I think this actually lends creedence to my point. Warroad was the Class A Minnesota State Championship team that year. Almost every guy on the team went on to play in college, a half dozen went professional and at least 2 made it to the NHL including TJ Oshie. They were an extremely good team that beat the USA women’s in an exhibition match (which is its own kind of problem since we don’t really know what kind of effort either team put in. I’m sure that neither team was playing its hardest, so who knows what their hardest would be), but barely. Warroad was likely better than at least a few college teams and I would conjecture quite a few.
How many times have you ever seen a female dunk a basketball.
Also just straight shooting. How many women hit 3 pointers?
I notice in youth hockey girls are sometimes the best player on the team. Until they are about 14 and then the boys really push ahead.
In truth, girls have an advantage of being able to play down. So a girl age 13 can play on a boys 12 and under team.
It most certainly does not lend credence to your point. I mean seriously, “every guy went on to play college”? That proves that a college team would struggle to beat a team that lost to a high school players? And you are ignoring that the boys had to abandon a major portion of their game, body checking, and still adapted and won.
I think an answer to the OP as to why men’s sports are more high profile than women’s is that men are more interested in sports in general, compared to women. And, as stated, men generally are able to perform at a higher, more exciting level, than women in most sports, so men’s sports are more interesting to male viewers and fans. Women would rather spend their time on something else, and broadcasters know this. IMHO, it’s as simple as that.
Take the Tour de France - the highest profile bicycle race on the planet. There is no women’s Tour de France (yes, there is a smaller race, but nothing approaching the scale of the men’s race). It’s not like there are no women that can ride the routes - there certainly is. But since the men compete at a higher level (climbing faster, sprinting, more willing to take risks, etc.), it is an interesting and entertaining show. TdF also happens to have a deep history and a ton of money and production put into it each year, so it has that going for it as well. There should be some interest in a women’s TdF, but there isn’t, so it does not exist (yet).
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Aren’t you asking why men’s sports are more popular than women’s sports? Why do men’s sports attract more viewers than women’s sports?
Why do you chose to watch what you watch? Is it because you are able to make your own choices, or is it because social pressure or political correctness demands that you watch as many women’s sports as you do men’s sports?
It seems to me that each fan choses to watch whatever they wish to watch. It’s a free market. The reason that some sports (regardless of gender) are more popular than other sports (regardless of gender) is simply because some sports are more interesting than other sports, and therefore they are able to attract more viewers/fans than other sports.
How are you going to entice/force fans to watch something that they, of their own free will, do not wish to watch?
How about cycle time trials. - in the amateur sport and not the big event professional tour circuit
Although there are various categories for prizes, the reality is that women compete on exactly the same route at the same time as men, and it isn’t unusual to see high performing women who will place pretty high in the field.
This does not lend credence, as pointed out above. Imagine if a team of high school girls - outstanding high school girls - defeated Team USA’s men’s hockey team. Would we be saying, “good for the men, they lost, but they lost to a team of top-notch high schoolers?”
Women sports are often pretty poor technically, even at the so-called highest level. (tennis, athletics and golf are notable exceptions). Put it down to coaching. There is too much “rah rah, Girl power” and not enough “what the ever loving fuck was that?” They are awesome just for playing. I understand that many women’s sports are mostly only just in the first and second generation of being taken seriously. And getting more young girls interested in sports is a must.
But coaching has to improve if the game is to survive. Many women at their highest level display mistakes and deficiencies which have been coached out of schoolboys Look at Carli Lloyd’s WWC Final 2015 goal. This is the pinnacle of the sport. Yet a GK is off her line, misjudges the trajectory of a shot, and then tips it over… a schoolboy who did that would be benched. Compare this with Gotze’s goal in the men’s final.
I wonder if that would change if they would get rid of girls/womens separate sports entirely and just have teams? Sure fewer women would play but those that do would receive the same coaching and if/when they do make the top teams or win the top tournaments or events, they could truly say they are equal.
I remember back when my son was playing baseball. Their was one girl on his team. When asked why she played on boys teams she said “girls dont play hard enough”. She was later persuaded to switch to girls softball because that was where future scholarships were.
For a while The University of Colorado’s womens basketball team (Lady Buffalos) had larger crowds than the mens team. so it can happen.
Was men’s basketball ever a huge sport at Colorado?
That’s a valid comparison. Both playing piano and playing billiards at an elite level require an amazing amount of practice time. Do women put in that kind of time to become piano virtuosos? Apparently yes. Do they have the same drive to beat men in pool halls? Apparently not. There’s NO physical reason there couldn’t be female Willie Mosconis, but there AREN’T any.
In some sports, the difference is in size and speed. In others, it’s obsessive focus.
No. And during the time in question the Colorado women were Top 15 while the men were in a generation long slump (except for one year with soon-to-be Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups.)
In “the old days,” before things like power steering and hydraulics, there probably was a strength component of sorts to auto racing. As for jockeys, at least one (Julie Krone) has won a Triple Crown race, although stature may actually work against women as they have to be at least a certain weight (you get an allowance if the horse is female, but not if the jockey is), so the women would tend to be taller and/or have to wear a lot of weight on them.
However, I think that, in both cases, the lack of women at the top level comes from the lack of interest at a young age more than anything else.
Being a jockey is actually fairly demanding physically.
Cite. It’s not just a question of sitting on the horse (cite).
Cite.
It can be done by females, just not very often.
Regards,
Shodan
In any sport, and I really do mean any sport, pregnancy can severely impact on the performance of a competitor.
Not every woman in sport wants to get pregnant or can get pregnant, and it doesn’t always happen at the time they’re at the peak of their sports prowess, but it does does have an impact for at least a significant proportion. I mean, if you imagine that 5% - for an easy number - of women playing in any given sport in any given season are likely to become pregnant - then it’d be like making 5% of the men in that sport wear big bellies setting them off balance, have hormonal imbalances, be sick a lot, have all the issues related to pregnancy, and have difficulty travelling internationally for the last three months of their pregnancy. It’s basically like an injury.
Women who don’t have babies during their sports careers are at an advantage over women who do have babies, but their advantage is less than the muscle-etc advantage men have over both the women who have babies and the women who don’t. It’s more akin to being really tall or strong.
Back in the 1970s, there was a successful jockey named Mary Bacon. She recalled once riding a pregnant mare while she herself was pregnant.
She joked later, “The four of us finished last.”
I’ve always wondered why colleges cant just have “teams”. Like just a basketball, baseball, hockey, or volleyball team?
Yes, fewer women would make it at the division 1 level but get down to Div 2 and 3 and you would start to see more playing.
Unless you got down to fifth or sixth grade, I suspect not. Once they hit puberty, bang, men will out-compete them. That’s why the Russians and East Germans used various drugs and strategies to delay puberty in female gymnasts - their center of gravity gets lower, their fat-to-lean-mass ratio increases, while for males it does the opposite.
Regards,
Shodan