FIFA Women’s World Cup – The River City Renegade

Female sports, male jock journos and Blithering Idiot Syndrome

Montreal and Toronto packed the Bell Centre for their Professional Women’s Hockey League skirmish last weekend.

As with many who stub their toes in public these days, the character assassination of Gregg Doyel has been swift, voluminous and “off-with-his-head!” in tone.

He’s become the Pinata of Print, battered fore and aft in mainstream media and on social media.

Doyel’s trespass?

Basically, being a doofus.

For reasons known only to himself, Doyel held to the notion that a press conference to introduce Caitlin Clark to the Indiana Fever faithful last week was about him, not the fresh new face of hoops in America. He then delivered a mea culpa that definitely was about him, not her. In short, he unleashed an ego the size of the Goodyear Blimp, at the same time confirming the existence of Blithering Idiot Syndrome (more on that later).

If you missed it, here’s how it went down:

The Fever trotted out Clark two days after they’d used the first shout-out in the Women’s National Basketball Association draft to claim the University of Iowa star as their own. Doyel was among the assembled news snoops and one of the first invited to ask a question, which the Indianapolis Star scribe prefaced by flashing a hand-heart, Clark’s signature gesture to her family post-game.

“You like that?” said Clark.

“I like that you’re here. I like that you’re here,” replied Doyel.

“Ya, I do that at my family after every game.”

“Okay, well, start doing it to me and we’ll get along just fine.”

Eeeeeuw! I think the creep-o-metre just went kaflooey.

It was an awkward bit of business with gusts up to ignorant, because it got worse.

When called upon again, Doyel said this to Fever head coach Christie Sides: “You just were given the keys to that. What are you gonna do with it?”

That? It?

Oh my.

Many have submitted that no jock journo, male or female, would be inclined to refer to, say, LeBron James or Steph Curry as a “that” or an “it,” but those words tripped off Doyel’s tongue as easily as if he was talking about a raccoon rooting through his rubbish bin.

Well, women aren’t thats or its or raccoons. They’re people, some of whom happen to excel at sports.

Which brings me to Blithering Idiot Syndrome.

It’s a curious abnormality that afflicts the male species on press row (some, but certainly not all) when they feel obliged to stray over to the distaff portion of the playground and report on the women at play. The lads are rendered clueless, and in-grained beliefs and built-in biases, if not colossal stupidity, slithers into their copy and/or commentary.

Thus, in the wake of the Doyel sideshow, the suggestion has been made that male jock journos know squat about how to cover, and interact with, female athletes.

Here’s sports scribe/commentator Jemele Hill: “Another upside of Caitlin Clark’s popularity is that it is going to finally force the sports media to grow up. Sports media has been extremely complicit in marginalizing and infantilizing women’s sports. A lot of the commentary and coverage is now coming from people who have little experience covering female athletes.”

Here’s Jackie Powell of MSNBC: “Sports coverage has generally been aimed at satisfying the stereotypical white, male sports fan. What’s going to happen, then, when journalists who are used to appeasing the interests and tastes of mostly men have to write to the interests of WNBA fans, a more diverse demographic?”

Hmmm. A more diverse demographic. Diversity is female sports, and lord help those dear boys on press row once they discover that scads of gay women populate the field and stadium pews.

Oh, yes, we all know that lesbians are plentiful in female sports. Somewhere between 25 and 30 per cent of the WNBA roll call is out and proud. The Canadian women’s hockey team that won the 2022 Olympic gold medal featured nine out gay players. Nine. That’s 39 per cent of the roster. Meantime, there’s an abundance of LGBT(etc.) players on World Cup soccer sides (96 in 2023), not to mention the National Women’s Soccer League. It follows, therefore, that a high number of lesbians count themselves among the constituents of elite female sports leagues, and they’ll be looking to read and watch informative dispatches in print, on air and online, not tripe.

But I digress.

The gay component is a sidebar to the main issue, that being the schooling of male jock journos who, until the ascendancy of women’s futbol, hockey and, especially, basketball into the consciousness of the public in recent years, were quite content to carry on with business as usual. Which is to say ignore, ignore, ignore women’s leagues.

The very idea that the rabble is now following, and enjoying, female sports with record head counts and unparalleled viewership must be such an inconvenience to a male-dominated industry (a study shows that less than 20 per cent of sports staffs at 100 newspapers and websites in North America are female). Minds must be a-boggle.

Truthfully, though, the notion that male jock journos require an immediate crash course on how to properly cover female athletes seems dopey in the extreme.

I mean, come on, man. Whether it’s Nelly Korda or Scottie Scheffler shooting under-par golf, surely the dudes on press row ought to be able to tell the story of a person who’s arrived at the pinnacle of their sport. Does it actually matter that Scottie has chin whiskers and Nelly ties her hair in a topknot?

I’d like to give the lads the benefit of the doubt and suggest Jemele Hill and Jackie Powell are conjuring up a faux boogeyman, but the Doyel buffoonery makes that difficult. Ditto the scribblings of someone like Postmedia columnist Steve Simmons, who appears to be blissfully unaware that his opinionating is sexist in tone.

For example, when National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman announced last week that he’d be plopping a franchise in Salt Lake City, Utah, this was Simmons’ reaction:

“Why won’t Utah have a name and logo for its first season? It’s April. The season starts in October. Surely, a name, a logo and a jersey is more than possible by then.”

Rather benign, wouldn’t you say?

Now compare that to what he wrote when the National Women’s Hockey League introduced a no-name, no-logo, no-jersey Toronto franchise in 2020.

“It has been officially announced that Toronto has been awarded an expansion team. What hasn’t been announced: the team’s name; the team’s logo; the team’s venue. And some of those things, if not all of them, can make an outsider rather skeptical and troubled about the future of this kind of endeavour. You don’t gain credibility by announcing a team with no name, no place to play, and no big-name players. When you have all that in place, then make the announcement. The press release referred to the expansion team as a ‘first class team of professionals.’ Time will answer that, but the new Toronto Whatevers are not off to a great start.”

Rather harsh, wouldn’t you say?

Also sexist. I mean, Simmons basically gives the Utah Whatevers, a men’s team in a men’s league, a questioning tsk-tsk, yet the Toronto Whatevers, a women’s team in a women’s league, was taken to the woodshed and bludgeoned. (Simmons also has repeatedly mangled the names of female leagues.)

It’s Blithering Idiot Syndrome in motion.

But, hey, perhaps dudes like Doyel and Simmons have actually done the lads on press row a solid—they’ve showed them how not to do it.

As Hill and Powell submit, class is definitely in session.

Rapinoe moves America’s hateometer needle like no athlete since 1960s Ali

The raw, unbridled hatred heaped upon gay soccer icon Megan Rapinoe reminds me of another athlete and another time in the United States.

Others of my vintage will also recall when Muhammad Ali was Cassius Clay, an outrageous, rebellious braggart who made certain that white America knew he was a loud and proud Black man.

After whupping the fearsome thug Sonny Liston to secure the world heavyweight boxing title as Clay, he promptly introduced himself the next morning as Cassius X, a member of the Nation of Islam and soon to be known as Muhammad Ali.

“I believe in Allah and in peace,” Ali informed news snoops after he’d used his fists of fury to raise a collection of gnarly knots on Liston’s head. “I don’t try to move into white neighborhoods. I don’t want to marry a white woman. I was baptized when I was 12, but I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m not a Christian anymore. I know where I’m going and I know the truth and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.”

That’s not how white America expected, or wanted, Black people to speak in 1964.

“It was unimaginable for most Black athletes to stand up that way and say, ‘I’m going to play by my rules and to criticize presidents and to criticize the war and to call all of white America a fraud,’ ” explains Ali biographer Jonathan Eig. “That was radical.”

So was telling Uncle Sam to go to hell.

