Race and College Basketball. Yes, Again.

There are a lot of important stories out there right now—Tennessee making their case to surpass Florida as the leading national embarrassment, the bizarre threat by Wisconsin Republicans to impeach a newly elected Supreme Court Justice before she even takes office, the Donald Trump trial (Curmie sincerely hopes the case is stronger than it appears to be, or the damage will be significant), the “revelation” of what anyone paying attention has known for decades: that Clarence Thomas is devoid of any moral or ethical sensibility. And plenty more… 

Still, Curmie’s going to concentrate for a moment on college basketball and race. He’s already discussed that with respect to Big 12 coaches on the men’s side; let’s talk about the women’s NCAA tournament. We can begin with the commentary from South Carolina coach Dawn Staley. Her team had entered the NCAA tournament undefeated on the season, but lost in the national semi-final to Iowa, who won behind the heroics of their star guard Caitlin Clark, who registered 41 points, 6 rebounds, and 8 assists. 

But there was a lot of commentary about South Carolina’s style of play. Iowa coach Lisa Bluder said prior to their game with the Gamecocks that going for a rebound against them was “like going to a bar fight.” Earlier in the season, Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma described what he perceived as the Gamecocks’ overly physical style and declared himself “sick of it.”

What’s this got to do with race? Well, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley is black; so are most of her players. Indeed, the only two white players on the team totaled a mere 222 minutes for the entire season; that’s less than 3% of the team total. Bluder and the majority of her team, including their star, Clark, are white. 

Auriemma is also white; whereas his team is roughly evenly divided between white and black athletes, most of his complaints about South Carolina were about what he regarded as numerous missed calls involving Huskies forward Lou Lopez Sénéchal, who is Latina and appears white. (It should be noted here that Auriemma’s commentary was generalized to how teams, plural, played Lopez Sénéchal and how referees allowed them to do so; South Carolina was just the most recent example.) 

So, is race a factor? Well, as Curmie was fond of saying when he taught Asian theatre, yes and no. Staley’s defense of her coaching strategy seems to suggest a racial element to the criticism of her team’s physicality, saying among other things that “We're not thugs. We're not monkeys.” This is not only a straw man argument, it’s a craven one, implying without actually saying that her and her team’s critics are engaging in racial stereotypes. No one, at least no opposing coach or player, and no sports commentator of any stature has ever used those terms, at least in public. Over-reaction, then? At the very least. 

Ah, but Gentle Reader, we’re not done. Multiple LSU players accused Clark of “disrespect” when the Iowa star waved off South Carolina guard Raven Johnson rather than run out to guard her late in the first quarter of the national semi-final. That’s just game plan: South Carolina lives and dies in their interior game; it’s perfectly reasonable to leave a 24% three-point shooter open in order to sag inside to make it harder to feed the post. There’s one easy way for Johnson to put an end to that tactic, of course: shoot the wide open three-pointer and make it.

Caitlin Clark-- we can’t see her

Significantly, the media lapped up Clark’s brashness. Cory Woodroof of For the Win, for example, raved about Clark’s “absolutely hilarious disrespect.” Media types also thought Clark’s derision of Hailey Van Lith when the Iowa-Louisville Elite 8 game was clearly going to go the Hawkeyes’ way was absolutely peachy. She got special props for the waving the hand in front of the face gesture. Curmie is told that this frankly stupid-looking display is intended to mean “you can’t see me”; the originator of this taunt was the pseudo-wrestler/pseudo-actor Jon Cena. Cena himself joined in the celebration of Clark, exclaiming on Twitter, “Even if they could see you…they couldn’t guard you!”. 

Ah, but here is where the fun really begins. When LSU defeated Iowa in the national title game, LSU star Angel Reese, who is black, pointed to her ring finger, suggesting that she was about to get a championship ring. I mean… Curmie hadn’t seen that gesture in, hell, a few weeks, when Kansas forward Jalen Wilson made a similar gesture to celebrate clinching the Big 12 men’s regular season championship. (Curmie is certain there are other, even more recent, examples; this was one Curmie, as a Jayhawks fan, saw live on TV.) 

Angel Reese, echoing the sentiment

Not only that, she used precisely the same gesture to Clark that the Iowa star had used in the Louisville game. OMG, the unmitigated gall! Oh, the humanity! Think of the children! Keith Olbermann, for example, declared Reese a “fucking idiot”; five minutes later he added “Mindless, classless, and what kind of coach does this team have?” 

