There has long been a battle over the idea of what women's sports should be. A leftist version of men's (open) games? An exhibition of athletic women's sexuality (see: Sepp Blatter)? Taken SuperSeriously, holding your nose and Loving It and acting incredulous when your friends tell you the empress has no game?
But what's forbidden from this battlefield is any discussion of their commercial viability.
Women's sports share something with the Paralympics - they are special divisions created and protected for a sector of the population that would never be able to compete in the open game. They are, in essence, charities. Not profitable, not widely watched, at best a LARPing exercise in a padded room in a padded world.
But charities, especially when they're stuck in old ways and old practices, tend to overbearingly offer help to those who'd rather not be bothered.
I see these incidents as the equivalent of Goodwill waking up to the fact that they were selling designer clothing along with the Tweety Bird shirts and grimy flip-flops. Or, perhaps more concisely, the Gucci bags and Prada clutches putting themselves into the showcase window when the humans are away.
All sports are about commercial viability and consumer interest. ESS has made the point many times on this Substack that women are not as interested as men in playing or watching sports so your 50% remark makes me wonder why your here. This is not a controversial point to people who read ESS, the reason we like him is he's the only one willing to point out the obvious, so this isn't about losing half the population because women don't care!
Bill Burr made almost the same point in his last special, you know why the WNBA is failing? Because women don't watch it, and the men that do are usually degenerate gamblers.
I don't have daughters but I have many friends that do and every single one of them encouraged them to play sports, and every single one of their daughters when they hit puberty decided they liked other things because sports was not something they cared much about.
Hmmmmm. 1st the point wasn’t that women don’t play sports, the point ESS and I and anyone who cares about this topic is making is do women play or want to play on par with men? I’ll not make you wait for the answer… it’s no.
Now if you’d like to know how to figure out the above answer as being no, you have to ask of the 400k girls that play high school how many other girls want to play high school basketball but can’t? Then ask how many boys play high school basketball and after that group who wants to play but can’t because they aren’t good enough? How many boys get cut from a team vs women? How many women want to go out for a team but don’t because they don’t think they have a shot vs how many boys know they have no shot and don’t go out for the team. Then how many of those women join other teams to play or play with their friends because they aren’t good enough to make the high school team… rinse wash repeat, the answer is men are more interested in sports than women.
Now to your 2nd miss-the-point. I never said “sports are only about commercial viability” I will quote exactly what I did say “sports are about commercial viability and consumer interest” however I will say that sports do have other things they are about so there is more than just those, like competition etc, some people crave it and need it more than others and men need and crave it more than women.
If people wanted to cut down men’s sports that weren’t profitable you won’t get any pushback from me because those men would and should find another way to play and if they can't get someone else to pay for it they'll pay for it themselves as men the world over have always done, but the reason they exist is a different question I won’t get into.
Your dig that I don't think women are "worthy" gets to the heart of your perspective, you think if someone has the audacity to point out that men are more interested in sports than women it’s some crime or that can only mean they don’t value women’s sports when it’s rather the opposite, I value it when it’s natural and healthy because it’s the exception not the rule.
Lastly I’ve played more sports with women than you ever have, I can tell you don’t play by your complete lack of any perspective on this issue. I played many basketball and volleyball games with women and am trying to get some of the women I know to the slopes in the next few weeks, as I've done for many years, to give them a fun sporting experience that hopefully will spark something in them, but I am fine if it doesn’t. I encourage just about all the women in my life to play sports, but just about all the women I know just aren’t as interested, but I don’t mind when people have different wants or desires than myself, I try to find interest in those too.
Kinda makes you wonder if the use of plus-size and adjacent women models is actually hurting business or not. Seems like women are bombarded with marketing that tries so hard to reinforce “body positivity” in a manner that’s almost completely absent with marketing towards men.
We love elite athletes because of they take good care of themselves. It’s supposed to be aspirational!
My wife has observed that most mannequins in women’s clothing stores are either plus-sized or the old, aspirational standard. You’re either the victim of attempts to be shamed, or someone who can fit into the aspirational ideal, but not someone with 10 pounds they’d like to lose (presumably because for the latter, the marketing is still the old, aspirational standard).
I'd say the answer to that question is mostly "yes" then. Football is a uniquely dangerous sport. But otherwise I'd say that most of the mainstream sports that we care about in the US require a large degree of endurance, power and strength, where those rigid requirements tend to produce aesthetically pleasing bodies.