Ali became America’s most notable draft dodger three years later, when he declined Uncle Sam’s invitation to travel across the world and spray bullets in Vietnam. (“I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”) He was sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000 and booted out of boxing for 3½ prime time years.

As much as sports scribes had been humored and entertained by Ali’s childlike charms, many of the elder statesmen on press row harrumphed mightily in consideration of his anti-war rhetoric, and his embrace of the Muslim faith was viewed as an example of the dangers of cult-like brainwashing by the Nation of Islam, otherwise known as the Black Muslims.

“I pity Clay and abhor what he represents,” wrote Jimmy Cannon. “In the years of hunger during the Depression, the Communists used famous people the way the Black Muslims are exploiting Clay. This is a sect that deforms the beautiful purpose of religion.”

Even racial barrier-busting ballplayer Jackie Robinson struck a sour note.

“He’s hurting, I think, the morale of a lot of young Negro soldiers over in Vietnam,” Robinson said.

The most stinging indictment of Ali was delivered by David Susskind, an American television personality and producer who unleashed an incendiary, racist attack on the boxer and the Muslim faith: “They hate whites, the Muslims. They mean genocide. Elijah (Muhammad) preaches genocide. Muslims are hooligans, killers, and they intend a total segregation of the races, that’s what they want. And they want the final holocaust, they want genocide, white genocide, that’s what that man preaches. Not that he can preach anything. He has trouble saying hello. Anything that’s not Black is evil and rotten and contagious and they want to exterminate it.”

He described Ali as “a simplistic fool and pawn and semi-illiterate and a disgrace to his country, his race and what he laughingly describes as his profession. He is a convicted felon. He is out on bail. He will inevitably go to prison, as well he should.”

Clay-turned-Ali had become the biggest pain in the ass since the first case of hemorrhoids was diagnosed. He was the most hated man in America, reviled by whites, Blacks, men, women, children and probably some house pets as well.

And now we have Rapinoe, who’s moved the needle on America’s hateometer like no North American athlete since the 1960s Ali.

Sure, there have been other villains, such as Tommie Smith and John Carlos, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, ARod, Tonya Harding, Lance Armstrong, Mike Tyson, Michael Vick, Pete Rose, Johnny Manziel and Colin Kaepernick. All but Smith, Carlos and Kaepernick cheated or spent time behind bars.

Rapinoe did neither, yet she’s taken more wallops than one of Tyson’s old sparring partners.

And for what? Because she took a knee during The Star-Spangled Banner to protest social injustice. Because she refused to sing the national anthem. (I’ve got news for you: so did the aforementioned Jackie Robinson.) Because she’s passionate in her advocacy for equity and equality. Because she trumpets her LGBT(etc.) community. Because she’s engaged to a she (hoops legend Sue Bird). Because she wants women to have control of their bodies. Because modesty isn’t part of her makeup, like purple or blue hair. Because she’s been a magazine cover girl. Because she’s never been shy about sharing her opinion. Because she won and bragged about it.

Oh, and let’s not forget that faulty kick from the spot in the United States Women’s National Team’s 5-4 shootout loss to Sweden that ushered the Americans out of the FIFA Women’s World Cup the other day Down Under.

That was some seriously flawed footballing, so ghastly that former U.S. president and current presidential wannabe Donald Trump broke free from his lawyers long enough to use Rapinoe’s flub as part of his arsenal in his bid to return to the White House.

“Nice shot Megan,” he posted on Truth Social. “The U.S. is going to Hell!!! MAGA.”

No doubt that cheap shot earned Trump some freebe political brownie points, but let’s keep in mind that it wasn’t Rapinoe’s penalty that scuppered the Americans. Young Sophia Smith had the game on her right boot seconds later. Alas, she kicked the ball from a spot in Australia but it landed somewhere in New Zealand.

Ah, but Smith’s gaffe=empathy; Rapinoe’s gaffe=hate.

As far as I can determine, the American’s sole bout of wrongfootedness during her stretch with the Yankee Doodle Damsels occurred in a 13-0 blowout win vs. Thailand at the 2019 World Cup. Rapinoe acted like a damn fool in an affront to sporting decency everywhere, but she wasn’t flying solo. Her associates were equally contemptible in celebrating each goal with a war-has-ended energy. It was an egregious lapse in judgment, worthy of scorn but not a lifetime of revilement.

Perhaps history will be kind to Rapinoe, as it was with Ali, who had made the journey from reviled to revered long before his death in 2016. Americans can be a very forgiving people.

I just don’t know what it is that Rapinoe needs to be forgiven for.

Let’s talk about Mud Murdoch…a pinata named Rapinoe…Rouge Football balderdash from the Republic of Tranna…golfing on cow pastures?…and sickening news in tennis…

I remember the day Bob (Mud) Murdoch was introduced as the freshly minted bench puppeteer of the Winnipeg Jets, although certain of the details are sketchy.

To the best of my recall, which admittedly is grainy, it was a lovely summer day and us news snoops had gathered at a downtown hotel for Mud’s coronation, whereupon I approached him for a re-introduction once the formal portion of the proceedings had been cleared away.

I say “re-introduction” because Mud and I had a bit of history, dating back to the early-1980s.

He had been one of Badger Bob Johnson’s assistants with the Calgary Flames, you see, and I wrote a daily sports column for the Calgary Sun, having escaped the Republic of Tranna.

“Didn’t you and I coach the Flames one night?” Mud asked with a knowing smile.

“We did,” I answered. “I was the head coach, you were my assistant.”

It was true.

The final act of the Flames training exercises that particular year was a full-on intrasquad game, Reds vs. Whites, in Okotoks, just a hoot and a holler down the road south of Cowtown. The reasons behind my participation behind the bench escape me, but no doubt it involved the promotions department of the newspaper and the National Hockey League club. Who benefited? Certainly no one on the shinny side of the hokey promotion, and not the newspaper, since I declined to recount my night as an NHL coach in the next morning’s sports section.

Basically, it was a silly idea and we all went along with the gag.

“You were terrible,” Mud reminded me at his coronation near Portage and Main. “You were a terrible coach.”

“Terrible?” I squawked in mock horror. “Who won the game?”

“We did.”

“Case closed. I retired undefeated. Let’s see if you can do as well with the Jets.”

We both laughed, then I offered him some tongue-in-cheek counsel: “Rent don’t buy. Coaches don’t last long in this town.”

Turns out that Mud coaxed a 37-32-11 record out of the Winnipegs in his first whirl, 1989-90, and that earned him the Jack Adams Award as top bench boss in the NHL. Alas, he was dismissed following his second season (26-43-11, out of the playoffs), and the Jets lost a good man. An cerebral man. A humorous man. An engaging man. A guy with the best mustache this side of Tom Selleck.

And now that good man has left us permanently, dead last week at age 76. RIP Mud, and thanks for the giggles.

Well, the American media won’t have Megan Rapinoe to use for a pinata much longer, but we can be certain they’ll get in a few good whacks before the veteran forward fades into life after futbol. It wasn’t Rapinoe’s fault that the U.S. failed to locate the back of the net through 120 minutes of nil-nil soccer vs. Sweden this morning, because she didn’t step onto the pitch until the second 45 of regulation. Still, she flubbed a penalty kick in the shootout that ushered the Yankee Doodle Damsels out of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, and that will be their main talking point, also a source of great glee. Some among her print/electronic antagonists are sure to heap further scorn on Rapinoe because she was observed smiling at the bitter end while a few of her younger associates were in tears. As sure as there’s a crack in the Liberty Bell, Rapinoe will take the rap for the Americans’ misfortune.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer my futbol on TV with a British accent. I tried watching the Fox Sports feed of the U.S.-Sweden skirmish, but it just didn’t work for me. I lasted about as long as it takes to butter my toast, then it was back to the TSN feed for English accents and the calming cadence and deeper knowledge of the talking heads.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers 50, B.C. Leos 14. Say no more. I mean, doesn’t that score say it all?