To be fair (sort of), Olbermann apologized (sort of) the next day, with the rather feeble excuse that he doesn’t follow hoops (yeah, right, the guy who spent two decades as a sports journalist and hosted SportsCenter for five years doesn’t follow hoops), so he didn’t know the backstory. As if the backstory really mattered. 

Olbermann, of course, took a lot of heat for his initial response, including from the likes of Samuel L. Jackson and Shaquille O’Neal, neither of whom were particularly kind in their criticism. Olbermann wasn’t alone in his hypocrisy, of course, but as the most famous of her detractors, he certainly works as an exemplar of the phenomenon. Curmie cringes at the thought of agreeing with a blowhard like Stephen A. Smith, but he was right in tweeting that “When Caitlin Clark did it...people were celebrating it and talking about nothing but her greatness. BUT the SECOND a sister stepped up and threw it back in her face, everyone is mad. Come on!”  

Reese herself was, to say the least, unapologetic, and certainly didn’t shy away from the racial dimension: “All year, I was critiqued about who I was…. I don’t fit in the box that y’all want me to be in. I’m too hood, I’m too ghetto. You told me that all year. But when other people do it, y’all don't say nothing. So this is for the girls that look like me, that want to speak up on what they believe in. It’s unapologetically you…. It was bigger than me tonight.” Of course, 16 of the previous 17 tournament Most Outstanding Players in the tournament were black, so Reese wasn’t exactly breaking new ground. 

Clark, to her credit, downplayed the entire incident, claiming she didn’t see Reese’s gestures, an unlikely proposition… but maybe Reese actually became invisible with the “you can’t see me” gesture? More importantly, she defended Reese: “I don't think Angel should be criticized at all. No matter which way it goes, she should never be criticized for what she did. I'm just one that competes — and she competed…. LSU deserved it; they played so well, and like I said, I’m a big fan of hers.” 

Irrespective of the factors leading to his perspective (age? class? race? something else altogether?), Curmie has never been a fan of trash talk, but accepts it as a fact of life in today’s sporting world. One supposes there are unspoken boundaries, but exactly where they are is difficult to determine. But those limitations, whatever and wherever they are, need to be the same across the board: age, gender, race, etc. cannot be a factor. And, of course, the racial (and perhaps gender-based) overtones to all this are impossible to ignore. But, as they say on the late-night infomercials, Wait! That’s not all! 

First Lady Jill Biden was at the game, and apparently enjoyed it. After the contest, she uttered remarks that were no doubt well-intentioned but rather stupid: “I know we’ll have the champions come to the White House, we always do. So, we hope LSU will come. But, you know, I’m going to tell Joe I think Iowa should come, too, because they played such a good game.” 

The suggestion that any losing team ought to be able to share the spotlight with the winners not only goes against tradition, it’s just dumb. But the implication that inviting LSU is more a matter of custom rather than appropriateness, coupled with the race of the majority of the players on those teams… well, the optics are less than optimal. 

Iowa’s Clark and Bluder both, by the way, said that the White House visit ought to be reserved for LSU. Biden’s minions were quick to “clarify” Dr. Biden’s remarks, but the inevitable damage was done. 

Reese promptly tweeted “A JOKE,” and rejected the (inevitable) apology. Her teammate Alexis Morris tried to wangle an invite from Michelle Obama instead (yeah, like that’s going to happen), and Reese proclaimed that the team was not going to visit the White House, but that “we’ll go to the Obamas. We’ll see Michelle. We’ll see Barack.” 

To be fair, she said that last part apparently in jest. The part that seemed to be serious, though, was that LSU would not accept the White House invitation. Apparently Reese believes she sets policy for the team, now. Curiously enough, the LSU athletics department had other ideas. Go figure. 

Jill Biden, by the way, was apparently to visit both locker rooms before the championship game, but LSU didn’t want her, for the oh-so-very-mature reason that Joe (not Jill) had not included them on his bracket. Sigh. 

OK. So who looks good in all this? If we forgive the trash talk and the narcissistic showmanship, Clark looks pretty good. The same could be said for Reese. On the other hand, she blew everything out of proportion by acting like a pampered 12-year-old. Olbermann should indeed shut up. Jill Biden should apologize in person rather than have her press secretary issue a walk-back. The tournament featured record-breaking performances, shattered attendance records, and some really good basketball. It kinda sucks that it will be remembered primarily for other things. 

Oh, and just because nobody else has mentioned this: much has been made of the black and gold tiger-striped outfit LSU coach Kim Mulkey wore to the final. No one seems to notice that black and gold are Iowa’s colors—Curmie isn’t sure what the visual equivalent of tone-deaf is, but this was it. Sigh.

