Editor’s Pick
AUGUST 3, 2009 12:27PM
OMG Lingerie Football! Excuse Me While I Die A Little Inside
OMG Lingerie Football! Now Excuse Me While I Die A Little Inside
wtf?
Courtesy of Yahoo! Sports Shutdown Corner and Philly.com, allow me to share this video, where the QB of the Philadelphia Passion explains how they're going to pass and run and all that good shit this season in the Lingerie Football League.
"We're going to defense each other". Yes. Peyton Manning could not have expressed the essence of football more passionately and clearly. The "With Leather" blog has a hilarious comment on this new league that you should check out (far be it for me to reprint and ruin someone else's funny joke).
I assume that most of my readers out there don't need me to go on a rant about all the ways this offends me. I am going to trust that you people recognize on your own all the levels of total wrongness going on here. I will say that as a former rugby player, I cringed at the one girl tackling the other girl up around the shoulder pads. Below the waist, dammit, Mindy! Also, as a former rugger, I wish I had a better body so I could play in this league, because I would totally lay those Buffys out.
I'm instead going to talk about women's pro sports. Sadly, the Lingerie Football League is probably the only way you're going to see women be paid for playing football. I know there are some pro women's leagues out there (in fact, I'm flirting with trying out for my own local team, the D.C. Divas). Still, here's my issue with the idea of calling that sort of league "professional":
1) You have no feeder league for the "pro" league. You can't be a professional player if you've never played the game before. The game of football just calls for too many specific skills and too much position-based knowledge to acquire in a year or even in 5 years. In addition, having no feeder leagues means your talent pool is diminished, because you don't have millions of young girls being introduced to the sport as players. You only get people like me, who are crazy enough to want to start playing football later in life.
2) The title of "professional" would indicate to me that the players make enough in salary to make a significant impact on their personal finances. I'm not sure they make ANY salary, to be honest, and not near enough to sustain a living without having another job. It sort of seems like "well-sponsored amateurs" would be a more accurate description of where the sport of women's football is at this point. Also, according to the Divas website, you have to PAY to tryout for the squad which... feels a touch sketchy to me, if I'm being honest.
3) As a fan, there's a certain level of skill you expect if someone's going to sell a game to you as "pro" level. And again... with no feeder leagues, you aren't getting anything close to men's professional football. You're not even getting close to high school football levels of play.
Looking at other professional women's leagues, I think they've come a long way. Again, the main leagues - the WNBA and WPS - do have great feeder leagues. More and more young girls are getting involved in soccer and basketball. Women's college hoops were already exciting at an almost pro-level, so there wasn't a big leap to make to go pro. Plus, there were already star athletes from the U.S. going overseas to play their sport professionally, so there was a good pool of experienced pros to choose from when the WNBA started.
However, obviously both leagues are struggling financially. It's well known that several WNBA players still need to play overseas in the off-season or carry some extra job to make ends meet. Several WNBA franchises were shuttered this season as well (no collapse was more devastating to me than the Houston Comets closing up). The WUSA league folded in 2003 after losing a significant amount of money. The new WPS league seems better poised to survive long term (though whether pro soccer - men's OR women's - will ever truly catch on to the levels of the big 4 in the US remains to be seen).
Part of me wonders if this is a chicken-or-egg scenario. Because you only get truly awesome levels of players when there's a strong incentive for those players coming up through the feeder leagues to work their butts off, to sacrifice and strain and push themselves to the limits of their sport. Men's pro leagues now benefit from players who have single-mindedly pursued the heights of their sports almost their entire life. That's because they can look at something like Matthew Stafford's rookie contract ($41.6 million guaranteed) and know that there's a substantial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
On the other hand, you can't get those kind of financial rewards unless interest in your sport supports that kind of revenue. And you can't get that kind of buzz and hype unless you have players who are remarkable athletes, who play at the highest level. Passion for the game is very important, don't get me wrong. On the other hand, passion alone never put food on the table (nor did it buy a yacht and a lot of bling).
wtf? Courtesy of Yahoo! Sports Shutdown Corner and Philly.com, allow me to share this video, where the QB of the Philadelphia Passion explains how they're going to pass and run and all that good shit this season in the Lingerie Football League.
"We're going to defense each other". Yes. Peyton Manning could not have expressed the essence of football more passionately and clearly. The "With Leather" blog has a hilarious comment on this new league that you should check out (far be it for me to reprint and ruin someone else's funny joke).