Overtraining and exploitation are probably the biggest issues now. I've read how over the last 20 years AAU has almost entirely captured the college basketball recruiting landscape. So kids are entering the NCAA with much more wear and tear than when Jordan was a high schooler, because now they're just constantly playing AAU games on the weekend.
I was recently talking to a coach on my son's baseball team who I overheard talking about how he ran the 800 m in college at Georgetown. I ran the 800 at a D3 school, but what astounded me was the fact that his training included 60 miles per week of running. After college he tested the waters in Olympics qualifying but his knees couldn't take it. That's just an insane amount mileage to train for what amounts to what my coach in high school referred to as a "long sprint".
I can speak to two schools. Both private, one small time D1 (where I played) and another BIG time (where I coached). Both had, for lack of a better term, morals clauses from the beginning. (Edit: I asked people at both schools basically right away. It was the first thing that occurred to me). There was a huge scandal at Nebraska wrestling about this when I was in college.
But they already have codes of conduct with (rarely enforced) teeth, it’s not a huge stretch. Big publics (like where I teach now) I think will have a hard time enforcing that stuff
Well not to be vulgar but can porn stars be considered athletes? Luckily I believe women who are interested in athletics are not inclined to be porn stars.
I don't see why any of this is an issue. So hot girls make the most money – big deal! The point is that EVERYONE is allowed to make money, based on what they command in the marketplace. And that benefits the athletes and the sports they play.
The observation is an interesting one, and I can see why the NCAA might be queasy about where things are going, but they're also the organization that has prevented these athletes from earning money for far too long. This is a net positive, plain and simple.
Man that is a super interesting topic. I typically come down on the side of accepting market forces and anti-woke. But this one is awkward.
I don't think it's wrong that these ladies are getting paid. Good for them. But I do think it might be bad. For the NCAA, for women's sports. Maybe. I don't know. There are some men's athletes whose fame outweighs their performance, but nowhere near this degree. It's close to uncharted waters.
Sports has always been about being good (or exciting like dunking). Less so about being attractive (to this extent). I'm not sure how to articulate it yet, but this feels off and like it might lead to worse things.
Also I really appreciated your tangent on how if you make a major change, you might get some outcomes you don't anticipate. This is basic common sense but almost nobody acknowledges it
What would your journalism profs at Cal say about the phrase "pretty inarguable?" ;)
Enjoyed the article. I'm way past tik tok age and I'd have to be literally be paid to watch, say, Miami women's college basketball, so I'm no expert, but I actually think in 5 years or so things will start to go more back to how they were before NIL rather than blowing up the whole NCAA. Right now it's so new. I just think in a few years things will settle down when companies/boosters at school/whoever start to see that only a few star athletes really matter and the money will dry up.
The mini-controversy around the Times story on this was so funny because what’s stated in the article was just obviously true. It’s easy to join a Twitter pile-on for most people than to admit what’s obvious-- this is extremely uncomfortable.
Also, telling a legendary coach to shut their mouth is a perfect indication Ms. Dunne is an immature person and/or knows she is bigger than Vanderveer. The NCAA sure hopes it’s the former. That they can deal with.
Great article, Ethan. I still haven't made up my mind on the defanging of the NCAA, NIL, conference realignment, etc. On the one hand, the NCAA was a terrible organization that clearly played favorites (see Tarkanian's amazing quote about Kentucky and Cleveland State) and athletes should have been able to make money off of NIL as everyone understood it to be before it was legalized (athletes making money from local companies to appear in commercials, sign autographs, make money off of jersey sales, etc.). And that fits in exactly with my political opinions. In TV and movies I'll always root against the Noble Lie.
But on the other hand, weren't college sports just better when conferences were only regional and had a manageable number of teams; when, however not good at its job as it was, there was some sort of rule enforcement agency to attempt to ensure there was a level playing field, where money wasn't as huge of a factor in winning as much as your ability to hire the right coach for your program (not that money is an end-all-be-all now [see Texas] but it seems like it quickly will be based on conferences only caring about TV revenue); when you could get excited about a freshman class and watch them develop over years into group that will challenge for a conference title, instead of basically every off-season turning into free agency and teams becoming entirely new every year?
This is a great and important point. Many of the changes in college sports were the right thing to do. Others were understandable (ie chasing $$).
