I've read more than a few pieces concerning the departure of Val Ackerman as commissioner of the WNBA, and I can't help but come away with the feeling that the whole story isn't being told.
Why? I'll tell you one thing, it doesn't have anything to do with women's sports. If there's anything I've learned in business, it's that you ought to start polishing your resume if your company's CEO heads out the door (if the CFO leaves, that's when it's time to really panic).
If nothing else, I'd expect some big changes in the way the organization is run. If you disagree, just ask yourself this question: if the future of the league was completely assured, then why would Ackerman (who has worked hard and acquitted herself well) leave now?
Oh, I’m not sure it’s too hard to understand why she’d leave now.
You graduate from law school, spend a few years working 80 hours a week at a big NYC law firm. Then you go to work as David Stern’s assistant, spend eight years working 80 hours a week.
Then you take over as WNBA commish, spend eight years working eighty hours a week, logging a couple million frequent flier miles.
You’re getting to your late forties. You have as much money as you need. You’d like to spend more time with you daughters. So you take off…
The future of the league certainly isn’t “completely assured,” but the league did just have its best financial year ever. The big changes came before the 2003 season, when they restructured team ownership.
Now, they’ll probably stay the course. That means they’ll likely choose one of the two insider candidates (Brown or Sarnoff). Ackerman has been telling Stern for a couple years that she was tiring and wanted to get out, so they’ve gotten the replacement ready. Big changes are (for better or worse) unlikely.
Nothing’s quicker than the “swap” button on my remote when a WNBA “highlight” comes on SportsCenter.
The best is the NBA telling the Memphis franchise that they can’t use the term “Express” because it’s too much like Federal Express, which is headquartered in Memphis.
Of course, in the WNBA, they have a team that plays in a casino in Connecticut and has the same font and spelling as the name of the casino embroidered on the front of their jerseys.
What a joke.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for answers, Eric. It has been long apparent that the MSM is deeply averse to criticizing women’s athletics. Everything in the WNBA is just hunky-dory, doncha know! Here’s a classic of the genre on Ackerman from ESPN:
http://sports.espn.go.com/wnba/columns/story?id=1907362
Here are some other questions that will no doubt go un-asked:
– If Ackerman wanted to devote more time to her kids, wouldn’t that have made more sense when they were, say, unable to care for themselves? (PC Answer: All women’s choices are valid.)
– Is the WNBA contracting or expanding? (PC Answer: Both!)
– If the depth on WNBA teams is the big story this year, as Ackerman asserts, doesn’t that mean by inference that the talent hasn’t been that good all these years? (PC Answer: The players are role models!)
– How long can the WNBA continue to alienate its gay fan base before the bottom falls out of ticket sales? (PC Answer: Lisa Leslie can dunk!)
– Did the League’s marquee player, Chamique Holdsclaw, flat-out give up on her team in the heat of the playoff run? (PC Answer: The players are role models!)
– If broadcast ratings for games are in steady decline, how can the WNBA claim it will become profitable in 2007? (PC Answer: David Stern is a visionary.)
Well, let me for a moment take Jim’s question’s at face value.
First, the question about why Val is leaving. When it was announced, I dug around some to find out why. Others did to — Sports Business Journal contacted a bunch of folks at the NBA headquarters. The answer was the same everywhere: the real reason for her departure was the answer given.
– If Ackerman wanted to devote more time to her kids, wouldn’t that have made more sense when they were, say, unable to care for themselves?
Well, I don’t know anything about her family or her kids. She worked for awhile, now wants to be with her daughters before they’re all grown up. When she had her kids, her career was just starting; now she’s basically accomplished what she wanted to.
– Is the WNBA contracting or expanding?
It expanded too fast, and almost killed itself. Then it contracted, cutting three teams. It will add one more either next year or the year after so that each Conference has seven teams. After that, it should stand pat for awhile.
– If the depth on WNBA teams is the big story this year, as Ackerman asserts, doesn’t that mean by inference that the talent hasn’t been that good all these years?
Depth wasn’t the big story this year. Depth was actually hurt because we had an unusually bad year for injuries, and because several international players skipped out this year. There were lots of big stories this year — the Olympics, Holdsclaw, the MVP race, etc. Maybe you’re talking about the rookie class, which was the best ever. By brilliant inference, that means that the rookie classes in the past weren’t as good as this year. The quality of play in the league still isn’t as good as anyone would like it to be, but it gets better every year.
– How long can the WNBA continue to alienate its gay fan base before the bottom falls out of ticket sales?
Don’t know how to answer that one. The league has always wanted to have it both ways — keep the lesbian fans, but not alienate the bigoted fathers out there who don’t want to bring daughters to a game lest they contract the lesbian contagion. In my view, the league should tell the bigots to fuck off. (In Jim’s view, perhaps, we should lock up the lesbians.) But the league tries to market to a variety of folks (MN’s second-biggest crowd this year was for a Christian youth group promotion), and it’s been fairly successful at it.
– Did the League’s marquee player, Chamique Holdsclaw, flat-out give up on her team in the heat of the playoff run?
Holdsclaw isn’t the WNBA’s marquee player. Even before this year, she wasn’t in the top five anymore. We don’t know why she left. She says that she has a medical condition, but no one knows whether that’s true. The MSM hasn’t exactly ignored this story — both hometown papers attacked her pretty relentlessly this year. Both papers published several rumors, and both spent some time digging, but neither was able to turn up the real story. I don’t like Holdsclaw very much, but I’ve withheld criticism on this one… I’d feel like an idiot attacking her if it turned out she really does have an illness that prevents her from playing.
– If broadcast ratings for games are in steady decline, how can the WNBA claim it will become profitable in 2007?