I assume that most of my readers out there don't need me to go on a rant about all the ways this offends me. I am going to trust that you people recognize on your own all the levels of total wrongness going on here. I will say that as a former rugby player, I cringed at the one girl tackling the other girl up around the shoulder pads. Below the waist, dammit, Mindy! Also, as a former rugger, I wish I had a better body so I could play in this league, because I would totally lay those Buffys out.
I'm instead going to talk about women's pro sports. Sadly, the Lingerie Football League is probably the only way you're going to see women be paid for playing football. I know there are some pro women's leagues out there (in fact, I'm flirting with trying out for my own local team, the D.C. Divas). Still, here's my issue with the idea of calling that sort of league "professional":
1) You have no feeder league for the "pro" league. You can't be a professional player if you've never played the game before. The game of football just calls for too many specific skills and too much position-based knowledge to acquire in a year or even in 5 years. In addition, having no feeder leagues means your talent pool is diminished, because you don't have millions of young girls being introduced to the sport as players. You only get people like me, who are crazy enough to want to start playing football later in life.
2) The title of "professional" would indicate to me that the players make enough in salary to make a significant impact on their personal finances. I'm not sure they make ANY salary, to be honest, and not near enough to sustain a living without having another job. It sort of seems like "well-sponsored amateurs" would be a more accurate description of where the sport of women's football is at this point. Also, according to the Divas website, you have to PAY to tryout for the squad which... feels a touch sketchy to me, if I'm being honest.
3) As a fan, there's a certain level of skill you expect if someone's going to sell a game to you as "pro" level. And again... with no feeder leagues, you aren't getting anything close to men's professional football. You're not even getting close to high school football levels of play.
Looking at other professional women's leagues, I think they've come a long way. Again, the main leagues - the WNBA and WPS - do have great feeder leagues. More and more young girls are getting involved in soccer and basketball. Women's college hoops were already exciting at an almost pro-level, so there wasn't a big leap to make to go pro. Plus, there were already star athletes from the U.S. going overseas to play their sport professionally, so there was a good pool of experienced pros to choose from when the WNBA started.
However, obviously both leagues are struggling financially. It's well known that several WNBA players still need to play overseas in the off-season or carry some extra job to make ends meet. Several WNBA franchises were shuttered this season as well (no collapse was more devastating to me than the Houston Comets closing up). The WUSA league folded in 2003 after losing a significant amount of money. The new WPS league seems better poised to survive long term (though whether pro soccer - men's OR women's - will ever truly catch on to the levels of the big 4 in the US remains to be seen).
Part of me wonders if this is a chicken-or-egg scenario. Because you only get truly awesome levels of players when there's a strong incentive for those players coming up through the feeder leagues to work their butts off, to sacrifice and strain and push themselves to the limits of their sport. Men's pro leagues now benefit from players who have single-mindedly pursued the heights of their sports almost their entire life. That's because they can look at something like Matthew Stafford's rookie contract ($41.6 million guaranteed) and know that there's a substantial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
On the other hand, you can't get those kind of financial rewards unless interest in your sport supports that kind of revenue. And you can't get that kind of buzz and hype unless you have players who are remarkable athletes, who play at the highest level. Passion for the game is very important, don't get me wrong. On the other hand, passion alone never put food on the table (nor did it buy a yacht and a lot of bling).
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Comments
But really... if you just want T&A, why not sponsor the "half naked jumping jacks" league or whatever?
rated.
mud wrestling, especially with tag-teams, has its charms for simple people. but the cultured pervert must urge widespread participation in gymnastics. where else can you see well-honed female bodies in thrilling action with a soupcon of pedophilia?
Did you notice the total lack of throwing ability of the quarterback? My daughter threw better than that when she was 8! This is pandering at its worst. At least mud/jello wrestling was honest about what it is.
@chris smith - to an extent, I think we agree. It's true that women are not capable of the same athletic feats as men. We're generally built smaller and weaker when it comes to sports like basketball. On the other hand, consider that men's professional sports in the big 4 (football, hockey, baseball and basketball) have had over 100 years of evolution in terms of the quality of professional play. The notion of professional women's sports is only perhaps 10 years old, so I do think that women's sports could still greatly improve and evolve over the next 80 years. Take a look at the old videos of men's basketball from the 1920's or so and then think about where the game has evolved physically since then.
What will the FCC o if there is a uniform malfunction on national television?
So, in order to get sport sponsorship, women have to take their clothes off? cool- we've come a long way baby- I feel like I too could be president.
These are great (looking) atheletes, MadTypist! They run, they throw, they wear shoulder pads, they get in position and make catches, they look good out there, um, hey, there's just a gazillion reasons to give LINGERIE Football a chance, sez me.
