Things You Can't Get Out Of Your Head

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On Wednesday, I heard Frank DeFord's weekly NPR commentary for "Morning Edition." I usually look forward to hearing Mr. DeFord's comments. He knows his subject (sports), has a sharp wit, and is not afraid to use it. I was disappointed in this week's broadcast, however. Unless he was being satirical in a manner too subtle for me to pick up when I was not 100% awake and alert, he seemed to lay the blame for the relative unpopularity of women's professional sports squarely at the feet of women everywhere.

I would love to hear his answers (yes or no), and then his reasons for each of them, to the following:

(1) Did he consider that women still make much less than men, thus severely reducing their ability to spend the money it takes to attend women's sporting events?

(2) Did he consider that women still bear--disproportionately--the burdens of keeping up the home and the daily care of the family, leaving them with much less free time and energy to attend women's sporting events?

(3) Did he stop to think that maybe not enough time has passed since the inception of Title IX to build a base of women who have played women's sports and who thus can be expected to be fans for life?

(4) With the same observation about Title IX, does he not recognize that women's sports have not received major TV coverage for a long enough time to reinforce and build that budding fan base?

(5) Did he not consider the effect that women not being allowed to play the single most popular sports, football and baseball, have on their willingness to become fans of those or of other sports?

(6) Did he not consider that for many, many, many people, women's sports are for wimps? One example: softball is what guys with beer bellies play on the weekends, and women may prefer to play or watch baseball to women's softball--even though women play the game at a level and with a speed that is actually scary, even to men. Furthermore, Mr. DeFord's "lament" at the quick demise of women's professional soccer is disingenuous. Nobody in America likes soccer enough to support a sustainable professional league, and it's only the bias favoring men's sports that's keeping men's major league soccer alive at this point.

(7) Did he consider the plight of women of my generation (those of us old enough to have finished most of our domestic responsibilities yet still young enough to work and thus have some discretionary income)? I was an only child and my dad wanted a boy. He got me, which was fine with him, but his idea of family time was to raise me to love the sports he loved, watched, and played. And women's sports in those days, except for Olympics-related ones [thus inaccessible to most of us because we didn't have the opportunity or talent to participate--Ed.], did not exist for the average sports fan, on TV or anywhere else. What is worse, whenever a woman of my generation exhibited any real knowledge of sports, the men all fled in horror. They claimed they wished the women in their lives would care about sports, but whenever one did, they feared being shown up, and their fragile egos made it that much harder for women to develop the habit of being sports fans in the first place, let alone fans of women's sports.

(8) Did he not consider that as women have come to participate in traditionally "men's" sports, that viewership of those sports has increased, and that it may be just a matter of TIME before the kind of female fan base needed grows to self-sustainability?

Maybe the key is to stop having separate leagues when at all possible. I'd like to see some studies done to determine whether, at the professional level, women really are too small, too fragile, and/or too slow to compete on the same turf as men. Bowling, golf, baseball, even tennis [how many male tennis players do you know who'd be willing to play either of the Williams' sisters?--Ed] . . . indeed, every sport that relies more on skill than on brute strength, can and maybe ought to be played co-ed at the professional level. But again, it would take time to develop the players, change the attitudes of the financial backers, and develop programs to air, thus increasing the viewership, thus increasing the fan base.

Dare I say that it's men and their fragile egos who once again are thwarting the sports dreams of women--and thus that Mr. DeFord's commentary thus is just full of it?

Brett Favre, Go Away, Don't Come Back Another Day

I'm sorry, but I am totally fed up with the Brett Favre psycho-drama. For the past several years, Favre has played coy with the Green Bay Packers, leaving the organization guessing as to whether he was going to play another year--until this March, when he finally said he was now officially retired.

Except that he didn't mean it. I wondered during his March announcement whether he meant it, as he kept saying that he knew he could still play, but he wasn't sure he wanted to any more. He seemed less than committed to what he was saying, but he said it, so he should have to live with it.

And now that the Packers as an organization took him at his word and moved on--both in terms of modifying the offense to take advantage of new starting QB Aaron Rodgers's skill set and in terms of whom the Packers chose during the recent NFL college football draft--Favre has come out of the woodwork and is demanding to be given his outright release so that he can play somewhere else.

And women are hopeless prima donnas? My understanding of the situation is that Favre, still owing 3 years' service on his most recently signed contract with the Packers, has the choice of staying retired or of asking the NFL, through a letter to the Commissioner's Office, for reinstatement. Until he is reinstated, the Packers organization is within its rights to consider him retired and to do nothing else.

But Favre doesn't want reinstatement, because Green Bay most likely would neither trade nor release him--rather, Green Bay would make him the most expensive bench-sitting back-up in history, at approximately $12 million a year. Green Bay has no reason to grant Favre an outright release, as Favre would use it to negotiate a contract to play for one of the Packers' biggest divisional rivals, the Minnesota Vikings. [As Green Bay's recent complaint to the NFL suggests.--Ed.] Nor does Green Bay want to trade Favre, as that would be anathema to most Packers fans, not to mention that the only teams with the need and the wherewithal to vie for Favre's services are the very teams, like the Vikings, to whom Green Bay most emphatically does not want Favre to go.

So Favre's family has been making noises for weeks now that the Packers organization has made Brett feel "not welcome in Green Bay" for the past several years, and Favre's legal representative claims the ball is in Green Bay's court and it's up to Green Bay to make the next move.