Here’s Davis Sanchez of the CFL on TSN squawk squad, comparing Toronto Argos QB Chad Kelly to the legendary Doug Flutie, whose collection of Canadian Football League trinkets includes six Most Oustanding Player Awards, three Grey Cups rings, three Grey Cup game MVP awards: “(Kelly’s) that good, that talented.” Good grief.

Come to think of it, the blab boys on TSN said the same thing about their favorite lousy quarterback, Johnny Manzel, when he came up north as an NFL washout and made his exit south as a CFL washout. I believe Johnny Rotten has since washed out of every football league in existence (and some that have disappeared), and the gum-flappers on TSN finally stopped talking about him last week.

There’s been chatter drifting from the Republic of Tranna that Kelly is the leading candidate for MOP this year. Can we table that discussion until post-Labor Day?

This morning’s comic relief comes courtesy Damien Cox, a Toronto Star scribe who sometimes notices Rouge Football, but only if Auston Mathews and Mitch Marner have gone fishing, or whatever it is that 20something multi-millionaires do with their downtime. And so it was last week when Cox decided to rain hosannas on the Argos, fresh off their sixth successive W in six skirmishes.

Here’s a sampling of his scribblings:

“For two decades, it seemed the Toronto Argonauts were intent on dragging the rest of thd Canadian Football League down with bad teams, bad attendance, bad marketing or all of the above. Now, it appears the Argos are the CFL franchise determined to pull the rest of the three-down league up by its collective bootstraps. How’s that for a turnaround in fortunes?
“Indisputably the best in Canadian football right now.”
“In terms of on-field product, the Argos are the class of the league.”
“They are setting a standard that only the Lions seem capable of matching.”
“For now at least, an unbeaten and untied Toronto squad gets to be the flagship of the league.”
“Their latest triumph should at least start chatter about whether the Argos are capable of running the table.”

Hoo boy. Where to begin? Well, let’s start with that “flagship of the league” hooey. It takes more than six wins to become the flagship of Rouge Football. It also includes community interest and support. In their two assignments at BMO Field this crusade, the Boatmen are averaging 14,220 customers. By way of comparison, the Bombers (the actual flagship franchise) attracted more than double that (30,874) to the Football Field In Fort Garry on Thursday night, when they rag-dolled the Leos, 50-14. Calling the Boatmen the “flagship” is like calling a cocktail napkin a beach blanket.

As for the rest of Cox’s d’oh boy musings, we know the Argos won’t be “running the table” unless there’s a recount on their 20-7 drubbing vs. Calgary Stampeders on Friday, and…well, let’s just say he jumped the gun on all counts.

The Train Trestle Hole at Kildonan Park Golf Course.

Here’s something weekend hackers in Good Ol’ Hometown and environs probably didn’t know about their golf courses: They’re cow pastures. I mean, what other conclusion is there to be drawn after scanning SCOREGolf’s list of the top 59 public courses on Our Frozen Tundra? Get this: Nine provinces are represented, the sole outrider being Manitoba. Here’s the evidence:

BC: 18
Ontario: 17
Alberta: 9
N.S.: 6
Quebec: 3
P.E.I.: 3
NL: 1
N.B.: 1
Saskatchewan: 1
Manitoba: 0

That’s right, according to SCOREGolf, even the Flattest of Lands has a public 18-hole track (Waskesiu Golf Course in Prince Albert National Park at No. 22) superior to anything you’ll find in our own backyard. (I agree, it’s hard to imagine Saskatchewan having the 22nd best of anything, let alone a golf course.)

Well I call BS on the whole thing. I mean, give me Kildonan Park and its Train Trestle Hole any day. And, hey, there’s a Sals on site.

If you’re interested in teeing it up at the best of the best according to SCOREGolf, you’ll have to pack a bag and a toothbrush and head to Nova Scotia or Alberta. The top five are: Cabot Cliffs and Cabot Links in Inverness, N.S., Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge and Fairmont Banff Springs, and Cape Breton Highlands Links in Ingonish Beach, N.S.

And, finally, it pained me greatly to read about now-former Tennis Manitoba president David Scrapneck, who stepped down in disgrace after some disturbing posts surfaced on social media last week and exposed him as a raging homophobe/transphobe. According to a Winnipeg Free Press report, one post featured side-by-side pics of two groups of kids, one waving Nazi flags and the other waving Pride flags. The caption: “Same evil, different era.” That’s beyond disgusting. It sickens me. It’s an immeasurable level of hate that can be emotionally crippling to those in the LGBT(etc.) community, especially the youth, and I assume gay kids play tennis in Manitoba. Maybe they’ll quit now. I hope not. I hope they know there are good people eager to provide them with a safe space on the tennis courts in Good Ol’ Hometown and, indeed, the province. They shouldn’t be hard to find, either. At least that’s my experience. My time covering tennis for the Winnipeg Tribune throughout the 1970s was pure joy, thanks to wonderful folks like Jo and Jack Brown, Ellie O’Gorman, Judy Peake, Rick Borland, Glenn Booth, Bob Moffatt, the Campbell sisters, Jim Matthews, Betty Tuch, George Kylar, etc. The Canoe Club and Winnipeg Lawn Tennis Club were special places, and those were special people.

The demonizing of loud gay icon Megan Rapinoe

As far as I can determine, the Yankee Doodle Damsels frolicking at the futbol fest Down Under are permitted to sing but not dance.

I arrived at that conclusion because numerous members of the United States Women’s National Team have been toasted like so many campfire marshmallows for declining to warble the Star-Spangled Banner pre-match. (And here I thought it was a futbol competition, not an audition for The Voice. Who knew?)

“These morons on the women’s soccer team continue to embarrass us on the national stage,” went a bleat from American journalist and media personality Megyn Kelly. “They won’t sing the national anthem. Half of them won’t put their hands over their hearts. Even the ones who are singing are half-assing it. They clearly don’t want to be doing it. I mean, they look like they don’t even want to be there. It’s like some sort of inconvenience to be representing the U.S.A. It’s shameful. These girls are shameful. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

But wait.

A few among the YDDs were also observed in full guffaw and—gadzooks!—doing a jig scant seconds after a dreary, you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me, nil-nil saw-off vs. not-so-mighty Portugal, a stalemate that thrust the Americans from the group stage and into the knockout kickabouts at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia/New Zealand. Apparently, a post-match do-si-do is also frowned upon.

“I’m all for positivity, but at the same time, the cheering, the dancing, I’ve got a problem with that,” gasped USWNT legend Carli Lloyd.

Many others have joined the chorus.

“I wonder if the US team—I’m hesitant to write ‘our team’—is aware, or even cares, that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, for self-respecting Americans to waste their time on them,” is how New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick put it.

Meantime, longtime journalist Jason Whitlock of Blaze Media described the Yankee Doodle Damsels as a “group of overpaid, spoiled, and entitled women who claim they’re underpaid and underappreciated and that they represent a racist, homophobic, and sexist country. I despise them. I want them to lose.”

Then it got nasty.

Whitlock reserved a special level of animosity for aging-out forward Megan Rapinoe, calling her “the ultimate pimp,” a “fraud” and “toxic,” and referencing “her shallowness.” Both Mushnick and Kelly provided the accompanying vocals, the former calling Rapinoe “vulgar” and the latter informing us that she has “poisoned the entire team against the country for which they play.” (Interesting to note that Kelly neglected to produce a sliver of evidence to support her accusation, but why let the facts get in the way, right?)

Anyway, if you’ve been trying to follow along at home, you either hate the Americans or you hate the Americans. And Rapinoe serves as the lightning rod for the hostility.