Ratings aren’t in steady decline. Profitability projections are based on a few things — namely, corporate sponsorship revenues were way up, both for individual teams and for the league as a whole. Also, paid ticket sales were up across the league.
Last year three teams were profitable. Though it’s all semi-secret, it looks like more than half of the teams were profitable this year.
All of these issues have been covered by the press this year in the hometown papers for each team. Of course, we’d all love it if there were more media coverage, and if the media would cover the WNBA like it does other sports — criticism and all.
But then… why bother asking or answering these questions?
You aren’t really interested in the answers to these questions, are you Jim? For you, dicussions of women’s sports are just used as a vehicle to rail against the so-called PC-feminist establishment. (Curse those all-powerful feminists, controlling the media, the Presidency, the Court, Congress… oh wait…)
Why not just have the courage to talk politics directly and leave basketball out of it?
So, the WNBA caters to bigots and somehow I
Yes, the survey of what players would do if president. You choose some statements suggesting leftism (though I thought taking away drugs was as much a Republican issue as Dem).
But there are several on the other side –
Kara Lawsom says she wouldn’t change anything with the way the country is being run right now. Becky Hammon says she’d lower taxes. Taurasi says she’d “cancel taxes.”
Most of the players don’t really answer — most WNBA players aren’t very political types.
There are plenty of conservatives around. Lindsay Whalen, the biggest hoops star in my state, is a Bush supporter. At Lynx games this year, we heard lots about Nicole Ohlde and Amber Jacobs and their faith in Christ. (Frankly, I got a little tired of it.) It’s actually more frequent that you hear a player discuss their faith in God than you do their faith in John Kerry or the feminist establishment.
I’ve been to a couple dozen women’s basketball games over the last year in California and Minnesota, both college and pros. Haven’t heard a whiff of politics at any of them. Only someone who never goes can (with a straight face) make the claim that such contests are “incessantly co-opted into a showcase for feminist politics.”
As far as the WNBA “Who’s On The Ball” campaign to show “strong women” in promo shots for the league… yes, it’s cheesy, but I don’t see any leftist agenda there. The woman featured today is Republican Jennie Finch. Last week it was Vanna White, not exactly a font of feminist thought.
As far as the Women’s Sports Foundation –
it’s a little misleading to say that the dinner last week was a “fundraiser.” The dinner was the annual awards dinner. Several WNBA players were nominated for awards, so they attended the dinner.
The WSF’s primary mission is to get girls to play sports because “girls who play sports are less likely to be involved in an unintended pregnancy; more likely to get better grades in school; and more likely to graduate than girls who do not play sports.”
It advocates for equality in sports, which means it pushes for equal funding and it supports Title IX. It fought changes to Title IX… I know you really, really hate Title IX (and love wrestling)… but given that Rod Paige and the Bush admin ultimately agreed with them, I’m not sure you can paint them as leftist extremists on that one.
I note also that Dominique Dawes is the new pres of WSF. She’s essentially an apolitical person. When asked about Amy Acuff in Playboy, she said she had no problem with it.
As far as the “cherished feminist canard” that sex differences are just constructs –
yet another ridiculous oversimplification. There is a school of feminists (Foulcaudians, primarily) who believe that gender is a construct. That doesn’t mean, incidentally, that differences aren’t “real” — Foulcauldians say contructs are just as real as anything else. They must be, because that’s all we have.
There are “difference feminists” who believe that there are real differences of whatever sort, and they say that the differences should be celebrated.
And then there are the rest of us who think it’s a stupid question to begin with. I don’t really care whether we say that women are different from men or not. The point is that women are and should be equal.
as far as press coverage — yes, I agree that the game would benefit from more scrutinizing coverage. I wish the MSM would cover the WNBA like any other sport: fawning when deserved, critical when deserved.
Right now we don’t have much of either.
Here’s how the WNBA is covered –
the papers in the 13 towns with teams have beat reporters covering the teams. They attend home games and write game reports. None of those papers will pay for their reporters to go to away games, so they just pick up wire reports, or occasionally hire stringers.
Beat reporters (only) occasionally write articles about something other than a game — if a major player gets hurt, if a coach gets fired, etc.
There is only one reporter in a town without a team that writes about the league — Mel Greenburg in Philly. He does so about once a week.
There are hardly any columnists who write opinion, commentary, criticism, praise pieces.
There is only one who does so regularly — Mike DiMauro in New London, CT.
When Seattle and Connecticut got in the finals, we saw a bunch of colums from those papers — Kelley, Levesque, Jacobs. Generally praising those teams for getting to the finals.
In Minnesota this year, there were a handful of colums early in the year, mostly trashing the team for not trading for Whalen.
In DC this year, there were about two columns about the Mystics, both about Holdsclaw — one trashing her (Wilbon), one defending her (Jenkins).
Several teams (Charlotte, Indiana, e.g.) didn’t really have a single opinion piece written about them in their hometown papers.
As a result, most of us have to turn to the internet to find opinion and commentary. What we find there is hardly fawning praise of the league and its players.
ESPN.com has two people who cover women’s basketball (Lieberman and Voepel). They write occasional articles. Both are boosters, both write mostly positive stuff.
(Remember, however, the Page 2 article last year from Stacey Pressman, who attended one early season game between two bad teams, and then declared that the WNBA is boring and that the only people there are weird dykes. As I recall, you all really loved that one.)
You yesterday linked to a Voepel article about Val. It was very positive. What you apparently didn’t realize, however, it that Voepel’s article was responding to the criticism that Val had received elsewhere (in the chatrooms, on blogs, etc.). Lots of people were happy to see Val go — said she’s a Stern patsy, that we need new direction, etc. Voepel responded (somewhat angrily) in defense of Val.