But if Green Bay doesn't have to do anything until and unless Favre applies for and is given reinstatement, why should the Packers organization lift a finger? Favre's representative says Favre isn't going to ask for reinstatement because he has no intention of attending training camp just to be a backup, and that if Favre asks for reinstatement he'll be fined for every day he doesn't attend camp, so Favre isn't going to do that . . . but get real! He's under contract--either he stays retired or he complies with the terms of the contract, which includes paying any penalties for non-compliance.

Favre doesn't really want to play any more, I suspect. This is a case of Favre realizing he's no longer in the spotlight and still wanting to be the center of attention. He says the Packers organization has been telling him one thing for months but saying something completely different to the general public. However, I have seen no inconsistencies in Green Bay's statements over the past several months. The organization has said it tried to talk Favre out of retiring, but Favre wouldn't listen. And now he's changing his mind, but now it's too late.

If Favre was as unsure of retiring as he now says he was, he never should have made the announcement in the first place. So suck it up, Brett, and realize that you don't get to have everything 100% of your own way just because you hold a whole mess of NFL records. Show a little grace, show a little class--move on.

I have a friend who's husband insists that Brett Favre will be his #1 QB choice forever, but I say this: Favre is durable and workmanlike, to be sure, but give me Joe Montana in his prime any day of the week. At least Montana had--and still has--class. He also knew when it was time to go. [Which saddened me no end. My dad raised me to be a KC Chiefs fan, and I was so tantalized by how close to the Super Bowl Montana got the Chiefs in his 2nd year at KC that I didn't want to see him retire . . . even though I have come to see the wisdom of his decision.--Ed.]

Heck, I still remember when John Elway, newly out of college, was drafted by the Colts, and basically pitched a fit and said he wouldn't go . . . and the Colts caved in and traded him. My dad was disgusted about that for years. Being a career Air Force NCO, my dad understood that when your employer tells you to go somewhere, you go . . . no matter how much you may not want to do so . . . until you've earned the right to make other arrangements, which Elway, never having played a day in the pros at that point, had not yet done.

So I am totally fed up with the crass egoism of certain professional athletes. What else is new?

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Dumb Animals? No! Dumb People? Yes!

Whenever I can afford to contribute to charity, I always give first to organizations that work for the protection of and betterment of conditions for animals, such as the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). Animals cannot speak directly for themselves--it is vital that caring humans do it for them.

Nonetheless, I do not support groups on or beyond the lunatic fringe, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Such groups do not recognize that their actions often do more to harm their credibility--and thus the credibility of other, more sensible groups--than those actions help the animals they say they are trying to protect.

PETA's latest nuttiness? It has written a letter to the Kentucky Horse Racing Association (KHRA) calling for the suspension of jockey Gabriel Saez's license. Saez rode the filly Eight Belles to a magnificent second-place finish in Saturday's Kentucky Derby. After galloping out following the finish, however, the filly collapsed when both her front ankles broke, and she had to be euthanized right then and there. [Thanks to all the networks which had footage of same but which didn't show it directly. It was sad and shocking enough to hear what happened. Seeing it would not have added anything but titillation to the broadcasts.--Ed.]

PETA spokesperson Kathy Guillermo claims that this suspension is necessary while the horse's death is investigated, because we need to know (1) whether the jockey "felt anything along the way," as the filly "doubtlessly was injured before the finish," and (2) even if not, we must blame the fact that the jockeys are "allowed to whip the horses mercilessly."

Excuse me while I roll my eyes in total disgust. Do PETA's members know anything about horses? Do they even bother to consider reality before they spew forth their idiocy? An animal weighing half a ton, moving at high speed, CANNOT land on a broken front ankle, let alone two broken front ankles, more than once before collapsing in a heap in a great amount of pain. It is physically impossible to do otherwise. I watched the Derby's stretch run, and have watched every replay of same that I could see. Eight Belles shows NO signs of discomfort, let alone pain or serious injury, through the stretch, at the finish line, or well beyond it. As her trainer Larry Jones noted, her ears were up (and I add, her eyes were bright) the whole way--a sign of happiness in a horse. If she were in any pain, her ears would have been flat down against her head and she would have been fighting her jockey, not going forward in a straight line with him.

As for the allegation that the horses are whipped "mercilessly," I wonder whether PETA's members have ever seen a racing crop. It's got two small squares of leather on the business end, attached only at the top--it's designed to make a noise as the leather pieces slap together. Even when applied quickly at full strength, it's more sound then sensation: it's to get the horse's attention and to keep the horse running along the line the jockey wants--s/he taps the left hip if the horse is bearing in to its left, the right hip if the horse is swerving out to the right. It's math in action: the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Get the horse to run in a straight line, and you save distance, therefore time. You thus improve the horse's chances to win or finish in the money. You also improve the horse's chances of avoiding collisions with other horses, as the jockey can see things on the track which the horse cannot see, letting the jockey steer clear of trouble.

I am not saying that there are never any abuses of animals in horse racing. I am saying that at this level of horse racing, the likelihood of abuse is so small as to be virtually non-existent. The money spent to race at this level makes it counterproductive financially to hurt the animals. Eight Belles' owner is so devastated by what happened that he's not speaking to anyone.

I don't blame him. I get teary-eyed just thinking about what happened, and I didn't have any stake in the situation at all, except for caring about the horses, the beautiful horses.