In his peculiar, spiteful essay that is part misogyny, part Title IX (“one of the greatest hustles in the history of pimping”) and an uncommon amount of Rapinoe-bashing, Whitlock puts her directly on the spit seven times, with nary a mention of any other member of the national women’s soccer side. The way he has it figured, whatever misadventure befalls the Yankee Doodle Damsels, it’s all on the gay forward with the big yap and the blue, short-cropped hair.

It’s as if Whitlock awoke one morning to discover Rapinoe in his kitchen, peeing on his Corn Flakes while her accomplices loitered outside on the team bus.

But here’s what I find myself wondering: How much, if any, of the anti-Rapinoe rhetoric we read and hear is rooted in her sexuality?

I know Whitlock, Kelly and Mushnick solely through their scribblings and commentary, thus I can only speculate on state-of-belief (you know, the same way they speculate about the American’s toxicity and narcissism), and I’m not prepared to suggest one or all three of them is anti-LGBT(etc.). Perhaps it’s a subconscious thing, though, because Rapinoe hasn’t been among the starting 11 for any of the Yankee Doodle Damsels’ three skirmishes, nor has she seen much of the pitch in a substitute role Down Under. She’s barely a spoke in the U.S.A. wheel. Still, the non-singing, the dancing…hey, why not blame the loud gay girl, right?

And maybe that’s what’s really at play here. It isn’t so much that Rapinoe is gay, it’s that she’s a loud lesbian. Put a microphone under her nose and a Pride parade breaks out: “Go gays! You can’t win a championship without gays on your team!”

But why is that leftover sound bite from 2019 considered obnoxious and objectionable?

I mean, didn’t Joe Willie Namath guarantee a Super Bowl win for the New York Jets? Ditto Mark Messier and the Stanley Cup for the New York Rangers? Both men were admired for their bravado (although a great many initially snickered when Joe Willie made his boast).

Yet when the loud lesbian says you can’t win without gays, she’s met with scorn and ridicule, and it hasn’t eased in four years. Even if her message was/is accurate.

Again, I can’t measure the undercurrent of anti-gay bias in the media, but it’s my experience that homophobes walk among news snoops. It’s just that most aren’t daft enough to say it out loud. They’re usually subtle.

Megan Rapinoe has had no influence on the pitch during the current kickabout, and who among us knows what goes on behind the Americans’ changing room doors? Perhaps she’s been performing Satanic rituals at halftime, or poking pins into a Lady Liberty doll, and she has her 22 younger Yankee Doodle Damsels hoodwinked into playing along.

In reality, Kelly, Mushnick, Whitlock and others of their ilk have produced zero evidence to support the notion that Rapinoe, a part-time player, has poisoned the U.S. water supply Down Under.

If she’s guilty of anything, it’s losing the final foot race with Father Time, the same fate that awaits all athletes.

So why demonize her? Because she’s a loud gay icon.

A red card to BBC reporter for trying to out Moroccan futbol players

Coming out is difficult.

You fret, wondering how many of your family and friends will disengage, and who among the rabble will whisper behind your back or, worse, climb atop a roof to shout out the news that you’re part of the LGBT(etc.) community, making you a target of every hate monger with a creepy and unnatural interest in your dating inclination.

You wonder how many among those hate mongers might lean toward violence.

You also give ponder to issues of employment, housing, medical care, schooling and your next trip to the bakery, hoping the cashier won’t look at you as if you grew a second head overnight or deny you service.

It’s a heavy load, and the weight of worry (some would accurately describe it as fear) seems to be particularly problematic for gay men, most notably professional athletes, and transgender individuals looking for the proper public pot to pee in, the women’s or the men’s.

I have described the coming-out process thus:

“Discovering yourself is the interesting part, accepting yourself is the hard part, revealing yourself is the frightening part that goes bump in the night.”

Fortunately, in our portion of the globe we are spared one scary bit: Prison.

Not so lucky are Moroccans, which is why an aborted natter between a BBC news snoop and national soccer side captain Ghizlane Chebbak at the FIFA Women’s World Cup was excessively dim-witted and exceedingly problematic. If you missed it, this was the exchange:

BBC: “In Morocco, it’s illegal to have a gay relationship. Do you have any gay players in your squad, and what is life like for them in Morocco?”

Moderator: “Sorry, this is a very political question. So we’ll just stick to questions relating to football.”

BBC: “It’s about people. It’s got nothing to do with politics. Please let her answer the question.”

End of discussion.

So give that man a red card!

Actually, make it two red cards, one for remarkable nitwit-ism and the other for being—to use tennis legend Martina Navratilova’s word—a “wanker.”

You can go to prison for being gay in Morocco, one of 68 countries on our big, blue orb in which homosexuality is a felony. It’s outlined in Penal Code 1962, Article 489 Unnatural Acts: “Any person who commits lewd or unnatural acts with an individual of the same sex shall be punished with a term of imprisonment of between six months and three years and a fine of 120 to 1,000 dirhams, unless the facts of the case constitute aggravating circumstances.”

Armed with this knowledge, the BBC dude still expected Chebbak to out her LGBT(etc.) teammates, if not herself, whereupon they would be at risk of time behind bars. Perhaps he believes “Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass Go” would make for a boffo marketing campaign.

Good grief.

Maybe he’ll next grill the Nigerian captain, demanding a roll call of lesbians among that country’s 23 World Cuppers, even though outing them could lead to death by stoning.

Anything for a story, right?

Except that isn’t the story you chase, and not simply because it could lead to dire consequences. It isn’t the province of a news snoop to out anyone, let alone the principals on a global sporting stage.

Coming out is a difficult, delicate decision, and you don’t want some nameless goomer with a pen and notepad doing it for you, not unless it’s at your beckoning. It needs to be your call, on your timetable, just as it is for all in the LGBT(etc.) collective. Anything else is irresponsible journalism.

Fans, of course, can speculate, and they do. For example, one New York Post reader suggested that the players in Australia and New Zealand are “mostly a pack of lesbians,” as if that’s a bad thing. What, gay women shouldn’t be allowed to join a kick-about? Is the roller derby rink a more suitable environment? How about the UFC octagon?

The ill-informed musings of the rabble notwithstanding, we know there are 95 out LGBT(etc.) players on the pitch down Under (12.9 per cent of the 32 nation rosters), because they outed themselves on various platforms. And they’re at risk, even in North America.

For the first time ever, the Human Rights Campaign has declared “a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States.” It cites the alarming number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills being passed in state legislative houses (more than 500 introduced in 41 states this year) and says “our community is in danger.”

Three members of the American side Down Under are out LGBT(etc.). There might be others still in the closet. If so, I’m sure the BBC will be first to ferret them out. Sigh.

Let’s talk about the Mars and Venus dynamic of elite futbol and team sports…Rapinoe’s last stand…hockey power rankings in July…a criminal, a cheat and a hypcocrite…and long live Tony Bennett…

The FIFA women’s World Cup down there in Australia and New Zealand is not merely an example of fabulous sporting theatre, it’s also a stark reminder of the contrasting cultures in elite-level football.

For one thing, the women play a much more honest brand of futbol than the men. That is to say, they spend more time frolicking on their feet rather than on their backsides, gyrating as if they’re giving birth to 10 pounds of barbed wire.

Oh, sure, flopping is part of female footy, too, but when we see a player supine on the pitch there’s a high likelihood that she’s actually wounded, not Meryl Streeping in the hope of hoodwinking a referee into a red card or maybe even an Oscar nomination. (See 2011 Wake Forest study re female and male soccer players diving.)

But fake-injury time isn’t the main point of separation between the women’s and men’s games. Sexuality is.

According to the folks who track such things at the website Outsports, 94 of the 736 players (12.7 per cent) getting their kicks Down Under are LGBT(etc.), and that’s likely a low number because the tally doesn’t include those in the closet. Twenty-two of the 32 sides feature at least one out player, with the co-hosting Matildas leading the way at 10 and Ireland and Brazil right behind at nine apiece.

