ESPN is clearing the decks for Game One of the WNBA Finals tonight, and if you're so inclined, check out Women's Hoops for all the skinny.
Concurrent with the start of the finals comes a piece from Jay Mohr over at SI.com, where he, surprise, bashes the WNBA:
I went to a New York Liberty game a couple of years ago and found myself, for the first time, in the minority at a sporting event. As my buddy and I sat courtside with other celebrities like, uh, um, well, I'm sure there was somebody else, we realized what a bizarre collection of souls made up the lower tier of the arena. Little girls and lumberjacks seemed to be the primary ticket holders. The little girls looked at the court in admiration of their heroes, and the lumberjacks looked at the court in a completely different type of admiration.
The rest is a lot like something ESPN.com's Bill Simmons wrote a couple of weeks back (though Simmons, to his credit, let his readers fire back), and Ted from Women's Hoops isn't taking kindly to this line of reasoning:
The WNBA, like any other league, is open to criticism, even ridicule. Sports columnists are paid to express an opinion, and they are encouraged to be provocative and controversial. Yet I'm always surprised that major media outlets like SI are willing to print homophobic...
Ted uses a naughty word that I won't print in my pursuit of larger ad revenues, but I'm sure you get the drift. What I disagree with is Ted's characterization of Mohr as a "columnist" because he's anything but. He's simply a comedian (at times an incredibly talented one, at others, not so much), and really doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
Besides, we all know nobody ever makes jokes about Breeders, excuse me, heterosexuals.
His column reminds me a lot of Justin Gimelstob's U.S. Open blog. He, like Mohr, was brought on board to do one thing: drive traffic. And it appears he's succeeding.
POSTSCRIPT: For those of you with a financial interest, take the Sun in four games.
