Happy 4th
Going to take a few days off and enjoy this long sunny weekend! Have a nice holiday!
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Going to take a few days off and enjoy this long sunny weekend! Have a nice holiday!
Associated Press sports columnists Tim Dahlberg writes about the unequal men's/women's prize winnings at Wimbledon. The discrepancy is now down to about $50K but the fact that a discrepancy still exists is what is ridiculous in this day and age. Venus Williams is getting vocal about the difference and even John McEnroe throws in his support.
In between all the "We Love you Pedro" stories, the Boston Globe has some nice coverage of the upcoming U.S. Women's Open (being held in Newport, RI). Globe golf writer Jim McCabe is also blogging from the event.
I first saw this one Sports Law Blog - a USA Today article about elementary schools banning certain games during recess times because they feel certain games lead to injuries, etc. It is true, you can get hurt - take it from someone who had her arm broken by a kickball in second grade (yes, embarassing, I know), but I think this is another sign of over protecting our kids.
A few media outlets wrote pieces on a study released last week by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at University of Central Florida that said most newspaper sports staffs are white and male. Here is a link to the actual report (PDF file)
Here's a few stats quoted from the report. APSE stands for Associated Press Sports Editors.
• White men and women comprised 88 percent of the total staffs of all APSE member newspapers; African-Americans held 6.2 percent, Latinos 3.6 percent, Asians 1.3 percent, and “other” people of color less than 1 percent.
• Women made up 12.6 percent of total staffs of APSE member newspapers.
• 94.7 percent of APSE sports editors were white while 90.0 percent were white males; African-Americans held only 1.6 percent; Latinos 2.8 percent and “others” less than 1 percent. There were no Asian sports editors.
• America’s sports columnists were 89.9 percent white.
• Women made up less than 7 percent of columnists at APSE member newspaper sports staff.
• Women and people of color combined to make up only 16.4 percent of columnists of the surveyed APSE member newspapers.
After complaining yesterday about Soccer 101 type coverage in the U.S. press I figured I should point out the excellent coverage such as Jere Longman who writes for the New York Times. Here's his latest. Longman also wrote the book on the U.S. women's national soccer team win in the 1999 World Cup - "The Girls of Summer".
I've been inconsistent with this blog lately - we took a few days to head north to N.H. to take the daughter to Storyland - if you live in New England and have kids, you know what I'm talking about. It was our rookie experience there. So now I'm playing catch-up with lots of things. While I was gone the Sun lost two games out West but won tonight against the Sting. I'm going to Thursday's game against the Lynx and Sunday's away game down in D.C.
Other stuff...
Wimbledon is the tennis I like to watch the most - but it will be interesting to see what it is like without a lot of the big names - Pierce, S. Williams, and Davenport (one of my favorites) -- pulled out due to injuries.
My husband likes the World Cup so we have had various games on. I prefer when we catch a game on Univision b/c I love the theatrics of that one announcer. I agree with this piece in the Chicago Reader that it's time for the U.S. sports media to stop acting like all Americans are "clueless" about this game. Sort of reads like my argument about some of the coverage of women's sports - just cover the sport as a sport. Stop acting like it's so amazing, strange, exotic, "look what they can do!" etc. Some of the soccer pieces read like they just dusted off the copy from four years ago and reran it. "What is this thing they call World Cup?" :)
The New York Times profiles Kelly Kulick, the first woman to qualify for a season-long exemption on the Professional Bowlers Association Tour (20 events in a season). ABCNews also covers the story.
I'm hearing lots of good things about the new documentary, "Heart of the Game" about a girl's high school basketball team . Here is a review from Newsday, the LATimes, and New York Magazine. Mike Turner at ESPN profiles Darnellia Russell,who is one of the players and the focus of the film. And Melissa Silverstein at the Women's Media Center writes about one of the issues the film highlights - pregnancy and sports.