Our Canadian side includes out players Kadeisha Buchanan, Quinn and Kailen Sheridan, plus Bev Priestman, one of two gay coaches.

Now consider the men’s World Cup.

Number of out gay men at Qatar in 2022: Nil. Number of out gay men at any of the 22 World Cup tournaments: Nil.

I suppose we could say this is all much ado about nil, because a player’s sexual orientation isn’t noted on a game sheet and no one wins the Golden Boot based on clicks on a dating app. Except that misses the point, which speaks to where we are in team sports 23-plus years into the 21st century.

It’s no secret that female athletes are comfortable in their own skin. The WNBA is the clubhouse leader on the inclusion file, with estimates of gay players ranging from 20 to 50 per cent. Connecticut Sun stars Alyssa Thomas and DeWanna Bonner announced their engagement on Friday. Meantime, soccer and hockey aren’t lagging far behind. Canada’s gold-medal winning shinny side at the 2022 Olympics, for example, included nine lesbians—Brianne Jenner, Erin Ambrose, Emily Clark, Melodie Daoust, Jill Saulnier, Jamie Lee Rattray, Micah Zandee-Hart, and two who became engaged in May, Laura Stacey and captain Marie-Philip Poulin. Meantime, the Yankee Doodle Damsels who won the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France featured half a dozen out gays—Tierna Davidson, Adrianna Franch, Ashlyn Harris, Ali Krieger, Kelley O’Hara and captain Megan Rapinoe, who’s engaged to WNBA legend Sue Bird.

“Go gays. You can’t win a championship without gays on your team. It’s never been done before, ever,” is how American captain Rapinoe put it during her fabulous French journey to a fourth WC title.

It’s to the point whereby a gay female athlete need not out herself. It’s dog-bites-man stuff. Nothing to see. Let’s move on.

The men, on the other hand…well, homosexuality remains a major bugaboo. You know, that scary thing that goes bump in the night.

Gay men continue to make their mark in most segments of society, but not major team sports. Go ahead and scan the landscape. The out gay man in the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB and MLS is as scarce as belly laughs in a graveyard. Carl Nassib is a football player without a team, and Luke Prokop is a Nashville Predators prospect who might one day defy the longest of odds and actually become the first openly gay player—ever!—to wear an NHL jersey. That’s it. Two gay guys, one who’s been to the show and the other a wide-eyed wannabe.

So why the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus dynamic in elite team sports?

Well, people with egg-shaped heads have spent considerable time studying that very issue, and there doesn’t appear to be a one-size-fits-all conclusion.

One theory holds that young straight men remain tethered to the antiquated notion that gay equals lesser-than, and that the mere existence of a gay guy on the roster would up-end the apple cart (Tony Dungy called it a “distraction”), thus making on-field success an extremely remote, also illogical, likelihood.

But would Argentina have been less likely to win the 2022 men’s World Cup had there been an openly out gay sharing the pitch and changing room with Lionel Messi and the straight guys? We can only speculate, but we do know that the LA Galaxy became lords of Major League Soccer with Robbie Rogers on the pitch and in the changing room in 2014. So what’s to fear?

The abundance of successful LGBT(etc.) players on the distaff side of the playground is the strongest indicator that a mix of gays and straights is doable. They work in concert and lift championship trophies together, not to mention pad their bank accounts with playoff coin.

Yet, despite overwhelming evidence, that remains a foreign concept among the men, even as studies tell us a majority of gays who come out experience a favorable reception from teammates. So why is it that gay male athletes are still considered poisonous fruit best kept out of sight? If they truly believed it was safe to come out, wouldn’t we be seeing them?

Perhaps it really is as simple as the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing.

Whatever the case, I don’t expect to see a men’s World Cup featuring 94 out LGBT(etc.) players in my lifetime, but it would be nice if the guys would learn the lessons of Venus and, even better, live in the same century.

If Canada doesn’t win Down Under, my World Cup rooting interests shift to these countries, in this order:
Ireland…What can I say? I’m Irish.
Sweden…Never met a Swede I didn’t like.
England…It’s a Commonwealth thing.
Brazil…Big fan of Marta.
Australia…Matildas have the most gay players.

Attendance for the first three days of the women’s World Cup of soccer:
42,137 Eden Park, Auckland (record for New Zealand futbol).
75,784 Stadium Australia, Sydney (record for Aussie female futbol).
21,410 Melbourne Rectangular Stadium.
13,711 Dunedin Stadium, NZ.
22,966 Wellington Regional Stadium, NZ.
41,107 Eden Park.
16,111 Waikato Stadium, Hamilton, NZ.
44,369 Brisbane Stadium, AU.
16,989 Perth Rectangular Stadium.
18,317 Wellington Regional Stadium.
But, hey, they say nobody wants to watch women’s sports (whoever “they” are).

America’s talk-a-lot forward, the blue-haired Megan Rapinoe, plans to hang up her futbol boots and live happily ever after with the lady in her life, Sue Bird, after the World Cup and National Women’s Soccer League season. Does that mean she’ll finally shut the hell up?

Actually, I’ve usually found myself nodding in agreement with much of Rapinoe’s blah, blah, blah over the years, so I’d rather she doesn’t take a vow of silence once the cheering has stopped.

Here’s Damien Cox of the Toronto Star on our soccer side reaching the top step of the medal podium at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo: “It was the first time a Canadian women’s team had won gold at the Summer Games in any sport.” D’oh! Our female rowers (eights) struck gold seven days before our female footballers, and it wasn’t a “first.” Here’s a list of earlier gold medal-winning outfits:

2020: Susanne Grainger, Lisa Roman, Chrstine Roper, Sydney Payne, Madison Mailey, Kasia Gruchalla-Wesierski, Avalon Wasteneys, Andrea Proskie and Kristen Kit (cox) – rowing, women’s eight.
1996: Marnie McBean and Kathleen Heddle – rowing, women’s double sculls.
1992: Kathleen Heddle and Marnie McBean – rowing, women’s pairs.
Kay Worthington, Kirsten Barnes, Jessica Monroe and Brenda Taylor – rowing, women’s coxless fours.
Marnie McBean, Kathleen Heddle, Kirsten Barnes, Brenda Taylor, Jessica Montroe, Kay Worthington, Megan Delehanty, Shannon Crawford and Lesley Thompson – rowing, women’s eights with coxswain.
1988: Carolyn Waldo and Michelle Cameron – synchronized swimming, women’s duet.
1928: Ethel Smith, Bobbie Rosenfeld, Myrtle Cook, Jane Bell – athletics, women’s 4×100 metre relay.

I’m not sure what part of “team” Cox fails to understand, but apparently he would have us believe that two-to-eight women pulling oars in unison doesn’t qualify as a “team.” Ditto two women sync swimming or four women foot racing. It boggles the mind.

On the subject of teams, Ryan Dixon of Sportsnet has delivered a Dog Days of Summer power rankings list for National Hockey League outfits, and he rates the Winnipeg Jets No. 24. “It’s almost easy to forget Winnipeg made the post-season this past year because it struggled for so long down the stretch and got bounced in five games by Vegas,” he writes. “Clearly it’s time to turn over a new leaf in Manitoba and while GM Kevin Cheveldayoff did well in the Dubois deal, it’s still seems like some tough days are ahead for this club.” The Jets won’t know tough until they no longer have Connor Hellebuyck in the blue paint to bail them out.

Interesting, also odd, that Dixon has the Toronto Maple Leafs listed at No. 4. I mean, don’t news snoops in the Republic of Tranna normally have the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup at this time of year?

Rory McIlroy says he’ll quit golf if LIV becomes the only tour available. Ya, and Joey Chestnut will stop pigging out on hot dogs if they aren’t Nathan’s.

