A few weeks ago, while preparing to be defeated in a game of Mario Kart (Donkey Kong with the Flame Runner, please), I flipped on the television, where I was greeted by a Sportscenter report done by Jeremy Schaap on the women’s basketball team at the University of Connecticut.
As I write this piece, the UConn women have won 76 basketball games in a row. By the time my 1,690 word manifesto is posted on FlipCollective , they will have won 77 in a row. Soon after most (but before some) people read it, they will have won their 78th consecutive game, which will grant them their second straight national championship.
Relative to the hoopla that would surround a similar run in men’s college basketball, coverage of the UConn women has been anemic, a fact that Schaap and others attribute to the Huskies’ dominance. Because the team brutalizes its opponents with such consistency, the thinking goes, no one cares.
Others suggest that the lack of attention paid to the streak is due to the fact that the UConn women are, well, women – that gender bias is at work. This line of thinking dictates that television viewers don’t care about women’s basketball not because they’ve made a considered viewing decision, but because they’d prefer to see women “barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen”, as then-Stanford women’s coach Tara Van Derveer asserted in 1994.
Neither is really true. Men and women, it turns out, are not the same. The differences in our bodies are trumped only by the differences in our minds, as anyone who has ever spent more than 12 minutes in a room with a member of the opposite sex knows. Those differences are definitely not a bad thing, and almost certainly a good thing. If we weren’t different, we wouldn’t need one another, and there wouldn’t be any more little men and women running around to take our places when we’re gone.
Simple enough, right? It would seem that we – long-standing Earth-bound organisms that we are – should be able to talk freely and openly about our differences, commiserating about our respective deficiencies even while we celebrate our capabilities.
But alas, such is not the case. Because if it were, Jeremy Schaap wouldn’t have to dance around the real reason people don’t watch women’s basketball, which is that women’s basketball is not particularly entertaining and, almost without question, not nearly as fun to watch as the men’s game.
That girls and women participate in sports is entirely positive. Studies have shown that girls who play sports do better over their lives than girls who do not. Furthermore, the idea of women playing high-level, televised sports is perfectly reasonable. If audiences want to watch women play sports, there is no justification for barring that from happening.
But if that audience watches women’s sports and comes to the conclusion that it’s just not as good as the men’s version, that audience ought to be able to express that opinion honestly. They should be able to say what they think, sans verbal ends-around and codewords, and without fear of being called sexist or unenlightened. They should be able to tell the truth.
Some years ago, around the time of the publication of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus”, it seemed that some traction was being found for reasoned discussions about the differences between men and women. After decades of trying to pretend that everyone on the earth was the same, regardless of that person’s needs in the arena of underclothing, we were taking a proverbial deep breath and admitting that men and women are different, and that those differences are a good thing.
But, to my eye, we’ve slipped backward. We’ve decided that different = bad. Any discussion of differences between the genders must mean that those doing the discussing have some ulterior motive, which they will use to hold one of those genders under their rhetorical thumbs. We’ve arrived at a point where we think it’s better to not talk about differences, because only harm can come out of it.
But what if we all understood one another a little better because we were able to admit that men are terrible at multi-tasking, and that women are nearly unwatchable as basketball players?
Some reluctance on the part of women to admit any weakness is understandable. Historically, our species’ treatment of the fairer (and probably smarter) sex has often been reprehensible, and the instinct to hold onto gains made in gender equality is not without cause. In addition, a plausible reaction to a thesis like mine is that “it’s just not helpful”. That reaction might carry with it an undertone of benevolent censorship, quietly saying that it is better to leave the issue alone, in the hope that not talking about it will somehow improve everyone’s lives.
But when it becomes obvious that something is different – that, for example, women just aren’t as good at basketball – wouldn’t we all be more trusting of one another if we could talk about that fact? After all, as a people, we often proclaim that seeking “truth” should be one of society’s goals. From my vantage point, the only way to achieve that goal is by talking about what’s real, as opposed to talking about A) what’s not real, or B) what we’d like to be real.
As an example of something real: I would rather have a female doctor than a male one. I think women are better listeners, are more empathetic, and are better able to consider multiple issues at once. These are all skills I would like to have, but don’t – at least not to the level required for high level doctoring.
My lack – and what I perceive to be the male gender’s general lack – of these skills is regrettable, but it’s not something I’ll soon rail against. Instead, I’ll probably use it to my advantage, like a baseball manager selecting a pinch hitter. My belief is that female doctors are better. Thus, when everything else is equal, I’ll probably gravitate toward Dr. Lois instead of Dr. Luke.
