Let’s talk about women’s sports and the media…tough times for Ponytail Puck…pigging out on Big Macs…the Barnum and Bailey Brier…Chevy’s sales pitch to free agents…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and I sprung forward this morning and brought some random thoughts along with me…

I think TSN and Sportsnet are trying to fool us into believing they actually give a damn about women’s sports.

Sportsnet’s Christine Simpson and Kim Davis.

I mean, both of our national jock networks have devoted copious air to the distaff portion of the playground in the past week, featuring interviews with movers and shakers like Stacey Allaster, Kim Davis, Kim Ng, Cammi Granato and Kendall Coyne Schofield, and they’ve also given us retro peeks at moments of girl glory delivered by Brooke Henderson, Bianca Andreescu and others.

It’s been boffo stuff.

And tonight we’ll hear the all-female broadcast crew of Leah Hextall, Cassie Campbell-Pascall and Christine Simpson work the Calgary Flames-Vegas Golden Knights skirmish on Hometown Hockey, something that—dare I say?—smacks of gimmickry and likely will have numerous men squirming and pressing the mute button on their remotes.

But here’s my question in the midst of all this rah, rah, rah about ponytail sports: Where are TSN and Sportsnet when it really matters?

You know, like when the Canadian Women’s Hockey League was in business. Like during the women’s Under-18 world hockey championship. TSN covering competition like the world shinny tourney or World Cup soccer are no-brainers, but to the best of my recollection Sportsnet broadcast the grand sum of two CWHL games before the operation bolted its doors last spring. I could be wrong. It might have been three. Meanwhile, TSN completely ignored the U18 event.

The National Women’s Hockey League, meanwhile, dropped the puck on its playoffs Friday night, but I haven’t heard a whisper about it on either network.

In the small hours of Thursday, Friday and Saturday mornings, I counted 136 news-related videos on the TSN website. The male sports v. female sports scorecard read 133-3 in favor of the dudes, and that included Justin Bieber practicing his shootout skills.

None of that’s surprising, of course, because numerous studies advise us that female jocks receive just two to six per cent of air time on sportscasts in the True North and U.S. The amount of space allotted to female sports in our daily newspapers would be similar. Maybe even less.

So, ya, it’s great that TSN and Sportsnet have been saluting women the past few days, but what’s their excuse for the other 51 weeks of the year?

According to a 2016 report, a study of sports coverage on our national networks (French and English) in 2014 showed that female athletes were featured in just four per cent of 35,000 hours of programming. More than half of that four per cent allotment showed women’s events at the Sochi Olympics and/or women’s tennis. Which means, of course, all other female activity received less than two per cent air time.

Whenever I contemplate the minimalist coverage female sports receives on air and in print, I think of comments from noted jock journos Steve Simmons and Bruce Dowbiggin.

“I don’t believe there’s a demand from the public for women’s sports,” Postmedia’s Simmons told the Ryerson Review of Journalism in 2002. He also advocated for the removal of women’s hockey from the Olympic Games in 2010, calling it a “charade.”

Dowbiggin, meanwhile, wrote last year that ponytail sports was “second-tier entertainment” and, in another piece, added, “You can’t swing a cat without hitting a lesbian in a women’s sport.”

I’m quite uncertain why Dowbiggin would want to swing a cat and hit a lesbian, or any woman for that matter, but I believe his indelicate and disturbingly crass remark about felines and females was an attempt at cutesy humor. If so, he failed. Miserably.

Point is, those are two loud voices in jock journalism completely dismissing female athletes.

Steve Simmons

Dowbiggin once was an award-winning jock journo and a main player on the national stage, twice winning a Gemini Award for sports reporting and broadcasting. He now cranks out opinion essays for Troy Media and his own Not The Public Broadcaster. Simmons is a high-profile columnist whose scribblings appear in Postmedia rags across the country.

As much as I wish it was otherwise, I’m afraid theirs is the prevailing attitude in our jock media.

It’s worth noting that neither of the Winnipeg dailies has a female in its stable of full-time sports scribes. The Drab Slab allows the talented and very readable Melissa Martin to make guest appearances for the provincial and national Scotties Tournament of Hearts, but the Sun hasn’t had a Jill writing jock stuff since Judy Owen left the building. Judy is one of only four female scribes with whom I worked during 30 years in the rag trade, the others being Peggy Stewart (Winnipeg Tribune), the lovely Rita Mingo (Trib) and Mary Ormsby (Toronto Sun). It’s been more than 50 years since I started at the Trib, and in that time I’ve known just five female sports writers in Good Ol’ Hometown—Judy, Peggy, Rita, Barb Huck and Ashley Prest. I know some women applied the last time the Sun had an opening, but Scott Billeck got the gig.