Wasn’t it thoughtful of O.J. Simpson to take a break from his life’s mission of finding the real killers to explain what should be done with transgender athletes? I mean, what would the discussion be without input from a convicted felon whose rap sheet includes kidnapping, armed robbery and, oh ya, the murder of a woman? “It just isn’t fair,” is Simpson’s take on the transgender/female athlete issue. I’d say his concern for women is touching, if not admirable, except there’s that small matter of double homicide, one of the victims being his ex-wife, Nicole Brown. I fail to see what’s “fair” about murder, but perhaps the real killers can explain it to us once Simpson finds them on a golf course.

Let’s see, which notables have recently joined the “fairness” discussion as it relates to transgender females competing against biological females? Well, there’s Simpson, a convicted felon. There’s Lance Armstrong, a disgraced cyclist under a lifetime ban for being the biggest cheat in the history of pedal-pushing. And there’s Caitlyn Jenner, a transgender female full-score against the inclusion of transgender females in female sports, yet she competes in female golf tournaments. So we have a convict, a cheat and a hypocritical attention hog. It’s like getting Larry, Curly and Moe together for a panel chin-wag on quantum physics.

On the other side of that discussion is Charles Barkley, the NBA great who teed it up in a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe last week and popped into a pub to share some suds and thoughts with locals. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that the anti-transgender mob has boycotted Bud Light because Anheuser-Busch used Dylan Mulvaney to pitch its product. Well, Sir Charles is having none of that. “If you’re gay, God bless you. If you’re trans, God bless you. And if you have a problem with them (f–k) you. If you are gay, lesbian, transgender, live your f—–g life,” Sir Charles told patrons. He also bought them pints. Bud Light, naturally.

And, finally, Tony Bennett is dead. Damn. I love the man’s voice, his singing style, the joy he expressed when the band began to play. It would be a total bummer if not for the fact his voice and music play on. Tony Bennett is dead, long live Tony Bennett.

Let’s talk about no respect for fitba…girl power on TSN’s World Cup coverage…Kaylyn Kyle blowing the whistle on refs…hair of the dog…Rafa and Big Red…and go Raptors

Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and if you don’t like reading about soccer, you’d be wise to move to another blog right about now…

The women’s World Cup is comfortably underway in France, and I sometimes wonder why we in North America have been so slow on the uptake in embracing the beautiful game known around the globe as football but soccer here at home.

True, fitba can be slow, tedious and boring. And, of course, there are the play-actors and their near-death experiences, a dodgy bit of business that is shame-worthy but never Oscar-worthy.

Perhaps it’s the theatrics of the soccer elite—almost exclusive to the men’s side of the pitch—that keeps us at arm’s length. I mean, watching Neymar and other faux thespians flopping and twitching and gasping for their last breath, like so many trout out of water, provides comic relief but it’s also a total turnoff. If I want to see bad acting, I can turn on Mama’s Family any night on MeTV.

But, hey, even with fake injury time added to each half of a soccer match, it’s over in less than two hours.

Cripes, man, the halftime show at the Super Bowl lasts longer than that, especially if Janet Jackson has to put her clothes back on. And yet the National Football League and its Super Bowl is a colossus, even when halftime entertainers aren’t flashing flesh.

The NFL, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball and National Hockey League are John, Paul, George and Ringo. Major League Soccer is George Martin or Brian Epstein or Billy Preston. You know, the so-called Fifth Beatle. Or worse—Yoko Ono.

Many myopic mainstream jock journalists are reluctant, or refuse, to acknowledge MLS as a major-league sport.

Steve Simmons in the Republic of Tranna, for example, recently posted this item to his Twitter feed:

Toronto big league championships in my lifetime (with apologies to Argos, Rock and TFC)
62 Leafs
63 Leafs
64 Leafs (have no memory of 62-63-64)
67 Leafs
92 Blue Jays
93 Blue Jays.

Toronto FC’s 2017 MLS title fails to register on the Steve-O-Meter.

Yet MLS qualifies on most measuring sticks as “big league.” Million-dollar player salaries? Check. Global reach? Check. Multi-million-dollar national TV contract? Check. Franchises worth mega-millions? Check. Healthy attendance? Check.

Atlanta United, in fact, has a better average head count (52,000-plus) than every team in Major League Baseball. Toronto FC outdraws the Blue Jays. Seattle Sounders outdraw the Mariners. Cripes, man, as of June 2, Portland Thorns FC of the National Women’s Soccer League had better attendance than nine MLB outfits. See for yourself:

I see a lot of “big league” head counts in there.

Meanwhile, here are a few other points of interest about MLS:

* Forbes valued four franchises at more than $300 million last year (Atlanta United $330M, L.A. Galaxy $320M; Seattle Sounders $310M; LAFC $305M) and Toronto FC at $290M. Again, that spells “big league” to me.
* In 2018, 53 MLS players collected $1,000,000 or more at the pay window, while both Zoltan Stieber of DC United and Andreu Fontas of Sporting Kansas City came in at one dollar less. If those aren’t “big league” wages, Pele was a punk rocker.
* Among all global leagues, only Poland’s First Division has had a faster growth spurt in the past five years, and MLS average attendance between 2013 and 2018 was eighth in the world.

* Atlanta United puts more people in the pews than Manchester United, Newcastle United, Liverpool, Benfica and Atletico Madrid, among many others, while Seattle Sounders have a larger per-game following than outfits like Chelsea and AC Milan.

Is MLS the premier fitba operation on the planet? Of course not. But it doesn’t have to be on par with the English Premier League, Serie A Italy, La Liga or the Bundesliga to make it a member in good standing of the Big Five—and not the Fifth Beatle—in North America.

No surprise, really, that Simmons would pooh-pooh the MLS as a hamlet-sized dot on our sports landscape. Here’s what he had to say about fitba on the Toronto Mike’d podcast during Toronto FC’s championship run: “I’m almost embarrassed to be at the soccer games, because my knowledge of the game and my interest in the game is so limited. I don’t know the ABCs. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you all the positions. I don’t know how many players are on the field. Honestly, I have no connection to this game at all. I didn’t grow up with it, I didn’t play it, I never watched it, I didn’t care about it.” That’s an astonishing confession from a sports columnist with a nation-wide platform. Let’s hope it means he’ll leave the writing on the women’s World Cup to scribes who actually know how many players are on the pitch.

If you tune in to World Cup coverage on TSN, you’ll see something as rare as a Monday morning without a Donald Trump tweet—an all-female natterbug panel. Instead of simply looking all gussied up and pretty, they’re letting Clare Rustad, Kaylyn Kyle and Diana Matheson analyze teams, break down plays and—oh…my…gawd—deliver opinion. You know, like they actually know what they’re talking about. Imagine that. Women with functioning brains on sports TV. What a concept.

I really enjoyed the lively and spirited banter between Rustad, Kyle and Matheson at halftime of the England-Scotland skirmish. Kyle and Rustad disagreed sharply on what should and shouldn’t be a hand ball penalty, and host Kate Beirness knew enough to zip her lips and let the two former Canadian national team members have at it. Kyle was, to say the least, animated and agitated after the Video Assistant Referee awarded England a penalty kick due to an unintentional hand ball by the Scots. Kyle was emphatic: The game referee and VAR room should ignore one of the most fundamental rules of the game and let the women play on. Which, of course, is total nonsense. Do you know what we’d have if officials stopped calling games by the rule book? The Stanley Cup playoffs.

Fashion note: The aforementioned Kyle has the most magnificent head of hair on TV. I know several drag queens who would give their first-born to have that mane.

Speaking of hair, what are the chances that Brett Hull is looking for some hair of the dog this morning? If Hull wasn’t five sheets to the wind on Sunday night in St. Loo, he was off his meds because he looked and sounded totally wasted prior to puck drop for Game 6 of the Stanley Cup final between the St. Loo Blues and Boston Bruins. I’m guessing his head is exploding right about now.

