What to do with the WNBA
Written by MC Homer, Wednesday February 25 2009
Let me start off by saying I am not sexist, nor do I look down upon women in any way, unless they are shorter than my height of 5’9, in which case I literally look down on them. Heck, I’m even married! That said, the WNBA has got to go. Like they say, ‘you ain’t got to go home, but you got to get up out of here.’ It doesn’t have to be disbanded, but force-feeding me highlights and even airing games on national telecasts needs to stop, or at least be toned down a bit.
I know I make it sound like they are on the boob tube all the time, when in reality only thirteen regular-season games were scheduled to be telecast on ABC and ESPN2 throughout the 2008 campaign. The season is 44 games long, not including the playoffs. That is only 13 broadcasts out of 572 games. My issue is more with the pace of the game, the excitement factor. Watching women’s basketball for me is like watching the Wisconsin Badgers under Bo Ryan; a very slow and methodical game plan, yet usually a successful one. This lull-you-to-sleep type of basketball is not fun for the majority of fans. This is where the players are getting the short end of the stick. They have no control over how they are marketed.
Maybe the problem lies in the marketing. Women’s basketball is a vastly different game than men’s basketball. Maybe some of the rules can be tweaked. It doesn’t have to be the same exact game as the one played by men. Maybe they can lower the basket 6 inches or shorten the shot clock by a few seconds to try and boost the scoring, you know, pick up the pace of the game a little bit. The highest scoring team in the league only averaged 88.5 points a gm. But, as the saying goes, ‘if if’s and but’s were cherries and nuts, everyday would be a holiday.’
For the second year in a row, attendance at WNBA games has risen, but don’t be fooled by this misleading fact. The average crowd to watch a game was 7,949 in 2008, up 2.21 percent from the previous year. There were 46 sellouts, more than three times the 2007 total of 17. TV ratings are on the rise as well. They may be finding their nitch, but is it really a mainstream sport deserving of a national broadcast at this point?
The Detroit Shock averaged 9,569 suckers every home game. (I wonder how many were there to see former bad boy himself, Bill Laimbeer, now coach of said Shock.) That was tops in the league. The lowest average was in Chicago, drawing a measly 3,656 onlookers. The Florida Marlins, boasting the lowest average attendance in MLB, drew a larger crowd on a nightly basis in ‘08 than those two combined, selling 16,688 seats per contest. The not-so-popular NHL’s attendance low comes from the Islanders in New York, who average 13,640 on a nightly basis. How about America’s favorite game soccer? The Kansas City Wizards of the MLS draw roughly 10,686 hooligans every match, that’s almost six thousand less than the league average of 16,459, which dropped 1.8 percent in 2008. Tennis is the only sport (that I’m aware of) that men and women both draw similar attendances. This probably has something to do with the fact that the sport is not based on size or strength, but on accuracy and endurance.
Attendance is obviously lacking in the WNBA, albeit growing slowly. The problem is, women are just not built like men, their physical makeup is different. That’s not a knock on women, men are physically bigger, stronger, and faster sprinters. Remember the Gatorade commercial with Mia Hamm saying to Michael Jordan, ‘anything you can do, I can do better?’ It was a catchy tune and made for an entertaining commercial, but the fact is there are few things women can do on the same level with men when it pertains to sports.
There is no WNHL or WMLB, although there is an American Women’s Baseball Federation. Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux probably had no idea that when they did the commercial saying ‘chicks dig the long ball’ that a similar line is also true. ‘Dudes dig dunks.’ Most highlights of basketball games are of the high-flying variety. The WNBA only has two players who have dunked in a game, and one retired this past year.
Like the evolution of men, women are continuing to get bigger, stronger, and faster. But until the time comes when more than one player in the league can complete the most exciting play in the game, it needs to be put on the back burner, but not thrown off the stove.
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You came close with your comment about the issue being how to market a women's sport, but you omitted the one thing that I consider critical to any professional women's franchise. It doesn't help your marking to you dress your female players in the same uniforms as men, because then the highlights on SportsCenter look like something out of a junior high school game: layup, outside shot, another layup, another outside shot... What the WNBA needs to do is identify a way to separate the female game from the male game. You suggested lowering the basket. That's one way to introduce the dunk. I'm going to suggest something differet, though. How about letting the women be women? Why dress them in baggy tanks and shorts? They're women; they have curves; they have feminimity. Show some of it. Female volleyball players don't dress like male volleyball players. Female tennis players don't dress like male tennis players. So why should the WNBA dress like the NBA? What's wrong with a uniform that fits tighter and shows more curve? To go further, why not a two-piece uniform to show off the players' abs? They work hard so why not show off the fruits of their labors? The league is filled with beautiful women. Why hide them under baggy clothes?