Ah. A post to which the correct answer is “Yes”.
From Huffington Post:
“But basketball fans don’t really care about the stories off the court. Or the character. Or the professionalism. They care about the basketball product. And the product isn’t televised as much as it needs to be. The league’s best teams aren’t showcased like they should be, in order to market said product. Women’s college basketball gets more televised games than the WNBA, and that’s part of the problem.”
To be fair, detonating nuclear weapons is not yet an Olympic sport. Whatever the government of North Korea might hope.
Not trapshooting, but I believe some kinds of Olympic shooting are the only ones in which drug use involves sedatives. And they are so exciting to watch, that they have a sedative effect on the audience.
Here’s the thing – Maria Sharapova is an individual player of a global sport who has won five grand slam titles and has been the world number one ranked player. She is legitimately famous on her own for accomplishments of her own, and a reference to her fictional gold medal winning husband would give context to the win.
I watch football every weekend of the fall and couldn’t name a single defensive lineman on any team but the Giants, and even then it might be a retiree. And probably no one but some fantasy league players have heard of Mitch Unrein. Tying this gold medal to him adds nothing to the story.
TV networks will put anything on the air as long as people watch it. This is why we see an entity that calls itself “The Learning Channel” air Honey Boo Boo and other nonsense. People watch. If enough people watched the WNBA, it would be on the air. There are a lot of people who really want the WNBA to exist but not so many that want to sit down and watch a game on TV, or buy a Jersey or a branded video game. Last I heard they couldn’t generate respectable crowds at the games even by giving tickets away for free.
I don’t see anything wrong with the wives of important men participating in the Olympics. Good for her.
anyone needs a hobby?
Sports! Because sport, team, fan! Go Team! Sports! Take mah, monies! New stadium!
I’m not a football fan myself but I believe that all active NFL players have a baseline of fame that is higher than most Olympic athletes. Nobody cares about trapshooting. The Chicago Tribune wrote that tweet the way they did rather than writing nothing at all. This trapshooter’s thin association with the NFL barely made the story interesting enough for someone at the paper to tap out a lazy tweet.
I am sure that if the situation were reversed (Husband of woman who has a position in super famous organization but is not that well known herself wins third place in ultra obscure Olympic sport that the majority of the planet doesn’t even know exists) the treatment of the story would have been largely the same.
I don’t often think of Olympic Archery but when I do, I think about Geena Davis. Why? Because one year it was widely reported that Geena Davis almost qualified for the Olympic team. Geena Davis is the only name of either gender that I associate with Olympic archery. This isn’t because I have anything against male archers.
“Chicago Woman Wins Olympic Gold Sharpshooting Medal” is just as evocative, if not more so. The fact that she is from Chicago, used a gun in a positive way, and won one of the first gold medals of the games is news. That she’s married to a journeyman football player is not.
I am a huge football fan, and watch at least two if not three games every week and read articles about it. Yet the players I can name are the stars, not a defensive lineman who played for four teams in five years. Believe me, the players are in heavy pads and wear helmets so they are largely anonymous unless they’re in advertising or get interviewed after a game, and defensive lineman don’t get interviewed after a game. Nobody knows who they are.
Your point would also have more merit if they had used the NFL player’s name in the post, instead of calling him “Chicago Bears lineman.” That, too, points to the anonymity of defensive linemen.
I am going to assume that you aren’t familiar with the history of womens association football, particularly what happened when Dick, Kerr’s Ladies FC were getting bigger crowds than the professional mens teams in the English football league.
5 Women’s Football Matches. The following Resolution was adopted:
Complaints having been made as to football being played by women, Council felt impelled to express the strong opinion that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females and should not be encouraged.
Complaints have also been made as to the conditions under which some of the matches have been arranged and played, and the appropriation of receipts to other than charitable objects. The Council are further of the opinion that an excessive proportion of the receipts are absorbed in expenses and an inadequate percentage devoted to charitable objects.
For these reasons the Council requests the Clubs belonging to the Association refuse the use of their grounds for such matches.
— FA Consultative Committee, 1921
My bad, forgot they have a hockey team as well.
In the Stanley Cup Playoffs 13 times, including 6 wins (3 in the last 5 years). Yeah, we’ve got a hockey team as well. 
Since when is a football player “important”?
It’s all about the money and pitch access. If women start playing these things there won’t be so much for the men. You can make almost anything about patriarchy…but in this case it’s correct. There is a very underutilised football pitch locally. Will the lessees share it with a women’s team? No way.
Since the people who advertise in the media decided so.
Seriously, though on a slight tangent, look at the shocked reaction from the British Establishment as the actual members of the Labour Party decide that they are going to decide who runs it, without the permission of Rupert Murdoch. Allowing ordinary people to decide what happens is undermining the whole basis of our democracy.
Now look at two of today’s papers where they have decided that the British synchronised swimming team consisted of one person (who is famous on their terms) and someone else who wasn’t in the picture. Reality is a manufactured construct for the media.
Why do you hate America?
You forgot identity! That’s a big one.
Yesterday I had rice to eat; today I’m hungry again.
Carbs are fairly incompetent at satiation. Look it up!
Wait, what?
A girl has no name, a girl will start killing shitty cis-het sexist reporters very soon.