Someone hurled a can of beer onto the ice surface late in the Game 6 skirmish. I’d point to Hull as the most likely suspect, except he didn’t appear to be in the mood to let a good can of beer go to waste.

I never thought I’d see dominance in sports like Secretariat at the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Big Red romped to horse racing’s Triple Crown with a 31-length victory in a world-record time that stands unchallenged to this day, and watching film of that gallop still gives me a shiver and has me reaching for the Kleenex.

Even after the passage of so much time, it seems so unreal. Like a fairytale about a wonder horse that us old folks like to tell our grandkids. But it happened, and so did a different kind of thoroughbred—Rafael Nadal. If anything comes close to Secretariat at the Belmont, it’s Rafa on the red clay of Roland Garros in Paris. In winning his 12th French Open title and 18th tennis Grand Slam on Sunday, Rafa is running neck-and-neck with Big Red on my personal scorecard of belief-challenging accomplishments. He’s 93-2 in France. That is not a typo. Do not adjust your screen. The King of Clay has lost twice—in 15 years! Against the absolute best players on the planet. That’s insane.

Number of different women winning the past 10 tennis Grand Slam tournaments: 9. Naomi Osaka has been the only repeat champion. Number of men not named Nadal, Federer or Djokovic winning the past 10 tennis Grand Slam tournaments: 0.

Fun tweet from Gord Stellick of Sportsnet: “Taking attendance first day of JK at Toronto schools in 2024: Kawhi Smith, Kawhi Jones, Kawhi Murphy, Kawhi Watson…”

And, finally, it’s my understanding that they’ll be playing a rather significant basketball game tonight in the Republic of Tranna. Like the majority of Canadians, I won’t be watching, but I hope Kawhi Leonard and the Jurassics get the job done against the Golden State Juggernaut. I love it whenever we beat the Americans at our own game.

50 years after Stonewall, lesbian athletes make strides while gay men remain stuck at ground zero

The past does not tell us where we have been, it tells us where we are.

So where are LGBT athletes today as Pride Month 2019 kicks off, half a century after the Stonewall Riots in Gotham’s Greenwich Village?

The answer, I suppose, depends on which scorecard you use.

Certainly there has been considerable advancement in the inclusion file, both on and off the playing fields of North America and, indeed, in global frolics like the Olympic Games.

Here are some of the notations you’ll find on that particular scorecard:

* Lesbian tennis legend Billie Jean King and longtime partner Ilana Kloss are part of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ ownership group.
* Out lesbian Laura Ricketts is co-owner of the Chicago Cubs.
* Golden State Warriors out gay president and chief operating officer Rick Welts was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame last year.
* Out lesbian Caroline Ouillette is assistant coach with Canada’s national women’s hockey team (she’s married to former Team U.S.A. captain Julie Chu and they have a daughter together).
* Out lesbians Jayna Hefford and Angela James have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
* 56 LGBT athletes competed in the 2016 Summer Olympics.
* 15 LGBT athletes competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics.
* 16 out lesbians were on rosters at the 2015 women’s World Cup of soccer.

* The leading goal-scorer in the history of women’s international soccer, Abby Wambach, is an out lesbian.
* 7 players in the 2018 Women’s National Basketball Association all-star game were out lesbians.
* Both the Canadian Women’s Hockey League and National Women’s Hockey League have featured transgender players—Harrison Browne and Jessica Platt—and numerous out lesbians.
* U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe became the first out lesbian to be featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.
* Rapinoe and hoops star Sue Bird became the first LGBT couple to be featured in ESPN The Magazine body issue.

* Out lesbian Katie Sowers is an assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League.

That acceptance is terrific, for the LGBT collective and society as a whole.

Unfortunately, there’s a second scorecard:

* Number of out gay men in the National Hockey League: 0
* Number of out gay men in the National Football League: 0
* Number of out gay men in the National Basketball Association: 0
* Number of out gay men in Major League Baseball: 0
* Number of out gay men in Major League Soccer: 0

Cite another segment of society in which the bottom-line number in 2019 is the same as the bottom-line number in 1969. I can’t think of one.

Thus, the motion of life moves everything forward with the exception of the cultural phenomenon that is professional male team sports, an unbudging, frat-boy enterprise still stuck in the mud fifty years after all hell broke loose in and outside the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan.

Are there gay men among the approximately 4,300 players on current NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB and MLS rosters? Here’s an easier question: Does Donald Trump tell fibs?

Gay male athletes have always existed. It’s just that 99.999999 per cent of them remained hidden in a closet, earnestly avoiding the most taboo of talking points until the final whistle had sounded on careers spent in fear of being outed as lesser-thans.

Women and men with framed diplomas that indicate intellectual loft have given ponder to the curious case of the closeted male jock, and the eggheads advance numerous theories in an effort to explain the refusal to identify as gay. But, really, it isn’t a Cadbury chocolate bar mystery. It can be cataloged under the ‘fear’ file. It’s the fear of loss—loss of family/friends; loss of career; loss of income; loss of credibility; loss of status.

No male athlete wishes to be known by friend, foe or fan as a lesser-than. A Nancy boy, if you will. So he plays on, keeping his choice of romantic interests on the hush-hush.

Lesbian athletes, on the other hand, are far ahead on the social curve. They are less inclined to hide from themselves or anyone else. Elena Delle Donne and Sue Bird are not thought of as lesser-thans. Ditto Abby Wambach or Megan Rapinoe. Billie Jean King is greatly admired. The same could be said for Martina Navratilova until she recently went off on transgender athletes. Caroline Ouillette and Julie Chu proudly post pics of their daughter on Instagram. Former hockey stars Gillian Apps and Meghan Duggan do the same with their wedding photos.

When Canada’s gold medal-winning goaltender Charline Labonté came out in 2014, she provided insight to the culture of the national women’s hockey club.

“Just like everywhere else our team had gays and straights, just like we had brunettes and redheads,” she wrote in an article for the LGBT website Outsports. “Everyone on my team has known I’m gay since I can remember and I never felt degraded for it. On the contrary, my sport and my team are the two environments where I feel most comfortable. The subject of homosexuality was never taboo with us. We talk and laugh about it like everything else. I feel privileged to live and be myself in an environment like this because I know that just a few years ago this topic was never part of the conversations in the locker room.”

Lesbians in sports has become a meh issue, and it’s only when a zealot like tennis legend Margaret Court turns the air toxic with illogical, wingnut rantings about same-sex marriage destroying Easter and Christmas that people give it any consideration.

Will men ever catch up to the women? Certainly not in my lifetime.

It is a peculiar business, indeed, when the San Francisco 49ers will happily hire a lesbian to tutor pass-catchers, yet there are no gay men in the NFL to catch passes.

Phil Esposito’s words from 1972 ring true today: It isn’t fair to boo athletes who wear the Maple Leaf

To skewer or not to skewer, that is the question.

I refer to our female footy ambassadors, who, at last sighting, were in the throes of a full-pitched bawl fest on the grounds of B.C. Place Stadium in Vancouver, where they had found themselves short of the task in a FIFA Women’s World Cup quarterfinal joust with an England outfit that had been there for the taking. In their valley of tears, those among the Canadian flag bearers not weeping had the carriage of a pall bearer—ashen-faced, mournful and spent.

In the wake of that 2-1 loss to the English 11 and their ouster from the global tournament, which concluded this Sunday past with the United States’ ascention to the mountain peak, much has been said and written about our soccer side, a good portion of the reviews featuring a favorable theme while others carrying a darker, less charitable hue.

Most notably, Lauren Sesselmann and Melissa Tancredi have been caught in the crossfire of critical commentary, the former for flubbing a pass and an accompanying pratfall that gifted England with its opening score, and the latter for failing to reward teammates whom had provided her with gilt-edged scoring possibilities.

