Why are men's sports more popular than women's sports?
This is the question my roommate Meghan and I briefly discussed this past weekend. She told me that I should make this the topic of my column this week. At first, I thought no way-this is too touchy of a subject, plus I'm not a big fan of controversy.
But then I opened up our fabulous Daily Cardinal sports page (okay, I'll admit I'm a little biased) and I got to thinking about the question again. Two of our female sports teams on campus had wonderful weekends-a women's hockey sweep over Minnesota State and an underdog women's basketball victory against No. 25 Iowa.
But where were these stories placed? Not on the primary sports page; that was occupied by the rough weekend had by our men's basketball and hockey teams thanks to a stupid little Gopher.
So why is this? Why is it that the men's teams can sell out the Kohl Center, while the women's teams that play there struggle to get only a couple thousand fans, and get the most press? I'm not asking these questions in a whining matter or suggesting that the Spice Girls reunite so we can have more 'Girl Power!', I'm just posing them as things to think about since the class you are sitting in right now probably is not that interesting.
Let me take you on a trip back to my high school days at Pius XI High School in Milwaukee. Our school was pretty well-known throughout Wisconsin for most of its athletics but nationally, the Lady Popes were almost a household name for girls basketball. Before I got to school, the basketball program had compiled winning streaks of 92-games, 124-games in our creaky old gym, produced 10 All-Americans during legendary head coach Joel Claassen's tenure, 12 consecutive WISAA championships (State for the Catholic schools) and 16 conference championships. Phew.
Despite all this, it was always the guy's games that drew a bigger crowd and the rowdier fans when I was there. Granted, the guys also had a respectable program, but it was nothing in comparison to the legacy the girls created at Pius.
As a female sports fan, I wish I could say that during high school, I was one of the loyal followers of the girls sports. At Pius, I was usually one of those students that preferred to spend her Friday nights watching our guys team rather than our legendary girls team and it has been much of the same now.
So again, why is it like this? I wish I had a legit answer but for some unexplainable reason, male sports are just more interesting to me than female sports.
Have any suggestions? E-mail Betsy at eagolomski@wisc.edu
