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frenzy has ensued (OK, well, not really a frenzy, but the most press the WNBA has gotten lately) after Bird recently rescinded a bet she made with a radio talk show host.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.