Billie Jean King

What a truly dreadful time it’s been for Ponytail Puck. First the CWHL ceased operations last spring, then close to 200 of the planet’s best players had a hissy fit and decided to boycott and trash talk the NWHL, and now the world championship in Nova Scotia has been cancelled due to the coronavirus. Tough to grow the game when all you have at the end of the day is a bunch of photo-ops with Billie Jean King.

Speaking of Billie Jean, she’ll be part of the Hometown Hockey telecast tonight on Sportsnet, but we shouldn’t expect any hard-hitting questions from either Ron MacLean or Tara Slone. My guess is MacLean will serve the tennis legend and women’s rights activist nothing but softball questions, while Tara swoons.

Sportsnet won’t be the only network featuring an all-female broadcast crew tonight. Kate Scott, Kendall Coyne Schofield and AJ Mleczko will be the voices for NBCSN’s telecast of the St. Louis Blues-Chicago Blackhawks skirmish, and I just hope they realize that criticism is part of the gig because they’ll be hearing it from the yahoos.

The PWHPA—also the talking heads on Sportsnet—would like the five-team NWHL to disappear at the conclusion of its fifth season, so they’ll be disappointed to hear this sound bite from NWHLPA director Anya Packer: “I’m excited to watch the growth. I think there’s going to be a lot of growth in the off-season. There’s a lot of conversations hosted today that will affect tomorrow. There’s a lot of conversations that happened before the season began that are going to make some major strides and changes as we move into season six. I’m excited for season six.” If they want to play serious shinny next winter, the PWHPA might want to rethink that boycott thing.

The rapidly spreading coronavirus has a number of sports teams/leagues talking about playing in empty stadiums. In other words, just like a Toronto Argonauts home game.

Chevy

Ya, I think it’s great that the National Hockey League salary cap is going up and Winnipeg Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff will have a boatload of Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman’s cash to spend on free agents this summer, but that won’t make it any easier for Chevy to sell Good Ol’ Hometown to high-profile players. River City remains No. 1 on most NHLers’ no-go lists, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

I don’t know about you, but every time I see the Nashville Predators play, I have the same thought: “How do these guys beat anybody?”

Does this make sense to anyone other than Tranna Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas?
William Nylander: 30-goal seasons—1; salary—$9 million ($8.3 million bonus).
Kyle Connor:         30-goal seasons—3; salary—$7.5 million ($0 bonus).

People poke fun at the Canadian Football League for rewarding failure by giving a single point on a missed field goal. Well, excuse me, but the NHL does that very thing almost nightly with its ridiculous loser point.

Watched Sports Central on Sportsnet on Friday morning and I didn’t hear one word about the Brier. Nada. They managed to squeeze in highlights of Joey Chestnut pigging out on Big Macs, but the Canadian men’s curling championship wasn’t worthy of their attention. Canada’s #1 Sports Network my ass.

There’ve been so many incredible circus shots during this year’s Brier, I expected to see Barnum and Bailey meeting in today’s final.

So I call up the Globe and Mail on Saturday and note that Cathal Kelly is writing about the Brier. I roll my eyes, because Kelly doesn’t know a hog line from Hog Town. Well, surprise, surprise. It’s an excellent, entertaining read. And honest. “Don’t look for curling expertise here,” he writes. “You won’t find any.”

Did Northern Ontario skip Brad Jacobs look like he was having any fun before being ushered out of the Brier? I swear, he’s more serious than a tax audit, and it isn’t a good look.

WTF? During the first two Brier matches I watched on TSN last weekend, I heard three F-bombs and one goddamn. I heard zero F-bombs and zero goddamns during the entire week of watching the Scotties on TSN. Just saying.

Actually, I’d like to know why male curlers feel a need to go all potty mouth, yet the women don’t. I mean, they’re playing the same game, playing for the same stakes, making the same shots, feeling the same pressure. It would make for an interesting social study.

Big headlines all over the Internet last week about movie guy Spike Lee having a hissy fit and refusing to attend any more New York Knicks games this season. Hmmm. I must have missed the memo that informed us we’re supposed to give a damn what Spike Lee does.

Gotta say, TSN’s man on UFC, Robin Black, is the creepiest guy on sports TV.

