People watch not-the-best athletes all the time. NCAA football and basketball are hugely popular, but they aren’t the best athletes in their sport. Baltimore Orioles or Cleveland Browns fans. Anyone who watches MLS soccer – they are a pale shadow of the European and UK top leagues. Anyone who watches local pro hockey or basketball, if they don’t watch the NHL or NBA.
What an odd take.
I’m sure any team in the WNBA could beat my local high school basketball team, and probably the vast majority of local high school teams. Would they beat NYU’s or CMU’s men’s teams? I don’t know, probably.
Practically speaking, unless you live in New York or some other location with world class venues, if you go see a play or a musical, you’re probably not seeing the best actors and singers. But people still go to local theaters, even here in Arkansas, and I promise you we don’t have the best actors and singers in the world. Sports is the same. I know people who prefer college football to professional. I know fewer still who prefer watching high school to either college or professional. We all have our preferences.
I don’t watch many sports shows these days, and most of what I used to watch didn’t have much of a woman’s equivalent at the time. But I’m just as happy watching the women’s boxing, MMA, or wrestling as I am the men’s. I don’t particularly care if the top women’s boxer wouldn’t do well boxing men. Who cares? I’m just there to see a good fight.
I’m trying to imagine a situation where I don’t watch a single match of a sport until the championship (which is the only way to guarantee you’re watching the best); sounds boring (since you miss everything leading up to it), soulless (since you don’t have a team to root for) and very brief (as it’s one match a year).
You can’t be a real sports fan and demand to only ever see “the best”. It sounds like you just don’t get sports; that’s okay, not everyone does.
Without any actual real-life performance on the basketball court it’s hard to say, unlike, say, the U-15 boys beating national women’s adult soccer sides repeatedly. But if I had to bet money on a good boy’s high school basketball team vs. the best WNBA team, I would put it on the boys. Perhaps not by a wide margin, but boy’s high school sports is no joke.
I remember watching two teams of age 13-15 boys going at it in a regular season game (school league). The aggression and speed of the layups, shooting, passing, physicality, intricacy was something to behold. Perhaps not yet WNBA level but even at that age I think they would have given an WNBA team serious competition.
Thank you, kenobi_65 for being the one person in this thread who is not entertaining the original question. The women’s US soccer team should frankly be paid MORE than the men, because they are vastly more successful in the competitions that are actually real rather than ones on the OPs head.
I prefer sports where the participants show real grit, determination and heart. For this reason I much prefer women’s football (soccer) over the over-paid men who don’t look like they give a shit half the time.
I attended a college that had a debate-competition win streak that dwarfs anything the U.S. women’s soccer team has ever had. As a school, we made exactly $0 off of our skill in debate competitions. Because nobody watched or cared about them.
It’s not about how much the women win, it’s about how much revenue and viewership the women’s game brings in compared to the men.
I don’t get the animosity towards the OP. He has a clear standard for watching sporting events–he enjoys seeing the best of the best competing, and lesser skill levels don’t interest him. You like watching less skilled players compete. That’s cool, but why should he be compelled to share your opinion? Or even endure your disdain for having his own opinion? Does his opinion offend you? That’s also cool, but why the need to set him straight? It’s only a matter of opinion, and I happen to share it.
I used to be a MLB nut (now, not so much), but I couldn’t even get interested in MLB games where one last-place team was playing another last-place team in September. Maybe when one of those .400 teams was the team I’d been rooting for all season, but even then I attribute my interest to habit rather than genuine caring about the game.
There’s a lot of sports available to watch, and we each must choose which ones we watch and which we don’t. I have no problem with the OP’s choice, and I have a big problem with giving him a hard time for expressing an opinion that differs from yours.
As to his question, I personally think a really good high school basketball team would beat the hell out of WNBA champs. Most good high school teams have a skilled player over 6’8”, and some have two of them. How are you going to stop them from scoring at will?
Mostly “nothing at stake” but I’d maintain that FOR ME there’s nothing at stake in winning the WNBA championship either. Sort of like taking pride in being the smartest kid in the dummy row at school.
You’re not a WNBA fan, I get that. But, for a fan of the WNBA, if two top teams are playing for a playoff spot, it’s exciting because there’s something at stake. Within the context of the sport (women’s basketball), these are the best players.