FIFA and the Women's World Cup, Part I: Money, Fans, and Ethics

This is the way we’d like to remember the Women’s World Cup:

celebrating with Carli Lloyd.

[It turns out that even beginning to talk about the corruption, incompetence, and sexism of FIFA with respect to the Women’s World Cup takes a lot of space.  This is, then, a two-part essay.  More tomorrow.]

Like a lot of other folks, Curmie watched the finals of the Women’s World Cup a week or so ago. Unlike many of the others tuned into that match, however, Curmie also watched both semi-finals, and would have watched many of the preliminary games had he not been pretty much cut off from television access at the time.

The fact is, the women’s game is simply more fun to watch than the men’s, and not merely for the jingoistic reason that the US women are perennial contenders for whatever title they seek, whereas the men (to put it politely) are not. The women’s game is more team-oriented, more reliant on passing and positioning, more (dare I say it?) intellectual without being any less athletic. It’s a cleaner game, too, with fewer fouls—not just fewer fouls called, but fewer fouls, and if a female player goes down and doesn’t get up immediately, it means she’s really hurt, not faking paroxysms of agony to try to influence the referee. The respect for the game, for the opponent, for tradition, and for teammates is all considerably higher.

Witness the fact that Carli Lloyd, the very deserving Golden Ball recipient whose hat trick 15 minutes into the final was nothing short of incredible, handed over the captain’s armband to fading star (but still team leader) Abby Wambach when the latter entered the game with the victory no longer in doubt. And who actually hoisted the trophy after the award presentation? Lloyd? Nope. Golden Glove winner Hope Solo? Nope. Wambach and 40-year-old Christie Rampone, the only active member of the 1999 team that won the Cup in such dramatic fashion: Wambach and Rampone are the links to heritage, the veteran leaders; the best players on the team right now will, one hopes, have another opportunity. (Wambach also passed the captain’s armband on to Rampone, who was apparently selected to raise the trophy by herself, but insisted that Wambach join her.) Respect, tradition, team. Not to mention the utter casualness with which everyone associated with the team regards the fact that Wambach and fellow veteran Megan Rapinoe have both been out of the closet for years. Ah, if only all sports were like that.

Except…

Alas, there is a darker side to the feel-good stories. There’s the fact that the US’s star goalie Hope Solo is alleged to be a violent criminal, yet has not been subject to the same backlash as, say the NFL’s Adrian Peterson or Ray Rice. (Curmie’s netpal Jack Marshall does his usual excellent analysis here and here.) Because she’s white? female? Because her variation on domestic violence isn’t perceived as being symptomatic of a larger problem? If Solo were black and/or male, or a little less accomplished (or even a little less beautiful), would she be trotted out as one of the faces of the team, or even allowed to stay on it? All over America, little girls are hoping to grow up to be Hope Solo, and their parents (not to mention their sisters and nephews) are hoping they… uh… don’t.

There’s also the frankly rather sketchy officiating. (Yahoo’s Graham Watson agrees.) There were a total four penalty kicks awarded in the two semi-final games. You could make a pretty good case that none of them were merited. And apparently (I missed this game) the third-place game between England and Germany was an officiating disaster. Part of this is the fault of the referees themselves, of course, but part is also on FIFA (the Fédération Internationale de Football) for not insisting on replay for calls that have the potential to change the direction of a match in a heartbeat.

Ah, yes. FIFA. The perfect blend of corruption, arrogance, incompetence, sexism, and boorishness. Needless to say, the world’s governing body for soccer/football had been making the headlines for all the wrong reasons coming into the Women’s World Cup. There was the corruption scandal involving many of the organization’s most powerful officials. There’s the mounting evidence that not only was the awarding of the 2022 (men’s) World Cup to Qatar almost certainly the product of bribery, but that the facilities for that tournament are being constructed in hazardous, often deadly, conditions by what amounts to slave labor. Please note, Gentle Reader, that this is an entirely different set of allegations from those that led to multi-count indictments (and three convictions already) against over a dozen current and former FIFA officials, sports marketing mavens, and a broadcaster. Self-styled “Godfather of Women’s Football” Sepp Blatter (yes, that is indeed a name worthy of a James Bond villain), who was re-elected in May because of despite being one of the most contemptible creatures ever to trod the planet, resigned in the wake of that scandal, but who is still in charge until a successor is named several months hence, didn’t make the trip to Vancouver amid speculation that his absence—and that of his minion, Secretary General Jerome Valcke—was under the advice of his lawyer.