The Sesselmann gaffe was especially slap-stickish. Writer Michael Farber on TSN’s The Reporters aptly described the much-maligned defender’s faux pas as negotiating the ball “like a racoon negotiates a garbage can.”

Farber, a senior scribe whose main portfolio with Sports Illustrated is hockey, later engaged in an interesting exchange of philosophy with Steve Simmons, the loud-barking Toronto Sun jock journalist whose suggestion it was to take a look at the big picture the World Cup offered vis-a-vis the growth of women’s soccer in Canada.

“This is not about 54,000 people in the stands. That’s wonderful. Women are empowered, women are inspired. That’s not the issue,” Farber lectured “This is a national team, playing at home, and if this were, say, the men’s hockey team they would be eviscerated for that kind of performance. These women have to face the same kind of scrutiny. John Herdman, the coach, has to face the same kind of scrutiny and Sesselmann can’t say, ‘I’ll only answer positive questions.’ She has to face the music. If you want to empower women, if you want to inspire women, they have to be held to the same standards as any other professional athlete.”

“We’ve never done that in this country for almost any sport,” insisted Simmons. “We don’t do it with the women’s hockey team when they lose…”

“You’re gonna pat them on the head…nice try, girls.”

“No, I agree with what you’re saying. I’m just saying, the broad view is we don’t treat them the same way. We probably should, but historically we have not.”

So, two of the top jock journalists in our country believe it should be open season on our soccer girls, or any athlete who wears the Maple Leaf at home and abroad. Both men and women. If they soil the sheets, carve ’em up. Eviscerate them!

Well, I’m sorry, we don’t want to go there.

Thought-provoking analysis and hard-edged opinion is one thing, but to advocate the slicing and dicing of our flag-bearers satisfies nothing but the sports media’s morbid preoccupation with blood-letting. Unless one of our athletes pulls a Ben Johnson/Charlie Francis and earns the country a reputation as a nation of syringe-packing cheaters, we do not take them to the figurative woodshed.

I am reminded of the events of September 1972, and I know both Farber and Simmons are old enough to recall the legendary Summit Series between our band of National Hockey League players and the best shinny stars from the Soviet Union.

The universe was not unfolding as we thought it should through the first four skirmishes, with the comrades holding a 2-1-1 advantage as the sides prepared to leave our shores for the Mother Russia portion of the engagement. In the post-Game 4 fallout—a 5-3 Soviet victory in Vancouver—our overwhelmed, exhaustive troops trudged off the ice to a chorus of booing and nasty catcalling which inspired an epic rant and scolding from Team Canada leader Phil Esposito.

“For the people across Canada, we tried. We gave it our best,” a sweat-stained Espositio told a live national TV audience. “For the people who booed us, jeez, all of us guys are really disheartened and we’re disillusioned and we’re disappointed in some of the people. We cannot believe the bad press we’ve got, the booing we’ve gotten in our own buildings. If the Russians boo their players like some of the Canadian fans—I’m not saying all of them—some of them booed us, then I’ll come back and apologize to each and every Canadian. But I don’t think they will. I’m really, really, I’m really disappointed. I am completely disappointed. I cannot believe it. Some of our guys are really really, really down in the dumps. We know—we’re trying. What the hell, we’re doing the best we can. They’ve got a good team and let’s face facts. But it doesn’t mean that we’re not giving it our 150 per cent because we certainly are.

“Every one of us guys, 35 guys that came out to play for Team Canada, we did it because we love our country and not for any other reason. They can throw the money for the pension fund out the window, they can throw anything they want out the window—we came because we love Canada. And even though we play in the United States and we earn money in the United States, Canada is still our home and that’s the only reason we come. And I don’t think it’s fair that we should be booed.”

Espo’s sermon rings true to this day.

Our women’s soccer players were devastated after their loss to England. They had hoped for so much better than a quarterfinal finish. Not for themselves, for the flag. Still, clinical analysis of offensive shortcomings, player deployment and the national team program is appropriate.

The suggestion that they ought to be “eviscerated,” on the other hand, is irresponsible and shameful.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for more than 40 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented to her in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour.

The boys on the football beat in Winnipeg are second to none

It occurs to me that…

There is no city in the Great White North with as superb a stable of scribes detailing all things three-down football than River City.

Start with Ed Tait of the Winnipeg Free Press. Best beat writer in the whole land. His accomplice at the Freep, Paul Wiecek, and Kirk Penton over at the Winnipeg Sun complete a menage-a-terrific that keeps readers fully informed of the goings-on of not only the Winnipeg Blue Bombers but the entirety of the Canadian Football League.

I also like Herb Zurkowsky in Montreal and the tandem of Rob Vanstone and Murray McCormick in Regina, but the quality and quantity that Messrs. Tait, Wiecek and Penton churn out is unmatched.

* There were fewer, if any, finer people on the Winnipeg/Manitoba sports scene than Frank McKinnon.

Frank, who passed away at age 80 last week, was the first person I interviewed and quoted in a byline story as a rookie reporter for the Winnipeg Tribune. It was at a Manitoba Amateur Hockey Association annual meeting, and he was gracious, obliging and generous with his time. We spoke often over the ensuing 30 years and the former head of hockey in the province never changed. He always was a delight.

When I reflect on all the truly wonderful people I met during my time in mainstream jock journalism, Frank’s name is at the top of the good-guy list, alongside former player agent Don Baizley and University of Manitoba Bisons football coach Brian Dobie.

* I’m wounded. Crestfallen. And it’s all Gary (La La) Lawless’s doing.

La La, you see, has made an attempt to find a proper place in the pecking order of hockey homebrews for Jonathan Toews, the Chicago Blackhawks centre who’s three wins away from adding to his collection of Stanley Cup rings. The main mouthpiece in the Freep sports section reckons that legendary goaltender Terry Sawchuk is the pre-eminent Manitoba born-and-bred shinny star. How did he arrive at this conclusion? Well, he claims to have talked to a number of writers and former scribes who cover(ed) the local shinny scene.

Well, I’ve been following hockey in Winnipeg since the 1950s. I’ve been scribbling about it for the past 44 years. Nobody’s been at it longer. Alas, my phone still isn’t ringing, so I assume it still ain’t La La calling. Perhaps I was out or in the shower when his call came. Or maybe he just didn’t call.

This hurts, Gary. You never write or phone anymore. Is it something I wrote?

* If you’re looking for an example of what some sports scribes do when they’re bored with themselves, take a looksee at this Cathal Kelly offering in the Globe and Mail last week.

Kelly piddles on our prairie cousins in Edmonton because…well, because, in the world according to Cathal, Edmonton has the bad manners to not be the Republic of Toronto. Apparently, Edmonton is supposed to behave like the backwater burg Kelly believes it to be and excuse itself from hosting elite sporting events. You know, like the FIFA Women’s World Cup that commenced with Canada’s 1-nil verdict over China on Saturday afternoon at Commonwealth Stadium in The Chuck.

He cites the 2011 WWC as an example of how things ought to be done. That footy extravaganza was showcased in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, a stately, magnificent structure that, again, in the world according to Cathal, makes Commonwealth seem like a shelter for the homeless.

“It’s actively ugly,” Cathal gripes about Commonwealth. “The field is circled by a track—the perfect bush-league touch that says ‘high school.’ “

Berlin Olympic Stadium, complete with track around soccer pitch.

Ah, yes. Nothing says high school quite like a running track around a football pitch. You know, just like the running track that encircles the football pitch in the BERLIN OLYMPIC STADIUM!

We wouldn’t want the facts to get in the way of a good hissy fit, though, would we, Cathal? You just go right ahead and rant. Stomp your little feet and hold your breath. Perhaps one day your beloved Republic of Toronto will grow up to become a city big enough to host a prestigious event like the FIFA Women’s World Cup.

For now, though, it’s shut out of the soccer circus and I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for the Pan American Games in July. Those would be the same Games that Winnipeg has already hosted. Twice.

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