A baseball manager makes the same sort of decision when it comes to pinch-hitting. He trusts his instinct that Johnson is better suited to the task of coming up with a ninth-inning hit than Beckett, and makes the decision to send Johnson to the plate.
That isn’t to say that Beckett wouldn’t have gotten a hit, or that Dr. Lois will necessarily cure me. There are, of course, male doctors who are better than the female doctors I would pick. But if I were forced to choose based only on sex, I’d choose the female one.
Keep in mind, the aforementioned example – how I pick a doctor, and the traits that make a good one – involves important characteristics. Basketball, and sport as a whole, is wildly unimportant, except that our society, in its current gladiatorial state, has decided that it is worth our time and money.
Which could take me to a larger point: Who really cares if women happen to be worse at basketball than men? So men are able to put a ball into a hoop in a way that is more pleasing to the eye than women. So what?
But I’ll save a discussion of the inexplicable importance of sport to our cultural landscape for another day. For now, I’ll return to the issue at hand.
Instead of bemoaning the fact that less coverage is given to women, or shushing those who would talk about the real reasons why that is the case, perhaps it would behoove people to think about the issue from a different perspective. Instead of trying to level every skill, it might be better to concentrate the emphasis of the gender on things that gender’s members are good at. Maybe, in the case of women’s basketball, the answer is to change the rules of the game. Or maybe the answer is to create another sport and abandon basketball entirely. As far as I know, there is no glass ceiling on innovation.
That’s not to say that women should give up on playing sports. Or that there’s anything wrong with watching women’s basketball. Or that there’s anything wrong with preferring to watch women’s basketball.
But if women expect men to accept that women are better at certain activities (which is a reasonable request), they should be willing to admit when they’re worse at others, without characterizing anyone who points out such a fact as being heartless or limiting.
Here’s what’s interesting: The result might be further respect from the population as a whole. To my mind, no one is more respected than the person who can admit his or her faults and weaknesses. Doing so is an indication of a level of self-assuredness to which we all aspire.
And, as a bonus, no one will feel obligated to endure Jeremy Schaap’s reports – reports that contain half-truths and evasion. People might be able to say what they think, which – much more than equality in a ball game – should be our ultimate goal.
All of which will lead us to a day when a guy will be sitting on the couch next to his girlfriend when a women’s basketball game comes on. He’ll say, “This is basically unwatchable.” She’ll pause before responding, “That’s true, honey. But I bet most of them could negotiate an arms treaty better than you could.”
Of course, to get there, we’ll have to work on emphasizing the importance of safety from atomic weapons over the ability to dribble a ball. Which, if you read the preceding sentence again with your logic glasses on (atomic bombs >> basketballs), shouldn’t be a difficult task.
Unfortunately, we’re not there yet, as evidenced by those who did read that sentence again and thought, “What’s so important about not getting blown up? The game’s on.”
While we wait, I hope we’ll consider allowing people to tell the truth, whether it’s about women’s basketball or the spinach in your date’s teeth. It might hurt a little now, but we’ll all be better off in the long run.
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1) Yes, some people don’t enjoy watching women’s basketball because it’s not as entertaining as men’s basketball.
2) Yes, some people don’t want to admit or discuss that there are innate differences between men and women.
3) No, that does not make women’s basketball “nearly unwatchable,” except for some people.
If your recent experience with women’s basketball doesn’t go past SportsCenter reports from pathos-peddling Jeremy Schaap and a quote from 1994 — a missive that notes both of those things but doesn’t namecheck any players, current or past, suggests that’s the case — I encourage you to watch UConn and Stanford play tonight. To my eyes, UConn’s sleek, quick, smooth, and relentless, especially Maya Moore; Stanford’s a little banged up, but they have a dynamo in Nnemkadi Ogwumike who can my make eyes pop.
If yours don’t, that’s fine, for all the reasons you laid out. But give it an honest try of recent vintage before extending your personal preferences to the we and plural you employed throughout this post.
Nothing is wrong with liking WBB Andy, but Paul is right: Most (not some) people would simply rather watch something else.
I understand your ‘just give it a chance’ point of view because I loooooooooove hockey. Most people have their reasons for not watching it, however, and no campaigning on my part will get them to do so.
The difference is that we as a society are allowed to talk about hockey viewership without stepping on any proverbial oversensitive toes (that is, if you disregard Canadians).
How do we get people to see past the surface of things and just speak honestly with each other?
As usual, a well written column about a difficult topic. My one issue would be with the statement “women aren’t as good at basketball”. In embracing differences between the genders, we must also embrace a different way to evaluate “skill”. Size and speed, essentials to be successful in men’s sports can be replace more often by brains and anticipation in women’s sports. These differences mean that comparing men’s sports to women’s sports is like apples and oranges. You need to rate skills differently between the genders.
