If I told you a player in a matchup between the number one and two ranked teams in the country was given an unsportsmanlike foul, a tech for swearing at the opposing coach, and got away with sweeping the legs out from under an opposing player, you would assume it was big news, right? You’d expect it to lead on SportsCenter. You’d expect it to be in the lede of every story about the game. But it’s funny, because that just happened, and I’ll be damned if I can find the women’s basketball media talking about it at all.
This is an actual graf that appeared in the Indianapolis Star the day after UConn smacked Notre Dame around on their home court:
“Legendary Huskies coach Geno Auriemma was on the visiting bench, doing what he constantly does – talking – and top-ranked Notre Dame’s senior star decided she’d heard enough. She got hit with a technical foul that only added to the frustration of this much-hyped, nationally televised Jimmy V Classic matchup of the nation’s top two women’s basketball programs.”
So Geno was talking and, suddenly, out of nowhere, Arike Ogunbowale was hit with a technical? So she was just standing there, minding her own business, and was hit with a mystery tech? No. She had just told the opposing coach to “shut the fuck up,” an action that not only warranted the tech, but would have been grounds to run her. Nowhere in that piece are her actions mentioned. In fact, there are several quotes from Ogunbowale about how she was being “baited” into some unspecified action (for which she apparently bears no responsibility). Nowhere does it mention the unsportsmanlike foul she was tagged with for pulling Crystal Dangerfield down by the throat. Nor is there a mention of her taking Dangerfield’s legs out as they were running unimpeded down the floor. And nary a word about whatever went down in the handshake line.
And while maybe I can see the local paper trying to cover up for the star player, no one else seemed to mention any of that in their coverage either. ESPN focused (deservedly) on Christyn Williams’ impressive performance. Williams deserved many grafs extolling her greatness. But there was not a single word about Ogunbowale’s behavior. Can you imagine ESPN ignoring, say, Zion Williamson telling Coach Calipari to shut the fuck up? And how many stories did I have to read, how many segments on shows and at various halftimes did I have to watch about Grayson Allen’s penchant for tripping people?
Hell, even the Hartford Courant, UConn’s hometown paper, which had three pieces on the game, relegated Ogunbowale’s dust up with Geno to a couple grafs at the back half of one piece, including McGraw’s pathetic “We lost our poise” quote. No mention of how bizarre it was that Ogunbowale was even still in the game to get the unsportsmanlike after she’d been T-ed up for saying something to Geno (why are we all pretending we don’t know what was said?).
And then Muffet and Arike address their apologies to their fans, without actually saying what they did wrong, or apologizing to the people who were actually owed the apology, followed by an avalanche of shamrock-riddled twitter accounts telling them how “classy” they are. Excuse me? Since when is it classy to behave that way, not even say what you did and then apologize to your fans, instead of the people on the receiving end of your shitty behavior? And then, come to find out, Muffet has UConn legend Breanna Stewart blocked on twitter. Petty is a much better word to describe these people and their bullshit apology. But no one in the women’s basketball media seems to be willing to call them out on it.
And, look, I get it. Women’s basketball gets a ridiculous amount of completely unfair criticism from idiots who live in their parents’ basement and have never actually watched a game. The Sandwich Brigade loves to pop into the replies and comments on every article about women’s basketball to say “kitchen” or whatever stupid, over-treaded joke that was never actually funny they’re using today. No one wants to add fuel to that fire. But we can’t let the trolls prevent us from writing the stories that need telling.
By pretending that there’s nothing wrong with women’s basketball, by shoving our hand in our pockets and looking the other way when there is something legitimately deserving of criticism, we are doing a disservice to the sport. If we want the women’s game to be treated with the same level of respect as the men’s game, then the people who write about it have to treat the stories equally. If it would be news if a man did it, then it’s news if a woman does it.
This is all part and parcel of a segment of the media that feels the need to be both journalist and PR flack. We get these disingenuous stories about how bad teams aren’t really bad, but just appear bad in relation to teams that are good (what?). There are many fantastic things about women’s basketball. I count myself among its champions. But blowing smoke at people isn’t going to make things better, it just gives the haters more ground to dismiss the sport.
And ignoring truly terrible behavior from female athletes – behavior that would NEVER be ignored had it been done by a male athlete – means people aren’t doing their jobs. Women’s basketball writers need to get more comfortable with criticism. I know what it’s like to write something with the negative responses circulating in your head even as you put your thoughts to words (heh). But this is the job. To tell the stories: the true stories, the good stories, the bad stories. The whole story. And sometimes that’s going to mean writing something negative about a female athlete. An aversion to doing that is just a form of benevolent sexism, and it’s not helpful. Tell the truth. Even if it hurts.
