Women's Sports Blog

Advice For SI On Its Top Athletes of The Decade

• Rank May-Treanor and Walsh higher, since their dominance within their sport was unmatched. 
• Consider Prinz and Wambach co-top-players with Marta.  Germany has won two World Cups and the U.S. has won two Olympic golds over the past ten years, and these scorers have been the lynchpins of their teams' efforts.  They're not as flashy as the Brazilian, but they're often more effective. 
• I love Cathy Freeman and her run at Sydney was moving and world-historical, but what is she doing on this list?  If Sheryl Swoopes is pushed all the way down to 15th, seemingly because her accomplishments occurred mostly from 2000-2005, why include someone who had only two major race wins in 2000 and 2001?  Think about replacing Freeman with an African distance runner or an American sprinter.   There needs to be a sprinter here.  Which leads to the question...
• If voting writers didn't have to consider PEDs, why didn't Marion Jones make the list?  I don't think she deserved to, but take a stand and say either PEDs disqualify, or writers aren't allowed to have them influence the decision. 
• Tennis is over-represented in the top ten.  Does Henin really belong at number four? 
• The selection of Torres over another swimmer, like Coughlin, is going to look short-sighted in a few years.
• Otherwise, fine job.

Holiday Hero: Charde Houston

Houston, who was homeless for awhile in her youth, steps up to the plate for a young San Antonian who has lost her mother to violence. 

It Sucked, And Then I Cried

The downside to the deep emotional investment that true fans put into their teams is the soul-crushing despair that can ensue when things go wrong.  In a second, you go from living for the team to not wanting to live anymore.*  I apologize in advance for the triggering effect this will have on readers' own unhappy sports memories.  The interesting thing is how many of the first ones that came to my mind involve men's teams, which I ostensibly care less about.  I haven't followed the Pacers for years, and the Mets have pretty well run their organization into the ground. 

7. The four point play by the Knicks against the Pacers in the 1999 conference finals.  My mother had just asked me 'is there any way they can come back?' and I told her there was almost no chance because they'd have to hit a three and get fouled. Thereafter followed the most bullshit continuation call in the history of basketball.

6. Kenny Rogers walks in the winning run in the '99 NLCS against the Most Hateful Team In the World, the Braves (bigots and wife-beaters welcome!).  Later Rogers turned out to be a totally unpleasant human being as well, so I don't feel bad for threatening to choke him whenever I hear his name mentioned. 

5. The pre-instant-replay, last-second touchdown thrown by Jim Harbaugh in the 1995 AFC championship game against the Steelers.  With review, I believe we would have been awarded the points and gone to the Superbowl.

4. Erika Valek misses open, game-tying layup in waning seconds of March Madness game '03 vs. Georgia.  This would have ranked higher, but I had left the room already because I couldn't bear to watch the final possession. 

3. The goddamn Steelers win the 2005 AFC championship after Peyton Manning fails to get the team close enough for a gimme field goal and Vanderjagt misses the one farther out.  Made ten times worse by the fact that I was watching the game with a good friend who is a huge Steelers fan, and we were both too polite to make it enjoyable.  I vow not to watch another Colts game until they make the Superbowl. 

2. 2009 soccer championship tying goal disallowed on offside, compounded by being forced to endure the obsequiousness sweepstakes that is media coverage of that creep Anson Dorrance and his insufferable, Yankees-like program.  Cat Whitehill inexplicably kissed enough UCLA butt that I knew to keep the sound off when she was actually commentating on her own team.  

1. 2001 NCAA basketball title game final shot.  Enough said about that. 

*This is excluding those frustrations that occur over time, such as the fact that the Patriots owe the Colts three AFC playoff rematches in which they are not allowed to cheat.

Can The Bay Area Support A WNBA Team?

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. 

You Don't Quuuuuite Get It, Do Ya?