For all the talk about changing the rules, you should check out a game of netball sometime. It’s a hugely-popular women’s sport in Commonwealth countries. It’s similar to basketball, but there’s no dribbling, no backboard, and players are only allowed to stay in certain zones on the court. That means passing is the key, and it’s usually played at breakneck speed – it’s a great spectator sport, and is such a wicked workout that a lot of men play it to keep in shape (and not just “couch potato” men – several All Blacks (New Zealand national rugby team members) play it regularly). As far as women’s sports go, it’s much more popular than women’s basketball, and gets a lot more coverage. It’s physical, tactical, and fast – it’s great on TV and it’s great in the stands. It would probably do really well out here, if it wasn’t for the stigma people would attach to it in America of it being a “girl’s only” sport.
Geoff S – The beauty of sports is that they are designed to evaluate skills. To Paul’s point with the current rules men are much more skilled at basketball. If they change the rules to something more like netball, then perhaps women will be more so.
You can’t say women are just differently skilled at long jump when the point is to jump the longest distance. That’s comparing apples to apples.
this “truth” you speak of is an opinion masqueraded as “truth”.
I would have to agree with Andy. Sure, women’s basketball is nowhere near as entertaining as men’s basketball, and that’s fair enough. A sport where size and strength make a huge difference will never be as entertaining when played by smaller, weaker players. But to say it is “nearly unwatchable” is a MASSIVE exaggeration. It is actually this kind of prejudice that drives people away from watching women’s basketball without even giving it a try. If you did, you’d find it is actually not bad to watch and I would probably pick a women’s basketball game over, say, watching baseball (and I’m a baseball fan!). But yes, I would have probably watched Duke vs Butler rather than UConn vs Stanford, if these two games had been on the same day.
As far as changing the rules to make the women’s sports more appealing… that’s just ridiculous. I want to play basketball, not to play netball. If I wanted to play a different sport I would do just that, play a different sport. As a baseball fan, I am pretty annoyed by the fact it is pretty much impossible for me to play baseball because I am a woman. Softball is just not the same thing, as similar as it is, and it doesn’t attract a larger audience because it is tailored to women (and therefore, by that line of reasoning, should make it more entertaining to watch). If you want to change the height of the basket so women can dunk too, or something, that might be ok, but to change the rules of the game is pretty silly. We should just accept the fact that some women’s sports may probably never attract the same audiences as men’s, and get on with it. There’s nothing wrong, in my opinion, with the general audience not caring so much about women’s basketball, you can’t force people to like something as much as something else out of some sort of moral obligation.
Summary. Why would I want to eat a dinner made by my 10 year old little brother when I could have a meal prepared by Bobby Flay? Translation: Women’s hoops = little brother (not so palatable). Bobby Flay = Men’s basketball (tasty and succulent – the food, not Bobby).
Let me put it this way… I stopped playing women’s basketball myself because I couldn’t even enjoy watching a game that I was playing in.
I believe the comparison is the same when we compare two sets of skill among the same gender. For instance, I would much rather watch a high school girls basketball game than a middle school girls game. And I’d venture to guess most people would agree with that statement. Unless they have a fetish for jump balls and possession arrows.
Scott, ditto, just replace ‘hockey’ with ‘soccer’ for me. Andy, as a broadcaster, I have participated in hundreds of women’s basketball games. On the off-chance that I’m forced to sit through a game I am not broadcasting (research, got to the arena early, etc), I am nearly bored to tears. I’m a female, and fully believe the women should have the RIGHT to play basketball. But that doesn’t mean I have to watch it, or like it.
Great post Paul, as usual…
“which is that women’s basketball is not particularly entertaining and, almost without question, not nearly as fun to watch as the men’s game.”
someone finally said it. thank god.
let’s bring it down to the basic, average, basketball fan: it’s not as fast paced. it’s always a layup or jump shot. it’s not as physical. there aren’t any strong personalities to love or hate.
the sooner people realize the structural differences and evolutionary patterns that men and women have fallen into through no fault of any athlete or modern society, the better. from a simple physics point of view, the higher incidence of female athletes with knee patellofemoral tracking problems and hip weakness alone is only a result of design, not training or that they are “weaker” than men.
“it’
s evolution, baby!” – eddie v.
Pragmatism…..if Paul had written a column extolling the virtues of puppies, you would have came here and bitched that he was a cat hater….face it, whatever opinion he is going to have on any subject will immediately become the opposite of your “opinion”….you are arguing for the sake of arguing.