It's no threat to the NFL. It's like, a new sport. C'mon, give it a chance! And I'll bet they won't have any distracting cheerleaders to take away from the on-field action...
Lingerie Football. It's time. [Ima go read your post now. By and by.]
Just to be contrary, I think that there's a danger in overgeneralizing here: Men are better at sports originally developed for and played by men, as you say. I think that, given time, it would be possible to devise sports better-suited for women than for men, relying on flexibility, size, even buoyancy. I believe there are some extremely long-distance swimming records, for example, that are held by women. Of course, it's an open question whether such things would be interesting as spectator sports. These tend to be exciting because they're "bursty", where I think men have a definite advantage.
For what it's worth, one reason I like to watch women's volleyball (I've played men's and co-ed, though not well) is that I can see what's happening, because the ball isn't moving quite as fast. Also, I think the volleys may go longer, which makes things more interesting.
I am sure part of it has to do with trying to get men interested in watching but I see a more sinister motive in play. I think women have to wear the itty-bitty panties because it will insure that no fat chicks get on the team. That is what I really think that this is about. If a woman doesn't have that ideal, thin as a rail, assless body that can actually fit into those pants - then what's the point of her being there? No one wants to look at that, now do they?
No fat chicks. It's that simple.
There just isn't any other big time sport where women can play with the men. Does anyone think, for example, that the best woman's tennis player would win a single game against Andy Roddick, who isn't even the men's best player? Or that the world's best softball player could hit the bombs that Prince Fielder did in the home run derby?
And it's not the fault of the women that this is the case. After all, sports were developed for men, by men.
The bulk of the sports audience is male, and we watch sports for a few different reasons: 1) Sheer admiration for the physcial power and grace of the athletes. We've mainly played the sports they are playing and are wowed by their ability. 2) Vicarious fantasy. As a one-time mediocre HS QB I can't begin to tell you the number of times I've watched Brett Favre and imagined what my life might have been had that cannon of a right arm been attached to me. 3) Camaraderie. We're guys; it's what we do. 4) Flexing our knowledge muscles. Knowledge is power. Knowing the role of a 3-technique d-tackle makes you feel like a god among insects.
Some women also watch sports, and they tend to do it for 1) camaraderie. It's what everyone is doing. 2) They are attracted to athletes. Go to a Brewer game and listen to the women in the stands talk about JJ Hardy (JJ "Hotty"). Every franchise has their handsome boys that bring in the female dollars. 3) To impress/spend quality time with the man in their life. 4) Some really do love the game itself.
While men can often appreciate the intricacies of the game in women's sports-- and can often find the athletes appealing--much of the wow factor is gone and there is no tradition of watching women's sports as a male-bonding experience. The numbers that watch are too few to keep it afloat.
Generally, women also don't really watch women's sports. The social aspect that draws them to the men's sports is gone. Generally, the attraction to the athletes is gone. Generally, women who are truly crazy about sports PARTICIPATE, but don't really end up watching other women play.
There are a few stars in the WNBA and WPS that are well compensated. Individual endorsements help a lot, as corporate sponsors pay a lot more for an individual's likeness (e.g. Candace Parker, Mia Hamm before she retired) than a team can afford to pay in straight salary.
@Don'tBlameGrimma - you make a good point. We as a society are not conditioned to have an interest in women's sports. When we do, it's in spurts, such as when the USA Women's Soccer team was going for the World Cup, or when a particular team is going for the gold at the Olympics. Long term, sustained interest in an individual women's sport isn't in our national character at the moment.
@Alan - yeah, obviously this league isn't really about promoting legitimate women's sports, or even about promoting football. My musings were more inspired by the idea of ladies getting paid to play sports, versus an actual belief that this qualifies as "pro football" in any way. As another commenter said, this is pretty much "Hooters hits the Football Field!"
I agree that sheer athleticism is not the main draw of sports. (It is PART, but hell, I can't play hoops like Candace Parker nor softball like Jennie Finch, so the women are impressive athletically anyway.) I think the main draw of sports is more the communal/bonding experience. If by some magic we could create a tradition of regularly watching women's sports together, they would be every bit as enjoyable as the men's sports.
As a former NCAA Div I football player, nothing ruins a football game more than a bad form tackle.
Parting shot- I agree with you MT. The target demographic audience of this league is more likely to be watching girls gone wild, than sports center. Say what you will, but soft core should not be masquerading as, "sports." At least they should be honest about it.
Why would they take what is so obviously pleasurable and oriented toward straight males (young, conventionally good-looking, women in lingerie) and RUIN it with association with something as obviously unpleasant and homophile as FOOTBALL?