Joey Chestnut

The aforementioned Joey Chestnut set some sort of world record for gluttony last week when he scarfed down 32 Big Macs in 38 minutes. We haven’t seen a pigout like that since Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs offence ate the San Francisco 49ers’ lunch in the Super Bowl.

The Winnipeg Jets are in the grip of an intense playoff battle, two Manitoba teams were running hot at the Brier, and what was featured on the sports front of the Winnipeg Sun last Monday morning? Toronto Blue Jays wannabe pitcher Nate Pearson. Good gawd, man, who makes those horrible decisions?

Wilma Rudolph

And, finally, in a salute to International Women’s Day, these are my fave female athletes of all time: Wilma Rudolph, Sue Bird, Martina Navratilova, Tessa Virtue, Nancy Greene, Evonne Goolagong, Katarina Witt, Steffi Graf and Jennifer Jones.

Let’s talk about female athletes quitting…will we miss them when they’re gone?…Dani Rylan aka Darth Damsel…LPGA visibility…no friends in the media…sexism, homophobia and Katie Sowers…and swinging cats at lesbians

A work week hump day smorgas-bored coming down in 3, 2, 1…and the back half of August feels an awful lot like the front half…

I thought Megan Rapinoe’s 15 minutes of fame was fini. Hadn’t heard from her for a few weeks.

Then her purple hair showed up on Good Morning America a few days ago and, along with Yankee Doodle Damsel teammate Christen Press, she talked about faith and hope and compromise and, most significant, bang for your buck.

“We won’t accept anything less than equal pay,” the U.S. women’s national soccer team co-captain declared.

Or what? They’ll quit?

Christen Press and Megan Rapinoe

Like approximately 200 elite female hockey players quit? Like members of the Swedish women’s national hockey team quit?

The Swedish women are supposed to be in Vierumaki, Finland, for the 5 Nations Tournament this week, but they’ve had it up to their blonde ponytails with being treated like second hand Roses and found something better to do. What that something is, we don’t know, but it isn’t wearing a yellow-and-blue hockey jersey with three crowns on the front.

There are 10 points of contention between the women and their governing body, the Swedish Ice Hockey Association (SIF), and they include everything from increased funding (top of the list) to wardrobe. Yes, clothing.

It seems that being forced to adorn themselves in male attire is a disagreeable bit of business to the Swedish women.

“For a five-year period, we have asked for clothes in a women’s model, clothes that must be sewn and adapted for women,” is Point 7 in their list of necessary upgrades. “In response, we are told that SIF provides equal clothing to all national teams, ie. men’s clothing. It should be in SIF’s interest that the Crowns represent SIF in a professional and respectful way. How does SIF want the Women’s Crowns to represent Sweden and the Swedish Ice Hockey Association?”

That might sound petty, but I’m reasonably certain that if members of the Swedish national men’s side were required to drape themselves in female finery, they’d sparka upp en stor stank (kick up a big stink). But, then, they’d never ask the fellas to do that, would they?

Anyway, as much as I enthusiastically applaud and endorse any female athlete’s fight for equal pay, equal benefits, equal opportunity, and the equal right to change tops courtside during a tennis tournament, it seems to me that quitting is an ill-conceived strategy when one of the main laments of all women’s sports is lack of exposure.

The women want to be seen and heard in print, on air and in the public conscience, yet they choose to disappear in a quest to achieve said goal.

Interesting gambit.

Let’s say the U.S. national side takes its lawsuit against U.S. Soccer to court and a jury decides the pay scale is not gender based? Hence, no additional coin. Does that mean Rapinoe and her world champion gal pals will be no-shows for next summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo? Certainly they’d be present by their absence, and whichever country were to emerge as champion would have an asterisk attached to its name, but I fail to see how that helps the cause of women’s fitba.

Dani Rylan

Are Sweden’s female hockey players getting a bum deal? Certainly sounds like it, yes. But there’s a danger in their ploy. That is, what if nobody gives a damn? It’s the same predicament players on this side of the big waters find themselves in. The Canadian Women’s Hockey League has already bolted the doors, and now approximately 200 elite players say they won’t lace ’em up again until Dani Rylan pulls the chute on her National Women’s Hockey League and a sugar daddy/mama (read: NHL) surfaces. Well, there are no signs of surrender in commish Rylan, so will anyone really care that the ForTheGame200 have gone AWOL?