Foley – “The beauty of sports is that they are designed to evaluate skills.” While sport does provide an opportunity to evaluate/compare the USE of skills based on time, personal scores or competition I would refrain from saying that is the beauty of sport. The beauty of sport is in the individual/team accomplishment, the strive to achieve goals and pushing oneself to the limit. Duff Gibson, a former Olympic gold medalist started a blog that explores what I consider to be the beauty of sport. sportatitsbest.com
Secondly, I am Canadian and am currently living in Australia and fine netball to be incredibly difficult to watch. It pains me. While the passing is skilled, it has all the elements of a “girls can’t handle basketball, let’s make something different for them” attitude. I would prefer to watch WBB than netball.
So let me get this straight, Paul: You’re suggesting that a basketball game with a halftime score of 20-12 isn’t exciting to watch? How dare you, these ladies are just as good as their male counterparts (given these counterparts are on a high school team).
Well done, Paul.
I think any good men’s high school team beats UConn’s women’s team.
And the one argument I’ve never agreed with is that female players are “more fundamental” than men. That’s just ludicrous.
I have nothing against women’s hoops — I respect the game and respect the players. I just don’t want to watch it. Ever.
You know, I probably picked the exact wrong day to make the “Just watch it, maybe you’ll like it” argument about women’s basketball…
geoff, your projection is inaccurate and a neat way to sidestep addressing the point i made. it seems that we agree its an opinion. why did he use “truth”?
sorry geoff, i was responding to mike. my guess is that somehow paul has become the arbiter of what is “truth” or not to you guys. people pick some strange heroes.
“But to say it is “nearly unwatchable” is a MASSIVE exaggeration.”
It seems like the main point is that it should be okay to express that opinion. I was out at a bar & grill last night, and the TV closest to me was on some cable news network. I was happy when they changed it to the Stanford/UConn game, but after a few minutes and seeing UConn storm back and take a lead, I was already hoping for it to be changed to baseball. It piques my curiosity for a few minutes when it’s a good matchup, but that’s about it.
You continue to be delusioned in your own Quixotic quest for confirmation, pragmatism.
how so scott? what sort of confirmation do i seek?
pragmatism, the truth you are referring to and Paul’s is different. You are looking for fact, while Paul is looking for a sincere thought. There are multiple definitions for the word you are creating a fuss over, look it up.
justin,
sincerely believing your subjective opinion doesn’t equal truth. i point this out because its lazy of paul to try to give his opinion more heft by masquerading it as truth. does the content of the piece suffer if he just says its his sincere opinion? i don’t think so.
Andy – Yeah, unfortunate timing. However, I do take issue with that argument in general, as it assumes people who don’t enjoy watching women’s basketball are just assuming it, and haven’t watched. A lot of us have, and that’s key to Paul’s point. If we were just assuming WBB was bad, that would be entirely biased but if we’ve watched it, and just can’t enjoy it, it’s not (though you could get into internalization of systemic bias, etc, it’s not a message board discussion).
pragmatism – I think what everyone’s trying to say is: We know that you know what he’s trying to say. Instead of discussing the core point of his post, you’ve decided to turn the argument towards a choice of wording, and not even a truly inappropriate choice of wording. You say his “truth” is an opinion masquerading as truth. What he’s saying is that he should be allowed to say the truth ABOUT his opinion, and that it should be taken at face value, instead of being summarily dismissed.
the subject is just meh for me. just more round-about self aggrandizement by paul declaring his sport as superior to womens’ bball. its really just self fellating.
but isn’t this supposed to be about his writing? or can i only join in if i blindly congratulate him as other commenters and authors here have suggested.
let’s examine the implications of your argument that this is the truth about his opinion. does this mean that he has lied in the past about his opinion? or unless he couches his opinion with the “truth” modifier, that its not really his opinion? again, i opine that paul is lazy and used a “charged” word which detracts from the post.
Something to take note of: In this article, Paul only uses the word “truth” 5 times. That includes the title, and the use of “half-truth”. At no time does he use the word “truth” to infer that his opinion is the truth. Even the title is not meant to infer that “women’s basketball is inferior” is the truth (he’s just immitating Dr. Strangelove). Every use of the word is in the context of “people should be able to tell the truth about what they feel, and not have to worry about being accused of darker purpose”.
So is your complaint that the grandiose title is misleading (valid concern), or that his use of “tell the truth” is substantially different from “honestly state one’s opinion”?
What you fail to realize, pragmatism, is that Paul Shirley IS the truth.