Let's Talk Sports

Serious stuff today, fun stuff later!

Over last weekend, in a show of solidarity with the Men’s Lacrosse Team, Duke University’s Womens Lacrosse team wore arm bracelets with the numbers of the 3 indicted Men's Lacrosse players on them during their tournament game. My first response was “what?!!!” I actually couldn’t believe the act. And I’ll echo the sentiments of Sports Reporter John Saunders of ESPN, who was thinking the same thing I was, in explaining my surprise.

Although we don’t know if the rape allegations against the men are true at this point, we do know that the Men’s Lacrosse team paid for strippers to entertain them at an off-campus party. And at least one of the Men’s players wrote a very cryptic, violent email, threatening to commit murder in his angst over the rape allegations.

Given these realities, I’m puzzled as to how self respecting women that have even a shred of understanding of the gravitas of the situation at hand, can so brazenly cast their lots in favor of support of these men. Either ignorance abounds, or peer pressure is a beast…maybe both.

Here's a thought for the Duke's Women's Lacrosse team: If they want to support someone so bad, maybe they could look around their locker room. Here are some quick, startling stats and a statement that I am borrowing from John Saunders because he’s totally correct: Between 14 and 20 percent of all women will be sexually assaulted their lives. Over half of all women in college will be sexually assaulted in some form during their time there. And this is just disgusting, but a recent study pointed out that 15% of men in college ADMIT to sexually assaulting a woman. Now, given that many women don’t report rape (and I’m sure that many men never own up to their sick criminal act), imagine that those percentages are certainly underestimates.

And with those stats, I’ll simply echo Saunders sentiments in saying that if the Women’s Lacrosse team wants to stick their necks out and support someone then they should look around their locker room, because it is highly likely that one of their teammates, as a result of sexual assault, could use their support.

Keeping with the women in sports theme, also over last weekend Indy Car fanatics crowded into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to watch the famed Indianapolis 500 race. In the field of drivers was 2nd year driver Danica Patrick; the only female in the pack. Since Danica has hit the IndyCar circuit, the profile of the institution has risen to levels that it hasn’t been at in decades. Unfortunately for Danica, she can’t buy a break simply because she’s a woman.

Last Sunday’s Indy 500 was only her 20th start, and sports writers and critics from all over were calling for Danica to win or else they will don her “the next Anna Kournikova.” “If she doesn’t win, the hype is unwarranted,” they'll say. Well look, here’s a lil fact for ya, the average number of starts before winning a single race was 34 for this years Indy 500 field. She actually led for a few laps at last years Indy 500 (en route to a 4th place finish) and she finished in the top 10 again this year. She is actually pretty phenomenal.

In any case, I have to wonder, why so much scrutiny for this one person who is doing more than holding her own. Would we even be talking about how she needs to win to validate herself if she weren’t a woman? On the other hand, would we be paying attention to her if she weren’t attractive and didn’t appear in a handful of magazines in sexy poses?

What a dilemma!!!

Women in sports are in a precarious position. In order to get any acclaim they have to be portrayed as sexy, but at the same time if they aren’t “good” (as defined by the male-dominated media’s criteria) then they get criticized because “she’s only famous because she’s sexy.”

Having said that, I’d like to point out that even Anna Kournikova was a pretty darn good Tennis player. She was ranked number 1 in the world in Doubles Tennis, and was ranked as high as 7th in the WTA Singles standings. And I know she’s criticized for having never won a tournament, but there are literally hundreds of male and female Tennis players out there that have never won and never reached the top 25. In fact, only a few dozen have more than 1 Singles title, and significantly fewer have ever won a Grand Slam.

So, true Kournikova was famous because her looks (though it didn’t start out that way), but that’s because women seemingly have to play the sexy role in order to gain the kind of acclaim that notable male losers get easily. I can reel off a huge list of NBA players, for example, that have never won despite their fame, but are considered great (Malone, Ewing, Baylor, Stockton, A.I., Payton, etc…and the same is true in a wide array of sports, including individual sports like Tennis).

And to get back to Danica, I think the men in the IndyCar field know that she’s good and that they’re gonna get beat by a girl one of these days real soon. So they come out of the woodwork with all these pre-emptive excuses (like Robby Gordon’s comment that she only weighs 100 pounds so she has an advantage over the 160+ pound guys). Even the old racing men have come out of nowhere to take swipes at her (Racing great Richard Petty said just prior to the Indy 500 that women shouldn’t be on the race track).

Let ‘em talk Danica…then you show ‘em how ladies do it!

-Maelstrom