Blog Post by: Nathan Wahle
We all know about the NFL draft because Todd McShay and Mel Kiper are on
ESPN almost every day from the moment the NFL season ends all the way up to
draft day. I do not know how others feel about this because I am sure everyone
has their own opinions; however, I find the coverage of the draft repetitive
and bothersome. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the NFL draft and I think it would
be beneficial to have all this coverage leading up to the draft. I just think
when it comes to sport coverage; football is gaining status of a monopoly. This
is just referring to sports covered on ESPN and not even going specifically
into men's sports versus women's sports.
This brings up my main point which is the WNBA Draft. The WNBA Draft was
held this past Monday and might have been the most quietly promoted and
produced sporting event this week. The draft was apparently held on ESPN or
ESPN2 during the mid to late afternoon hours this past Monday. So, to begin
with the coverage was not even during primetime for television viewing and was
during the work week. I know on a personal level I would still not have known
that there was a draft if I was not watching Sportscenter Monday night where
they took all of about fifteen seconds to go over the top five picks in the
draft and then they moved on. Again, from a personal standpoint, I have text
alerts come to my phone from ESPN whenever there is major news in sports and I
did not receive a text for anything from the WNBA draft. Furthermore, that same
day I received a text from ESPN saying that Indiana University offered an
eighth grader a scholarship for basketball. Again, there was a special news
conference held in a primetime spot (unlike what the WNBA Draft received) to
announce that the Kentucky starting five were entering the NBA Draft.
It is incredible how we feel as though women's sports are receiving close to
equal treatment as men because this week has been painfully obvious how untrue
that is. I think this unequal treatment was temporarily forgotten due to ESPN
doing a pretty decent job offering close to equal coverage of the NCAA Women's
tournament as the Men's; however, that was fool's gold because coverage alone
of the NFL Draft might equal the total amount of all combined women's sports
coverage. I believe ESPN made a statement by the lack of their coverage and
attention towards the WNBA Draft. They are making it clear that women's sports
is nowhere close to being as important as men's sports and this is what will
need to change if we ever want equality in men's sports versus women's sports.
Now that you mentioned something about the WNBA draft I cannot remember any coverage of the draft besides the stuff we mentioned in class. Women do not receive an equal amount of attention and coverage like men do. I would say that in rare instances women’s sports do get a lot of coverage when player like Brittney Griner’s come around. Other than examples like that there is not much else when there should be. Maybe they should create a WESPN a women’s entertainment and sports programming network. But I do not think they would get much attention that way either. Women’s sports have come a long way from where they were. With larger issues and players more attention may eventually increase. I am unsure how long it will take but someday.
ReplyDelete-Nathan Latta
I shared a very similar experience that Nate did when it comes to the WNBA draft. I did not hear of any advertising for it on the days leading up to the draft which is interesting compared to the months and months of coverage we get leading up to the NFL draft. In my opinion this was very disappointing to see because it sort of showed to me that ESPN were not giving the WNBA it’s time. They could have used the draft as a showcase for the league to continue to build women’s sports in this country but instead they seemed to brush it aside.
ReplyDeleteComment by Mark Chipperfield
Post by Brady Munger
ReplyDeleteI have a similar experience but hockey wise. In the college hockey level, the men’s Frozen Four had a huge buzz and had ESPN advertisement about the event. They were televising the event with some of their top tier hockey reporters there. When it came to the women's frozen four, there was no advertisement at all. I did not hear once about the location, or who was playing in it I had to seek out the information myself. Also, looking for it on the television I could not find it. I was a bit shocked by this to see the insane difference between the two. The men's received all of this attention and media, but the women's received next to nothing. In comparison the NCAA basketball tournament, that is a huge difference. The coverage is there for both sexes. But I believe that one of the main differences between these two is that women's basketball is so much more popular than women's hockey. There are a ton more women’s basketball fans out there that would watch the games than hockey fans, but I was still very surprised to see the lack of coverage the women's Frozen Four received. I would have liked to see more media coverage for the women. I know it can never be even between the two because of the huge popularity gap between the two sports for each gender, but some respect for the women’s game I believed is own and it was not shown at all this year. I feel in many ways’ it is a lot like the WNBA NBA drafts. How the men’s league gets the prime time show and the women get a small mention in the ticker running across the bottom of the screen.
Ya I would have to agree with all of the statements above. There was little to no coverage about the WNBA draft. I did briefly see something on ESPN where they took a little segment and showed the top five women who did get drafted. That little segment was about 3 minuets long. That is completely ridiculous. I feel that they should get some coverage and hype leading up to the event as well. I believe if ESPN did this it would get more people to watch and get more people interested. ESPN just covers mens sports dominantly and I believe that it really hurts the sports society. And as for what Brady said I honestly didn't even know they had a Women's Frozen Four. That just adds to his statement that there was no coverage on it at all. I think if ESPN took time to cover all the sports each sport would get a bigger fan base.
ReplyDeleteComment by
Kane Godfrey
I agree with the fact that women's sport should receive more coverage. I think it's ridiculous that the WNBA draft only had a mere amount of coverage on ESPN. This got me thinking then to when the ESPN has selection Sunday for the draw of teams in men's college basketball for March Madness. ESPN has a few good solid hours of the reactions of the team, things leading up to the selection, and the actual selections. Women's basketball on the other hand, has a little bit of coverage to show who the teams are and who they are playing but nothing to the extent of what the men receive. I think that if ESPN covered more amounts of women's sports, society might watch more of women's sports. I always see advertisements and commercials for the next big game in professional sports, but rarely does that ever consist of a professional women's sport. It usually has to do with the NFL, NBA, MLB, or NHL. If women's sports were advertised and received more coverage, I think that would be a step in the right direction in order for women's sports to be more recognized.
ReplyDeleteHeather Cox
Last week I was caught up in the NFL Draft coverage and was very interested in the news conference involving the Kentucky starting 5 announcing their intentions to go pro. I was also interested in the WNBA Draft because I wanted to see if a local girl from my area was going to get picked or not. Looking back I'm shocked about how much coverage the WNBA Draft received on ESPN afterwords and how much attention was on the Kentucky players. As stated, this is clearly telling the audience how much they are not for giving women sports more attention which it deserves. Obviously, what the audience wants to see is the coverage of the NFL Draft because I feel the audience is so caught up in seeing debates going on with McShay and Kiper. That's what ESPN is all about right now I feel like, gathering more viewers because of the debate aspect and having conflicts between analysts and TV personality's.
ReplyDeleteHeather you make a lot of good points. You are right about the Selection Shows being like the draft coverage. I the Men's Selection Show was this huge deal that every analyst wanted to put their two cents in on and people in the ESPN studion would talk about every game and make every pick possible until they were blue in the face. The Women's Selection Show was just sort of a reveal the selections then that is it in comparison to the men's. Plus it has all to do with coverage time. The Men's show was on a Sunday at primetime where there were no other sporting events going on at the time but the Women's was on a Monday night where they couldn't slot enough time for after the selections to tlk about them. So eual coverage also require equal opportunity and I think we can all agree that women's sports should receive more advertising if not equal to men's in order to level the playing field as best as possible.
ReplyDeleteComment by:
Nathan Wahle
Excellent observations Nathan!
ReplyDelete