Women’s Sports Are Mostly Irrelevant - Except For Auto Racing

December 7, 2007
By Larry Cottrill

Larry Cottrill

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

I’ve set the bar even higher for this piece.

Someday, soon hopefully, we’ll see a woman win not only a major race, but the Sprint/Nextel Cup itself. There are hundreds of young girls and ladies already racing in go-karts, and entry-level and feeder series nationwide, and a good number of them have displayed great promise.

Anyone with a brain can understand that there is a huge demand from prospective sponsors to provide the opportunity for the better of those that will soon surface.

Many of us thought that Erin Crocker was going to be that woman. Between the prowess she displayed behind the wheel of sprint cars and her engineering background, her pairing with Ray Evernham ( who’d had a wee bit of success previously with a young prodigy before ) seemed destined for success. While the jury is out on Erin’s driving future, it appears that their "pairing" may have yielded a different kind of outcome that both have found pleasing, and let me be amongst the first in print to wish them well. After all, as important as racing is to us all, it’s just a game.

That being said, I can’t wait to see a woman mixing it up ( at the front of the pack - not watching Shawna Robinson being lapped for the 5th time ) in a Cup car with the guys. When this happens, I’ll be happy for an honest-to-God noteworthy moment in sports history, as it will be the first time when a woman will defeat a man head-to-head in a major professional sport.

Each day I read the sports section of my local newspaper, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. It literally sickens me when I realize how many times that a story on NASCAR, the Steelers or the Penguins gets shortened or bumped all together just to make room for a story on the WNBA, the Seton Hill College girl’s volleyball team, or some girl’s local high school basketball or track team meet. Being realistic, and comparing apples to apples, women athletes simply cannot compete against men in any of other "major" sports. If they could, there would be no need to have "women only leagues" would there?

I remember a few years back when LPGA golfer Anika Sorenstam attempted to make the field at a PGA meet ( the "Colonial" I believe ). She was praised for her heroic efforts, EVEN THOUGH she failed to make the two-day "cut." In a day and age where finally women and other minorities ( odd that women are lumped in with minorities even though they make up around 52% of our population ) have made incredible strides in receiving opportunities and being viewed as equals, the patronizing of that event was actually demeaning to women.

Possibly the greatest offender of the publicity/opportunity given to inferior athletes was Title IX. In no other endeavor in the scholastic or business world can I think of a situation where such mediocrity is rewarded. Any woman that truly wants to be treated evenly in all regards by men should ask to compete evenly with men. The only thing that should have been covered by Title IX was to see that all High Schools and Colleges/Universities provided multiple locker/dressing rooms for Women’s Home/Women’s Away and Men’s Home/Men’s Away athletes simultaneously. Let them all compete to play on the same team, and if they’re skilled enough, so be it.

Sports ARE a great venue for young people to learn to be competitive and to learn team building skills. I know that from the experiences of my youth. I also know that I wasn’t good enough to even dream of playing on my high school basketball or baseball team, and could’ve used a few more pounds to play on the football squad. That being said, I played more sports than most of the guys on the teams did.

My buddies and I played 2-on-2, or 3-on-3, and 4-on-4 basketball, football and street hockey for hours and hours EVERY DAY!!! We probably enjoyed our sporting endeavors more than the members of the organized teams did since there were no boring practices, and every day was "game day."

We didn’t, however, ask anyone to form a league just for individuals of our lesser skills.

In the women’s professional sporting leagues, be it Tennis, Basketball, Softball, Golf, or . . . you name it, that’s just what we’re presented with. It’s likely that there are hundreds of High School and College mens/boys teams that could whip the WNBA Champions like the Globe Trotters put a pasting on the Washington Generals.

In these sports, where size and muscle-mass will are such prerequisites, the odds of a woman ever competing on the highest level with men is an extreme longshot at best. However, NASCAR will provide the opportunity for women to compete, and win, in a MAJOR sport heads-up with the men.

It WILL HAPPEN, and it will happen soon ( I hope ). When this day does arrive, it will be great for both NASCAR, for women, and for men.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.

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