Bryant Gumbel sees a women’s sports double standard

Submitted by anthony on Sat, 2011-07-23 21:15

Article here. Excerpt:

'In the wake of the U.S. women’s soccer team losing the World Cup final to Japan last weekend, Bryant Gumbel of HBO Sports asked: “Can we stop coddling women in sports? Are we now so fearful of being labelled sexist that we can’t objectively assess the efforts of female athletes?”

Most [male] American reporters did adopt the ‘Gee, they-kick-the-ball-pretty-well-for-girls’ approach, dodging serious criticism of the U.S. players dropping the WC Final. Others followed Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press, extolling the high calibre of the tournament, saying he’s now a convert to women’s soccer. Few besides Gumbel ripped the team for allowing the underdog Japanese to win - a distinction they shared with Japan’s other victims, it might be added.

“Had a men’s team turned in a similar performance,” Gumbel said on the season premiere of HBO’s Real Sports, “papers and pundits nationwide would have had a field day assailing the players, criticizing the coach, and demanding widespread changes to a men’s national team that flat-out choked. Yet the common reactions to this ladies’ loss were simply expressions of empathy for the defeat of the unfortunate darlings and pride in their oh-so-heroic effort.”'

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Men who perform badly on the field are beat on on top of having lost the game. Women on the other hand get poor-deared and coddled. Kudos to Gumbel for having the cajones to speak up.

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2011-07-23 21:59

...lost out to Germany in their world cup quarter-final penalty shoot out their manager Hope Powell criticised some players for failing to step up to take penalties.

She was widely criticised for these comments in the media, yet male sports teams have been called-out for an apparent lack of "bottle" by the media many times. Even when initially coming from a woman the media seem reluctant to back up criticism of women's sports teams, while at the same time demanding sportswomen are judged by the same standards as men.

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Submitted by sirprince on Sat, 2011-07-23 22:26