Frozen Four Response

The 2012 Frozen Four From Tampa Bay FL.

Gender Differences in the Media and Team Relations

Brady Munger

Over the past week, I spent my time in Tampa Bay Florida working hand in hand with the NCAA for the entire Men’s Frozen Four (the hockey equivalent to the final four).  Over the week, I had an all access pass, in which I had access to any part of the rink, as well as access to talk to anyone in the media, teams, or organizing committees.  Over the duration of the week, I took great care in looking at the media and the teams present and noticing and taking not of gender differences among the different means of media from print reporters, to online columnists, to radio and television. As well as media I looked closely at the team operations and observing the role women played for some of the teams and how their role was compared to others.         

Media wise, I was pleasantly surprised to see the amount of females that were present at the tournament. Seeing as hockey is a sport largely dominated by males, I suspected there to be a majority number of men in the press box from the media. But upon observing the numbers I was surprised to see a large quantity of females on hand. Upon my rough calculations, 40 percent of the reporters present from the news paper or online news sources were females.  This number was a surprising figure to me in that there were almost an equal number of males to females, my predictions were that there would be a large majority male and I was wrong to an extent.  For the higher media I was right on the target though. The television media and radio media were all dominated by males. There was not a single female either in radio or in television at the event. This did not come as a surprise; hockey being a masculine sport the two major form of live media radio and television were dominated by males. This comes from a consumer point of view, when you tune in to listen on the radio, or watch on TV you pair the masculine voice of a male with the sport, and it promotes the masculinity of the game as a whole and makes the audience portray the host to be more knowledgeable.

From a team perspective, I was pleasantly surprised to see the amount of females working with the teams. 2 out of the 4 teams have a female worker representing their team. But after some investigation, finding the positions the women held made more sense to me and fit more of the “feminine” roll.  They both were assistant SID’s (sports information director), and their main duties were to coordinate with the press for meetings and talk to reporters to schedule interviews and open up for players during the interviews. I found this kind of typical, having a woman who is generally more welcoming and softer dealing with the camera’s and press putting on the smile at all times.  It was not surprising to see these roles filled by them, as it is sort of a stereotypical job for a female to hold.

The other large thing that I noticed for gender stereotyping was that of stereotyping the anticipated crowds. Upon visiting the apparel stands I was looking at the choice of clothing souvenirs. For men there were over 20 different shirts to choose from, short sleeve, long sleeve, hoodies, crew cuts; but there were only 2 things specifically marketed towards women. Both were t-shirts and one was pink and one was purple. I found this very surprising; upon walking through the crowds I noticed that there were a large number of females in attendance. This is an event where a lot of couples travel to together for years and years. Over the weekend I met a couple who had been going to frozen four’s since BGSU won it in 1984. I was surprised to see the limited number of female apparel available, and am still curious to wonder whether it was a guess that the crowd would be dominantly male and stereotyping the dominant masculine fan base, or if women would want the same t-shirts as men.

Lastly, was the use of the promotional schemes at intermissions and extended breaks. The tournament had what was called the “capital one girls” (capital one being the main sponsor), that would do different activities and games on ice during the intermissions and time outs. What it boiled down to be was a perfect example of the NCAA trying to use sex appeal to sell its product to their consumers. It had nothing to do with hockey, and they would center the girls on the megatron and on the camera and having them interact with the audience, and only once over the entire weekend did I see them involve a girl. I was surprised to see this at play at an NCAA event, but then again whatever helps sell people will use these days.

Overall it was an interesting thing looking at the gender differences and comparisons at the event among the teams and Medias. The one thing I did not touch on was the organizing committees. I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of NCAA staff members being female. The majority actually from the NCAA were female works which was a surprising fact to me. At such an important event you would automatically by gender stereotypes assume it would be male dominated authority roles, but the majority of the NCAA authority positions were females, which I thought to be very interesting and surprising.