One of my favorite WNBA twitterers is Monique Currie, who can be quite funny as well as surprisingly trenchant.  Yesterday she wrote a general tweet along the lines of 'do you really enjoy following people you don't know?' calling it 'odd.'  That certainly wasn't the original point of Twitter, which was envisioned as a way to keep in better touch with friends throughout the day.  But the beauty of the Web 2.0 (3.0?) movement is that things grow and change beyond their intended usages, and following people you don't know has become pretty much the most important aspect of the site.  For one thing, Mo Currie has over 1,300 followers.  I strongly doubt she knows that many people personally, but it's sure a boon to the WNBA that fans can connect with players that way.  A public Twitter feed, unlike a Facebook page, is a public persona.  There is only one privacy control on the site, and if you don't use it, you're a 'celeb,' and people feel it's totally appropriate to follow your tweets whether they know your or not.  As sociologist danah boyd has pointed out, that changes the discourse.  As I've said before, this is a net positive for the women's sports community.  It also allowed me to have a mostly civil, thought-provoking argument with a writer I've never met about reproductive rights activism (he didn't like the coat-hanger campaign; I thought it was pretty effective).  The character limit actually helped, because it forced me to consider what I was saying extremely carefully and stick to what was crucial in my communication.  Thus far the Twitter limit has not led to an increase in text-speak, in part because Kids Today are not actually using Twitter.  Which is fine by me.  I've found it extremely useful as a blogger, and I sure enjoy reading Mo Currie's tweets.  If she thinks that's odd, so be it, but it's driving Twitter's growth and it's great for the game of women's basketball.   

Basketball Round-Up

*The Lynx  have to hope that high draft picks this year will succeed where high draft picks in the past have not.  They seem to get one every year and thus far it hasn't broken their bad luck or bad decision-making.  Perhaps that's what Blaze was thinking when she traded away a first-round pick, because otherwise it would be the kind of bonehead move usually associated with the GM of New York's other baseball team. 

*A day in jail is what one would expect for a male player convicted of DUI.  This is one kind of parity the WNBA shouldn't want.  Let's see Taurasi do *scads* of community service. 

*Four midwestern teams make ESPN's preseason top ten, including Xavier and Notre Dame.  Ohio State is at number three in the AP.  Is this the time for formerly unheralded programs to finally get their due?  Will it turn into the seemingly inevitable tournament bust for the Buckeyes?  They have to break through sometime, and this may yet be the year. 

*Will this be another yawner of an undefeated season for UConn?  Magic 8-Ball says the possibilities are good.

*The lead story on Women's Hoops Blog this morning is Oklahoma's Caton Hill, who is deploying to Afghanistan. 

*After the LSU coaching staff revealed that the previous team book was Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, the only thought that came to mind was...wouldn't W.E.B. DuBois have been more appropriate?  If you're going to read late 19th/early 20th century black intellectuals, why go with the one who thought that college was a waste of time for blacks? 

Local Ownership Groups A Boon For WNBA

Groups of investors passionate about the teams and their home cities, many of them women, are changing the face of pro ownership.  The latest successful buy keeps the Dream, a playoff team in only their second year, in Atlanta.  This sure beats linkage with NBA teams and their owners, sometimes people of dubious commitment to the women's side of the sport. 

The Tulsa Shock?

The city is in crisis, so let's take its team away.  More than that, let's take a successful team, which has made the playoffs seven consecutive years and won three championships.  The weirdest part for me is that the Shock have always been the most urban of WNBA teams, and I'm not using that as a racial euphemism.  Rather, they play a tough, gritty style that's very suited to Detroit.  I can't imagine how it will play in farm country, nor that the current set of players will be happy there.  This is a sad day for the league, which has shown that the historicity and importance of franchises is no barrier to change. 

Classic Finals Great For The WNBA

Not so happy for the Fever fans.  But high-scoring, close games pulled in a wide TV audience.  Plus the practice of buying out the upper decks inaugurated by Larry Bird put thousands of new fans in the seats, and these are people who are likely to come back, since WNBA tickets are among the cheapest in the sports world and the atmosphere is genial.  Message to the Fever ownership: DO NOT TAKE THE TEAM OUT OF INDIANAPOLIS.  Thank you. 

Douglas Disappearance Dooms Fever

Screw superstition, this has to be said.  Y'all know that White and Figgs were listening to the commentators and going 'Who was the leader of that '99 team?  Good to know.'  When she was the most important player, in 2001, she was so streaky that she could be counted on to show up every other game.  When she was hitting shots it was great, and she never gave up on defense, but she could grow stone cold with some regularity.  Connecticut also never got over the top on her watch (not entirely her fault, but still).  I love Katie Douglas, but 2-14 from the floor in a possible title contest is not going to cut it.