Extracurriculars

FanHouse’s Brian Straus thinks that re-upping Bob Bradley for four more years reveals that U.S. Soccer Federation boss Sunil Gulati . . .

“didn’t want exciting. He wanted stability and a coach who has many more wins than losses. In Bradley, he found his man.”

Martin Rogers of Yahoo! Sports thinks Bradley — and the decision to reappoint him — should be cut some slack:

“For any nation, a period such as this should be one of optimism and the beginning of a long road that, if traveled correctly, can lead to a pot of gold. As it embarks down that path, the USA can at least be safe in the knowledge that it does so steered by a man who has taken the journey before, and will surely have learned to avoid some familiar pitfalls.”

Mike Wise will be in the cooler — and presumably off the Tweet — for the start of the all-important Redskins’ season, among other events, ironically for making up Tweets about Ben Roethlisberger’s suspension.

The self-described @MikeWiseGuy is rather fortunate he didn’t lose his job — even the Post’s ombudsman thinks so. Here’s the obligatory mea culpa.

There’s something amiss in The Tribe when some of its best-known denizens are putting the essence of their work on a lower rung than attention-grabbing stunts. Whether they’re intentional or not.

Dan Wetzel says that the solons of the BCS have only themselves to blame should Boise State waltz through a soft schedule.

The irony here is that if the Broncos, ranked No. 3 in the preseason AP poll, can defeat 10th-ranked Virginia Tech in their Labor Day season opener, they are in fantastic shape to benefit from the BCS system they’ve been trying to change.

It would be a well-deserved and truly fitting fate for the solons, who are looking to realignment to bail themselves out of what they had wrought.

BTW, Wetzel’s anti-BCS book is due out in mid-October, and the title is oh-so-apt as well.

Roger Federer’s opening-round mauling of Brian Dabul in the U.S. Open Monday was rather uneventful, except for this point, which is rapidly making its way around the jockosphere this AM:

Not surprisingly, Federer does lead the tennis money list, which is not as male dominated as you might think.

For those who lament the supposed dearth of media coverage about women’s sports, what follows is a rather extensive collection of links from just the last week or so.

They generally deal with various levels of discontent/anxiety/concern, which can be read as negative coverage. But because this is coming primarily from mainstream outlets, the status of women’s sports across the board can also be seen as increasingly worthy of some serious, and respectful, media attention:

• The U.S. Open is underway, and even the exalted terrain of women’s tennis appears well-worn and uninspiring. The absence of an injured Serena Williams is a leading factor. Then John McEnroe kicked up a storm by suggesting that women can’t handle the physical duress of a demanding global tour. He can’t be serious! ESPN New York’s Johnette Howard rounds up the array of backhand return winners from Billie Jean King, Chris Evert and Mary Carrillo, his New York City childhood chum.

• The New York Times spiced up the lead-in to Flushing Meadow with a provocative video (alas, not embeddable) on the “Beauty of the Power Game” that accompanies Sunday’s fascinating magazine piece on the same subject. When I first saw the video, I wondered how long it would take for feminist howls of protest to spring forth. Not surprisingly, Nicole LaVoi of the University of Minnesota took the bait first, accusing the Times of peddling “soft-core pornography.”

She calls it a “blatantly sexist, disgusting and marginalizing example of sexualizing female athletes,” which is the standard fare argument made by some women’s sports advocates who foolishly believe the body can be separated from the erotic.

There’s nothing tasteless in this presentation; if anything it demonstrates the aesthetic appeal of women’s tennis that makes it, along with figure skating and gymnastics, enduringly popular, especially with female fans and viewers. The unbeatable combination of athletic power and “traditional” femininity on display will always have leave some in The Sisterhood in a perpetual snit, but even one of Dr. LaVoi’s readers took issue with this narrow point of view:

“I think women’s bodies are beautiful to the degree that they’re like artwork, and I don’t think there’s a problem with showing beautiful bodies as art. It was not diminishing their athleticism in that endeavor, in my view.”

That was from a female reader, by the way.

• It’s no surprise that tennis players head the most recent Forbes list of top-earning female athletes. No team sport athletes here though.

