Sometimes a little motivation and incentives are needed to
enhance a game that is not necessarily all that exciting. And
nothing could use more enhancement right now than the WNBA.
That’s what Sue Bird, point guard for the Seattle Storm,
thought as well.
A media frenzy has ensued (OK, well, not really a frenzy, but
the most press the WNBA has gotten lately) after Bird recently
rescinded a bet she made with a radio talk show host.
The wager, made earlier in the season, hinged on whether
Bird’s assist-to-turnover ratio would turn out higher than
2-1 at the end of the season. As the bet stood, if Bird won,
program host Mitch Levy would buy season tickets to Storm games
next year.
If she lost, Bird would have had to cry, “Harder, Daddy,
harder” while being spanked.
Apparently this bet has offended those inside and out of the
WNBA. After this realization, Bird withdrew from the bet. Many
people felt it was not proper for a female role model to
participate in such a bet.
Evidently, everyone failed to realize that most people
don’t care about the WNBA and its players enough to be upset
if one of its role models gets spanked.
Until recently, I, like the majority of the public, thought the
only Bird in the sports world was Larry.
As you can see, I’m not big on the WNBA. I find it boring
and to be completely candid, all this rah-rah for women’s
rights and role model junk is tiring. And I don’t like it
being pushed in my face.
And apparently I’m not the only one disinterested, as it
has become very clear the WNBA has a very limited fan base.
Currently, the popularity of the women’s basketball league
ranks somewhere above curling but below the World Eating
Federation. If a bunch of fat guys eating hot dogs gets more press
than a basketball league, it might be time to realize there’s
something wrong.
Bird herself noted this problem in her apology last week, saying
in a team statement that she made the bet “as a good-natured
way to draw the radio talent and listeners to Storm
games.”
Though this wager was probably not the smartest tactic to
recruit fans, what does that say about your league when your own
athletes feel they need to help generate more fans by making
bets?
But there is no reason to be overly concerned with their public
presentation, especially because the majority of the public
isn’t listening. You’re not much of a role model if no
one knows who you are.
Maybe more ridiculous than the bet itself has been the reaction
to it. Washington State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, who teaches
women’s studies at the University of Washington, has been the
most adamant opposition to the wager, telling the Seattle Times,
“It helps feed into the images of violence against women and
stereotyping.”
Huh? Maybe I’m dense and don’t get it, but this
wager had nothing to do with violence against women.
If anything, it is sexual.
In an Associated Press report Levy said it best in a response to
Kohl-Welles statement: “For her to equate a good-natured,
consensual radio segment that happened to involve a spanking
element to “˜images of violence against women,’ is not
only reprehensible and political grandstanding, but frankly it is
outright offensive to any victim of this horrible crime.”
The whole idea behind betting, especially outrageous bets like
this one, is that people think they are going to win ““ and
Bird was very likely to win with 137 assists and 63 turnovers in 20
games. People don’t make extreme bets because you want to
participate in whatever the losing wager entails.
This whole situation has just become a joke, from the wager to
the reaction. It’s only made more of a spectacle out of the
WNBA.
But hey, at least we all know who Sue Bird is now.