But the outcome might be very bad. There was/is something magical about college sports. That magic might be going away. And without it, it's just the minor leagues
This is reminding me of these awards in my state that are meant to highlight the HS athletes who are exceptional teammates provided by a big national bank. Give some scholarship money to the kids who maybe aren’t quite at the very top of their sport.
Except you cannot help but notice when looking at the awardees that ~85% of them look like models. Somehow the best teammates in the state all happen to be top 1% in attractiveness. What a coincidence.
Solid piece. The NCAA's reaction seems misguided at best. The Kournikova frenzy died down. The female golfers that sell their sexuality have followings, but the frenzy died down. NIL is new, but the frenzy over college women selling their sexuality will die down. There's infinite content for horny bros in this world, and as time passes this will all normalize to where people who follow sports will be most interested by the successful athletes, particularly those with compelling stories apart from their looks.
One quibble: Ethan, you're a great journalist. It would have taken you 5 minutes of calling colleagues or even just google searches to get the pronunciation of "Bueckers" (BEH-ckers) and "Cavinder" (CA-vin-der) correct. It made the audio version of the article a little less of an enjoyable listen.
It's kindof funny looking back at Kournikova & the "oh she's just popular b/c she's hot" controversy b/c she's underrated as a tennis player now. Yes, she didn't win tournaments, but that doesn't mean she wasn't undeniably one of the best players in the world at the time (who did have accomplishments on the court at a world class level. ) We aren't talking about someone averaging 12 a game in college.
The delicate phrasing in that New York Times article is legitimately hilarious.
There has long been a battle over the idea of what women's sports should be. A leftist version of men's (open) games? An exhibition of athletic women's sexuality (see: Sepp Blatter)? Taken SuperSeriously, holding your nose and Loving It and acting incredulous when your friends tell you the empress has no game?
But what's forbidden from this battlefield is any discussion of their commercial viability.
Women's sports share something with the Paralympics - they are special divisions created and protected for a sector of the population that would never be able to compete in the open game. They are, in essence, charities. Not profitable, not widely watched, at best a LARPing exercise in a padded room in a padded world.
But charities, especially when they're stuck in old ways and old practices, tend to overbearingly offer help to those who'd rather not be bothered.
I see these incidents as the equivalent of Goodwill waking up to the fact that they were selling designer clothing along with the Tweety Bird shirts and grimy flip-flops. Or, perhaps more concisely, the Gucci bags and Prada clutches putting themselves into the showcase window when the humans are away.
Well that’s the thing: you can no longer prevent these athletes from profiting off their own likeness. Nor should you be able to.
All sports are about commercial viability and consumer interest. ESS has made the point many times on this Substack that women are not as interested as men in playing or watching sports so your 50% remark makes me wonder why your here. This is not a controversial point to people who read ESS, the reason we like him is he's the only one willing to point out the obvious, so this isn't about losing half the population because women don't care!
Bill Burr made almost the same point in his last special, you know why the WNBA is failing? Because women don't watch it, and the men that do are usually degenerate gamblers.
I don't have daughters but I have many friends that do and every single one of them encouraged them to play sports, and every single one of their daughters when they hit puberty decided they liked other things because sports was not something they cared much about.
Hmmmmm. 1st the point wasn’t that women don’t play sports, the point ESS and I and anyone who cares about this topic is making is do women play or want to play on par with men? I’ll not make you wait for the answer… it’s no.
Now if you’d like to know how to figure out the above answer as being no, you have to ask of the 400k girls that play high school how many other girls want to play high school basketball but can’t? Then ask how many boys play high school basketball and after that group who wants to play but can’t because they aren’t good enough? How many boys get cut from a team vs women? How many women want to go out for a team but don’t because they don’t think they have a shot vs how many boys know they have no shot and don’t go out for the team. Then how many of those women join other teams to play or play with their friends because they aren’t good enough to make the high school team… rinse wash repeat, the answer is men are more interested in sports than women.
Now to your 2nd miss-the-point. I never said “sports are only about commercial viability” I will quote exactly what I did say “sports are about commercial viability and consumer interest” however I will say that sports do have other things they are about so there is more than just those, like competition etc, some people crave it and need it more than others and men need and crave it more than women.
If people wanted to cut down men’s sports that weren’t profitable you won’t get any pushback from me because those men would and should find another way to play and if they can't get someone else to pay for it they'll pay for it themselves as men the world over have always done, but the reason they exist is a different question I won’t get into.
