Ladies, Under No Circumstance Should You Be Doing This

Yes I still blog.

It's been a while, I know. This new job is KILLING my blog time. As are my incredibly busy weekends consuming alcohol, drafting fantasy teams (THAT preparation sucked up a good bit of my blog time!), eating buffalo wings, seeing bands (House of Blues might suck), getting smoked on college basketball bets (you gotta hit that wide open three to cover, you Louisville scrub!), and arguing with my friends on email (most of my writing time has gone there). But anyways, I'm back and I've got loads to talk about, so be ready for a rash of posts.

But even with all of this going on, I did find some time to watch women's basketball on the treadmill the other day and you know what I figured out?

It is awful.

Like, sour milk, frizzy hair, Caddyshack II, Christmas Fruit Cake awful.

In fact, it is more awful than all of those things put together.

I wish that my liberal, Title IX LOVING, smash through the glass ceiling side of me could come out on this one, but it cannot. I wish I could lie and support these surely wonderful ladies. I wish I could say I want to go to a game or wax poetic about the greatness of the game.

But I cannot.

Because women's college basketball is just sooooo bad.

I may be offending a female reader or two with this one (does this bother you Gees?), but c'mon. It's awful and you know it. Search your inner feelings young Skywalker; you know this to be true.

I mean, really what's to like?

Do you like the ugly set shots, or the painfully slow developing fast breaks? Do you like Pat Summitt's face or Gino Auriemma's skeaziness (BTW, when is a woman going to coach a men's sport? Imagine Jenny Finch strolling out to the mound to yank CC Sabathia from the game after 5 2/3 innings? Does he hand her the ball? Does he even look at her? I mean, she'd probably be better than Grady Little at knowing when to remove pitchers from the game and bring in a reliever, no? We will truly know the glass ceiling has been shattered when I see a woman grab the ball from a pitchers hand on the mound at Fenway and slap him on the ass.)? Maybe you like the fact that you can follow your favorite Stanford Lady Cardinal to the WNBA or the weird screams that permeate the audience after a "big" shot goes down. Or perhaps you like the awkward chest bumps (these creepy celebrations make Phil Mickelson's victory leap at
The Masters seem hip and cool) or those high flying slam dunks? Oh wait, those don't exist.

Interlude: I mean really, have you seen the chest bumps? They do this in women's college basketball. A lot. The chicks who do this make two women tits touching as sexy and hot as The Barefoot Contessa and her husband kissing.

What makes women's basketball even more painful to watch is that I am pretty sure me and four members from either my 1996 UMass Intramural team or one of my Melrose High Faculty teams (Brennan would be a must. You too Wall and Turner) would defeat Oklahoma. In fact, it pains me to watch these women so much that I'm pretty sure I could beat them at anything. I know I sound like a younger, but equally ignorant version of Bobby Riggs, but I'm not letting these women beat me. At anything. It can be a three point contest, a speed skating race, a table tennis game, Boggle, a free throw shooting competition, Name That Tune, a hot dog eating contest (although that linebackery chick on Oklahoma could probably take me down), or even a sprint. It doesn't matter what we play, but I gotta say, I'm not losing to these chicks. At anything. I mean c'mon, imagine losing to Rebecca Lobo at ANYTHING?!? I'd have to let one of you kill me after that (no shortage of volunteers there, I'm sure)!

I know this sounds outrageous, but I feel this way. I really do. I wish it weren't, but it is. Part of the problem is that the media is shoving women's basketball down our throats and TRYING to make it happen. It's like Gretchen Wieners in Mean Girls trying to make Fetch happen. It's just not going to work. I have a hard enough time watching mens college basketball (I'll save that for a March 2010 post. But seriously, take the brackets and gambling out of mens college basketball and what do you have? Lots of guys who can't shoot and turn the ball over way too much) as it is painful to watch any sport that is NOT played at the highest level. Yeah, I like they they play with "heart" and for the love of the game, but when you have the NBA to watch on another channel, why would I watch a lesser brand of the same game? I know people hate on the NBA and that's fine, but you hate on it for all the wrong reasons. I want to watch something played at the highest possible level. Why do you think no one goes out to Hillview to watch a bunch of old guys hit worm burners from the first tee?!? Because it sucks. Just like women's basketball sucks. And you want heart? Go watch a little league game.

I wish women's basketball would take a cue from the MLS and realize that they have a niche audience (although, apparently, that "niche" audience is made up of 138 people because word is the WNBA is officially done) and stick with that. Let the folks at Stanford, Tennessee and UConn enjoy their women's hoops, but for the love of god, stop shoving it down our throats because we just don't care. And ESPN, just stop it. Please. No one who lives outside Storrs, CT cares about the UConn perfect season.

I really want to support it, but I feel like I'm saying (writing) what so many people feel, but are too afraid to say. And as I write this, I realize it's not solely about the fact that it is women's basketball so much as it is a game that is played at an inferior level (it's the same reason why I don't watch Sci-Fi Channel horror films like Sasquatch Attacks II). I might like it more if it wasn't so in our faces. I mean, we got a woman Speaker of the House. Isn't that enough for you chicks?

Well, there goes my three female readers. Thanks for supporting me ladies! It's been a trip!