadcasting should focus on sports. Trivia and commentary during games should relate to the team, athletes, or sports world in general. I don’t need to hear an old man’s opinion on an athlete’s significant other. I can determine a person’s attractiveness on my own, thank you.

In addition to the lack of female presence at the analyst desk, the issue of women’s sports and national airtime is also imbalanced. In a 20-year study by sociologists Mike Messner and Cheryl Cooky, women’s sports only accounted for 4% of all sports news in 2009. I believe this is mostly due to the fact that there is hardly any coverage. It is quite difficult for WNBA teams to gain fans if the only way to watch a game is on ESPN2, NBATV, or attending a game. Those channels, while influential, do not draw the same numbers in ratings as network channels like ABC or NBC.

There are many things that need to change in our society. While this isn’t the most important in the grand scheme, the idea that women aren’t as effective in analyzing men’s sports is severely outdated. Just take a look at the stands in any major sporting event. There are just as many women going nuts and yelling obscenities at opponents, as there are men.