Your dig that I don't think women are "worthy" gets to the heart of your perspective, you think if someone has the audacity to point out that men are more interested in sports than women it’s some crime or that can only mean they don’t value women’s sports when it’s rather the opposite, I value it when it’s natural and healthy because it’s the exception not the rule.
Lastly I’ve played more sports with women than you ever have, I can tell you don’t play by your complete lack of any perspective on this issue. I played many basketball and volleyball games with women and am trying to get some of the women I know to the slopes in the next few weeks, as I've done for many years, to give them a fun sporting experience that hopefully will spark something in them, but I am fine if it doesn’t. I encourage just about all the women in my life to play sports, but just about all the women I know just aren’t as interested, but I don’t mind when people have different wants or desires than myself, I try to find interest in those too.
Kinda makes you wonder if the use of plus-size and adjacent women models is actually hurting business or not. Seems like women are bombarded with marketing that tries so hard to reinforce “body positivity” in a manner that’s almost completely absent with marketing towards men.
We love elite athletes because of they take good care of themselves. It’s supposed to be aspirational!
My wife has observed that most mannequins in women’s clothing stores are either plus-sized or the old, aspirational standard. You’re either the victim of attempts to be shamed, or someone who can fit into the aspirational ideal, but not someone with 10 pounds they’d like to lose (presumably because for the latter, the marketing is still the old, aspirational standard).
I'd say the answer to that question is mostly "yes" then. Football is a uniquely dangerous sport. But otherwise I'd say that most of the mainstream sports that we care about in the US require a large degree of endurance, power and strength, where those rigid requirements tend to produce aesthetically pleasing bodies.
Overtraining and exploitation are probably the biggest issues now. I've read how over the last 20 years AAU has almost entirely captured the college basketball recruiting landscape. So kids are entering the NCAA with much more wear and tear than when Jordan was a high schooler, because now they're just constantly playing AAU games on the weekend.
I was recently talking to a coach on my son's baseball team who I overheard talking about how he ran the 800 m in college at Georgetown. I ran the 800 at a D3 school, but what astounded me was the fact that his training included 60 miles per week of running. After college he tested the waters in Olympics qualifying but his knees couldn't take it. That's just an insane amount mileage to train for what amounts to what my coach in high school referred to as a "long sprint".
I wonder when someone will be the first NCAA athlete to have an OnlyFans.
Schools already have bans on this in their agreements with athletes but I’d put money in a public school not being able to enforce it.
do student athletes today sign agreements that specifically say they won't sign up for onlyfans? Is that really the case?
I can speak to two schools. Both private, one small time D1 (where I played) and another BIG time (where I coached). Both had, for lack of a better term, morals clauses from the beginning. (Edit: I asked people at both schools basically right away. It was the first thing that occurred to me). There was a huge scandal at Nebraska wrestling about this when I was in college.
But they already have codes of conduct with (rarely enforced) teeth, it’s not a huge stretch. Big publics (like where I teach now) I think will have a hard time enforcing that stuff
Well not to be vulgar but can porn stars be considered athletes? Luckily I believe women who are interested in athletics are not inclined to be porn stars.
Best comment. Gasoline on the raging inferno type stuff here.
I don't see why any of this is an issue. So hot girls make the most money – big deal! The point is that EVERYONE is allowed to make money, based on what they command in the marketplace. And that benefits the athletes and the sports they play.
The observation is an interesting one, and I can see why the NCAA might be queasy about where things are going, but they're also the organization that has prevented these athletes from earning money for far too long. This is a net positive, plain and simple.
Man that is a super interesting topic. I typically come down on the side of accepting market forces and anti-woke. But this one is awkward.
I don't think it's wrong that these ladies are getting paid. Good for them. But I do think it might be bad. For the NCAA, for women's sports. Maybe. I don't know. There are some men's athletes whose fame outweighs their performance, but nowhere near this degree. It's close to uncharted waters.
Sports has always been about being good (or exciting like dunking). Less so about being attractive (to this extent). I'm not sure how to articulate it yet, but this feels off and like it might lead to worse things.
Also I really appreciated your tangent on how if you make a major change, you might get some outcomes you don't anticipate. This is basic common sense but almost nobody acknowledges it
women’s beach volleyball has been swimming in these waters for a decade or more.