The ForTheGame200 bully tactic doesn’t appear to be intimidating Rylan, because the latest roster update from The Ice Garden tells us that 66 players, including 13 Canadians, have signed on for the NWHL’s fifth season, set to face off on Oct. 5. That happens to be World Girl’s Hockey Weekend, and I’m thinking there’ll be about 200 elite women who’d like to be part of it.

Prediction: At some point, the 200 boycotters will turn on Rylan. They’ll accuse her of acting like she believes herself to be “bigger than the game,” and make her out to be Darth Damsel, an evil force standing between them and the “$50,000 to $100,000” salaries Cassie Campbell-Pascall thinks they deserve. Bet on it.

Michael Whan

How significant is exposure? Well, let’s consider what Ladies Professional Golf Association commissioner Michael Whan has to say on the matter.

The distaff swingers mostly fly under the radar unless you subscribe to the Golf Channel. Still, they’re playing for a total prize purse of $70.5 million in 2019. By way of comparison, the men appear on network TV every weekend 10 months of the year, and it doesn’t seem to matter if Tiger Woods shows up to hack his way to another over-par score or not. NBC, CBS or Fox Sports will be there on Sunday to tell us Tiger’s wearing a red shirt. Oh, and the boys divvy up a $300 million-plus pot of gold.

“If you give me 39 weeks on (national) TV, I’ll close the gap on viewership in a long way, and if I close the gap on viewership I’ll close the difference in purses and pay,” says Whan. “But you can’t do one without the other.”

So, what part of being seen do female hockey and soccer players not understand?

The 10 highest-paid female athletes in the world, according to Forbes, are tennis players. The women’s purse at all four Grand Slam tournaments is equal to the men’s. They didn’t get there by going into hiding. They got there by negotiating while still playing.

Media, of course, plays a significant role in exposing sports to the masses, and there’s definitely a substantial divide in coverage of women’s and men’s competition. For example, I’d wager that few, if any, of you are aware that Canada and the U.S. recently engaged in two hockey tournaments—three-game series between the women’s under-22 and under-18 sides. TSN ignored both events. Yet if I thought watching shinny in summer was a worthwhile activity (I don’t), I could have tuned in to the boys’ World Junior Summer Showcase and the Hlinka Gretzky Cup. Perhaps someone at TSN can explain why our future female Olympians aren’t as important as our future male Olympians. Meanwhile, at Troy Media, they have award-winning journalist/columnist Bruce Dowbiggin telling us that women’s sports is “second-class entertainment.” Steve Simmons of Postmedia once advocated for the elimination of women’s hockey from the Olympic Games. With friends like that, it’s a wonder female athletes even bother to leave the house.

So, you say you’d like to coach college hoops. Sorry, no can do. Not if you’re lesbian. What about pro football then? Sorry, no can do. Not if you’re female.

That, kids, is a double whammy of discrimination and Katie Sowers lived it.

Sowers now earns her daily bread as an assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers, but she only landed the gig after another National Football League outfit told her it was “not ready” to have a women join their stable of on-field instructors.

Years earlier, she had offered her services as a volunteer basketball coach to alma mater Goshen College, a Mennonite school in Indiana.

“I had just finished up my basketball career,” Sowers told Kristine Leahy on the FS1 show Fair Game. “My four years of eligibility were done, so I was on my victory lap and I started playing track and field for fun, and I also was thinking ‘I really want to get my coaching career started.’ So I went to my basketball coach, who had given me…I was a team captain all the years I played, I was a leader on the team, and I knew that they were low on staff, they were low on practice players. I actually emailed him and I said ‘Would this be an opportunity where I could be a volunteer coach?’ I didn’t even think there was a chance for a no. But he responded saying just to come into his office to talk about it.

“And what he told me was that because of my lifestyle, he didn’t want me around the team. And when I was on his team, I was someone that he would protect, but now that I’m not, there’s not much he can do about it. And there were prospective students’ parents that were concerned that if there was a lesbian coach, their daughter might ‘catch the gay’ or whatever it might be, because people might think it’s contagious or whatever it was. But for some reason, they didn’t want me around.

“There was another school in the division that I played, I had a really good friend who played basketball, got kicked off the team at her school because they found out she was gay. She lost her whole scholarship. This was 2008, 2007.”

And people wonder why there are still Pride parades.

And, finally, this from the aforementioned Dowbiggin of Troy Media: “You can’t swing a cat without hitting a lesbian in a women’s sport.” Sigh…there just aren’t enough words.