I don’t care about NBA games at all - I watch a lot of hockey, though. And, watching the women’s gold medal game was very exciting, because there was so much at stake, even if they weren’t moving at the same speed. I find NBA games to be boring, even if it’s the two top teams. Nothing to do with them being the best or not women, or whatever, just the sport is boring to me.
I love to go to minor league baseball games, because the experience is fun, and those really aren’t the best baseball players.
Me too. And they’re a lot better than I ever was, so I still appreciate their skill. I like women’s college basketball, although I have no interest in the NBA. Hell, I’ve even enjoyed a high school football game now and then.
I have the opposite view. And I don’t think it would even be close.
Circa 1990, my university’s women’s basketball team had two all-conference players (the point guard and one of the wings). If it matters, it’s a major NCAA athletic conference (a “Power 5” today) and the women’s team that season finished ranked in the top 10.
Those two all-conference female players sometimes showed up at the rec center to play mixed-sex pick-up games with male players including Yours Truly – just guys killing time between classes, nothing serious. Generally, it was the two women and three guys against five guys playing full-court – not, say, two-on-two at one goal.
The women had much better dribbling ability (today called “handle”) than us schlub guys playing pick-up, but that was their main skill advantage. The women could rarely get a shot off without a screen or two. Rebounding was hopeless against even the relatively unathletic guys due to the size differences. The women had quicks compared to the schlubs … they’d jump a passing lane and get a steal if the guys were too loose. Some hustle plays, too. But at the same time, very limited.
Had these female players come out seven or eight years later, both would have had WNBA careers. As it happens, one of them later became a WNBA head coach and is still an assistant coach in the league today.
EDIT: Just looked it up – the female point guard that joined our pick-up games was not only all-conference, she was Div I All-American one year as well.
Often the style of play is different in women’s and men’s sports. Someone may like the type of play in women’s sport more than men’s. For instance, since women typically don’t have the same kind of burst strength and speed, women’s sports often involve more strategy and teamwork. In men’s basketball, men often power their way down the court and dunk the basket on their own. Women don’t have that same ability. They work together as a team to get the ball down the court and into the basket. The people who like that “play as a team” style may prefer women’s sports over the “star player makes big play” style in men’s sport.
As for the HS teams beating a pro women’s team, keep in mind that not all HS teams are equivalent. Schools typically compete with schools of the same size. A small school will be called a “1A” and a very large school will be a “6A”. As you probably realize, the level of sports at a very large school will be much higher than at a small school. I wouldn’t be surprised if a boys 6A basketball team would be competitive in the WNBA. For instance, here’s a 6A basketball championship. I would think that the WNBA players would have better strategy and crisper technique, but the 6A boys strength and speed would give them an advantage to help overcome their lack of skill.
The only sport I watch is Formula 1. I consider F1 to be the “pinnacle of motorsports,” but that’s a contestable position and even F1 fans understand that there’s a lot more nuance - NASCAR and IndyCar are also pinnacles of their respective branches of motorsports, and it’s hard to compare them to each other.
There’s also a bunch of junior series – F2, F3, and other formula series all feed up into F1. And people enjoy watching those. I don’t, because I don’t have that much time on my hands, but I understand why people enjoy them – racing is racing, after all, and since they’re all spec series the racing is often better.
There’s also the F1 Academy, a woman-only “feeder” series that participates alongside F1 at select tracks. Of all of the feeder series for F1, which one gets the most shit online? Is it F2? F3? Super Formula? Which one is the one that most of the commentariat takes an issue with? Hint: it’s the one involving women.
Why should someone with below-average intelligence not take pride in improving their academic standing relative to their peers?
This notion that the only standard that matters is being the very best of the best is, IMO, misguided and can be corrosive if taken too literally.
It almost sounds like you’re saying women shouldn’t even play sports at all, because there is no way they can ever be the strongest, fastest, best in a field that includes men.
It is me citing the one obvious U.S. sports example of your earlier complaint:
The U.S. women’s soccer team is tremendously more successful than the men’s team – they win gold medals, they win World Cups, things that the men’s team has never even come close to accomplishing – and had to sue in order to get paid as well as the men’s team does.