The only time anything came close was that model at Colorado who was also, tangentially, a wide receiver (right?)
I can't believe I never conceived this happening when NIL came about. I feel so old.
What would your journalism profs at Cal say about the phrase "pretty inarguable?" ;)
Enjoyed the article. I'm way past tik tok age and I'd have to be literally be paid to watch, say, Miami women's college basketball, so I'm no expert, but I actually think in 5 years or so things will start to go more back to how they were before NIL rather than blowing up the whole NCAA. Right now it's so new. I just think in a few years things will settle down when companies/boosters at school/whoever start to see that only a few star athletes really matter and the money will dry up.
I wouldn’t want to be Charlie Baker right now.
The mini-controversy around the Times story on this was so funny because what’s stated in the article was just obviously true. It’s easy to join a Twitter pile-on for most people than to admit what’s obvious-- this is extremely uncomfortable.
Also, telling a legendary coach to shut their mouth is a perfect indication Ms. Dunne is an immature person and/or knows she is bigger than Vanderveer. The NCAA sure hopes it’s the former. That they can deal with.
I actually missed that mini controversy. What happened there?
A synthesis of bro and anti-bro disdain for the story:
https://defector.com/new-york-times-finds-worst-reason-to-fret-over-nil-deals
https://www.outkick.com/woke-nyt-columnist-has-a-problem-with-lsu-gymnast-olivia-dunne/
I gave up Twitter for Lent so I can’t pull up the short-form outrage.
Great article, Ethan. I still haven't made up my mind on the defanging of the NCAA, NIL, conference realignment, etc. On the one hand, the NCAA was a terrible organization that clearly played favorites (see Tarkanian's amazing quote about Kentucky and Cleveland State) and athletes should have been able to make money off of NIL as everyone understood it to be before it was legalized (athletes making money from local companies to appear in commercials, sign autographs, make money off of jersey sales, etc.). And that fits in exactly with my political opinions. In TV and movies I'll always root against the Noble Lie.
But on the other hand, weren't college sports just better when conferences were only regional and had a manageable number of teams; when, however not good at its job as it was, there was some sort of rule enforcement agency to attempt to ensure there was a level playing field, where money wasn't as huge of a factor in winning as much as your ability to hire the right coach for your program (not that money is an end-all-be-all now [see Texas] but it seems like it quickly will be based on conferences only caring about TV revenue); when you could get excited about a freshman class and watch them develop over years into group that will challenge for a conference title, instead of basically every off-season turning into free agency and teams becoming entirely new every year?
This is a great and important point. Many of the changes in college sports were the right thing to do. Others were understandable (ie chasing $$).
But the outcome might be very bad. There was/is something magical about college sports. That magic might be going away. And without it, it's just the minor leagues
Did it again dude, amazing article and insights!
This is reminding me of these awards in my state that are meant to highlight the HS athletes who are exceptional teammates provided by a big national bank. Give some scholarship money to the kids who maybe aren’t quite at the very top of their sport.
Except you cannot help but notice when looking at the awardees that ~85% of them look like models. Somehow the best teammates in the state all happen to be top 1% in attractiveness. What a coincidence.
Solid piece. The NCAA's reaction seems misguided at best. The Kournikova frenzy died down. The female golfers that sell their sexuality have followings, but the frenzy died down. NIL is new, but the frenzy over college women selling their sexuality will die down. There's infinite content for horny bros in this world, and as time passes this will all normalize to where people who follow sports will be most interested by the successful athletes, particularly those with compelling stories apart from their looks.
One quibble: Ethan, you're a great journalist. It would have taken you 5 minutes of calling colleagues or even just google searches to get the pronunciation of "Bueckers" (BEH-ckers) and "Cavinder" (CA-vin-der) correct. It made the audio version of the article a little less of an enjoyable listen.
Best post in a while. Light years ahead of the hockey one.
Great topic, great angle, great writeup.
I looked at the Dunne TikTok clip, then found a pic of VanDerveer. omg.
It's kindof funny looking back at Kournikova & the "oh she's just popular b/c she's hot" controversy b/c she's underrated as a tennis player now. Yes, she didn't win tournaments, but that doesn't mean she wasn't undeniably one of the best players in the world at the time (who did have accomplishments on the court at a world class level. ) We aren't talking about someone averaging 12 a game in college.