As a native of a basketball-mad area that can barely keep its WNBA franchise afloat, and a Bay Area women's sports fan for the past six years, I was worried when I heard the Monarchs were coming. Granted, anything's better than Sac-town (thanks, Maloof brothers, for your belief in women!), but there are a lot of questions still to be answered. Oracle is far too big for a WNBA franchise, so where does the team go? If San Francisco, will the East Bay fans come, and vice versa? If down on the Peninsula, where they can draw in the Stanford faithful, will the city fans make the trek? Sure, the Bay Area has a thriving women's basketball culture, but it has an even more entrenched soccer culture, and FC Gold Pride is struggling mightily. That team is proof that a strong bastion of college support is not the same as a pro fan base. It's also being made to pay out the nose for the prime stadium location in Santa Clara (thanks for the solidarity, Broncos!) and rumors continue that it may move to the East Bay, because there's nothing Bay Area fans like more than commuting to games. Based on my observations, I think the team has failed to pull in the key Hispanic demographic that has helped men's soccer survive here. Marketing has been fairly poor. A WNBA franchise needs to seriously step it up to compete, and with league-wide instability it's unclear whether that will happen.
Aside from the rain delay, the LPGA couldn't have scripted this one any better. The two leaders for player of the year sit in second and third in the year's final tournament. Tune in at 1 PST/3 EST if you have the Golf Channel.
This is a real insult to the many great golfers who have been toiling away to make the game competitive and exciting. Just because the Dude Networks' cameras were looking elsewhere at the time doesn't mean it wasn't happening, nor that we should pander to them by embracing their narrative. Then again, the LPGA has done sod-all to market any of the others, and Wie is perhaps the only household name on tour right now, so we have a sort of devil's bargain on our hands. At least she's actually an extremely talented golfer and not just a pretty face.
In case you haven't noticed, I kind of want to be danah boyd, despite the fact that my actual academic work is not in her field. Since WTS has been so engaged in social media discussions lately, it has given me free range to wander off topic. Techno-ennui has surely set in among many of you. I'll try to get back to sports proper.