So what FIFA really needed was a well-attended, effectively administered, competitive, Women’s World Cup with good TV ratings—something to take the edge off, at least, until at least some of the brouhaha died down. They got it, at least to hear them tell it. The reality was a little different. This year’s version set total attendance records, but there are two problems: first, the comparison is between a 16-team, 32-game tournament in 1999 (the previous record-holder) and a 24-team, 52-game tournament in 2015. So, in 1999, attendance averaged over 37,000 fans per game to reach a total of about 1.2 million, compared to over 1.35 million this time around. But whereas 2015 version drew more fans, total, it averaged over 10,000 fewer fans per game. 

If this is a sell-out crowd,
a lot of people came disguised as empty seats.

And—problem #2—that’s after massaging the numbers. Early round games were sold as double-headers, and FIFA, ever the paragons of dubious virtue, double-dipped. Fans who bought a single ticket to see two games were counted twice, whether they saw both games or not. For example, some 32,716 people—a sell-out(!)—bought tickets to the Australia-Nigeria and USA-Sweden double bill. The latter game was in fact pretty close to full. The earlier game was half empty. FIFA consulted its magic pixie dust and declared that all 32K+ folks had attended both games: total attendance, therefore: 65,432.

The television numbers, which FIFA couldn’t control, were at least honest, and were certainly encouraging, at least in North America. The final, for example, was watched by some 26.7 million viewers in the US, eclipsing the old record of 26.5 million Americans who tuned in to the Germany-Argentina final in the men’s World Cup last year. But how many of those viewers would have watched had the US not reached the final (or even if it had not been a re-match of the 2011 final, a heart-breaking loss for the American side), and how many more would have watched the US men’s team had they advanced to games of real significance?

Still, as the New York Times article linked above points out, it is unquestionably significant that viewership for the USA-Japan final outdrew Game 7 of last year’s World Series and the clinching Game 6 of the NBA playoffs. There’s certainly interest. Here. As might be expected, countries whose teams didn’t fare as well didn’t stay tuned as much after their side had departed the competition. Still, the television numbers were generally pretty good all over. I can’t find final world-wide figures for the final, but the semis averaged over 12 million viewers world-wide, with about 2/3 of those viewers coming from the US. Assuming that same ratio for the final (global TV ratings haven’t been released, or at least I can’t find them), then we’re talking about a total television viewership of perhaps 40 million or so. That’s a lot of folks… until you compare it to the estimated 1 billion (yes, “billion” with a “b”) who watched last year’s men’s final. More importantly, whereas the women’s final this year probably attracted a few million viewers from countries other than the two participants, last year’s men’s final attracted a few hundred million audience members from elsewhere than Germany and Argentina.

And that’s an important statistic. Because whereas there is no doubt that FIFA is run by a cadre of sexist assholes, there is at least some economic sense to the disparity in payouts to the sides. Is there an outrageous disparity between the $2 million the US women won this year and the $35 million the German men brought home last year? Well, duh. But what ought that ratio be, and by what basis should we arrive at it? Is absolute parity the way to go? Could be. That’s what Wimbledon is doing, for example.

But a purely performance-based system also has a claim to being the fairest model. No one seriously suggests that the US women would fare well in a head-to-head contest even with the American men (who, by the way, brought home $8 million for getting knocked out in group play last year), let alone with a first-rate international squad. The women are at least as technically skilled, but high-end male athletes are bigger, faster and stronger than their female counterparts: that’s why there are separate teams for men and women (and there are few sports—wrestling, boxing, crew, weightlifting—in which smaller men get to compete only against each other, not against the big guys). If we’re really talking about some variation on equal pay for equal results, then shouldn’t a pedestrian men’s team make as much or more as a good women’s team they could still beat?

Or we could adopt entertainment value as our central criterion. Players who generate more income should be compensated according. That’s fair, too? Well, now we’re talking pure economics, and the more colorful (or sexy) players who attract a bigger crowd ought to get a bigger piece of the pie… regardless of outcome. And if we’re dealing with a strictly capitalistic model, then the fact that the men’s final generated a couple dozen times as many viewers as the women’s, both in the stands and in the worldwide television audience, suggests that they ought to be paid commensurately.

You know what?  Not really.  But at least there’s some rationale behind the disparity in prize money, which, it turns out, isn’t FIFA’s greatest crime. What is? That’s in part II of this post.  Watch this space.