• The issue of women golfers and glamor also arises on the LPGA Tour from time to time, and American star Paula Creamer is unbothered by what drives the likes of Dr. LaVoi up the wall:

“I’m an athlete. I’m 24 years old. I like to wear skirts . . . You’ve got what you’re born with, I guess.”

• Michelle Wie won the Canadian Open, just her second victory on the LPGA Tour, which could use her marquée name in headlines. She’s got one more tournament to play before heading to Stanford for her final year of college.

• Karen Crouse of The New York Times profiles former tennis pro Gigi Fernandez, who struggled for years to bear children before finally becoming the mother of twins at the age of 45. The ordeal of Fernandez and her partner, former U.S. Open golf champion Jane Geddes, was further complicated by the physical effects of Fernandez’ tennis career and Florida’s legal ban on adoptions by gay couples.

• Is Danica Patrick’s act wearing thin? Wilmington News-Journal auto racing writer Mike Finney thinks so, saying her attention-grabbing takes away from other drivers, male and female.

• Another glamor girl finally calls it quits: Softball icon Jennie Finch has played in her last event. MLB.com offers a fond farewell to a superstar who elevated her sport while earning the ire of The Sisterhood for her attractiveness to men.

• One reason for Finch’s departure is the lack of Olympic softball, and women’s ice hockey is facing a similar existential crisis. Discussions are underway in NHL circles to start a women’s pro league, along the lines of the WNBA. IOC boss Jacques Rogge hinted after the Vancouver Games the sport could get dropped because of a lack of competition. But I’m not sure a WNHL would cut into U.S. and Canadian dominance unless top players from other nations come over to play.

• The WNBA playoffs are in full swing, and the defending champion Phoenix Mercury have advanced to the Western Conference finals. But the team is breathing a huge sigh of relief because star guard Diana Taurasi, who was talking about not playing next season, has signed a contract extension. While that threat wasn’t good PR for the league, it’s a bit much to declare it “narrowly avoided doom” when she re-upped. Taurasi’s former teammate, New York Liberty guard Cappie Pondexter, is a candidate for MVP, but also is busy developing some entrepreneurial chops in the fashion industry.

• Women’s Professional Soccer has made cuts in its front office and marketing staff in an effort to save on expenses and devote more resources at the franchise level. The two-year-old league is talking about expansion.

• Caster Semenya has returned to the track, but her rivals are not thrilled, with some seeking a little more transparency from the International Association of Athletics Federations about how the South African runner was cleared to compete with women. They’re not alone with their questions.

• When The Big Lead is asking a pertinent question about the coverage of women’s sports — without the celebrities, bimbos or snark — listen up:

“There are a number of prominent women reporting, writing columns, editing, hosting and producing shows. They are seemingly in position to set agendas, yet focus predominately on male sports. Are they doing enough to promote women in professional sports? Should they be obligated to?”

An excellent question. My best answer: They’re much more pragmatic than me, who took the risk of being pigeon-holed by carving out a quasi-women’s sports beat at my former newspaper. I don’t regret what I’ve done at all, but for the few women who’ve made sports media their profession, going down such a narrow path is not regarded as a good career move.

No woman sports journalist should feel obligated to take up the cause, although one serves as a de facto stenographer of The Sisterhood from time to time, without having all that much to say.

There won’t be any “title-nining” of coverage, but judging from the links above, that’s probably not all that necessary.

European hockey coaches are complaining that their young stars are coming to North America’s minor leagues too prematurely in order to display their skills for National Hockey League teams:

“If the (NHL) would be two or three years more patient, we would send over a better player.”

Most interesting nugget here:

“NHL scouts generally believe Czech, Slovak and Russian players have a more difficult time adjusting to the North American lifestyle and hockey style than, for example, Swedish players.”

Language may be a factor there, especially since many Scandinavian kids grow up communicating in English far better than — dare I say — Americans.

Ironically, USA Hockey recently has banished national championship events for its youngest competitors, and here’s a compelling suggestion for other sports to follow suit. I’m not sure if mandating equal playing time is the best way for elite athletes to develop — they still may need to move to more highly-charged environments — but taking the onus out of winning from the outset is a terrific idea.

The European youth hockey development model — which I blogged about here during the spring — may finally be influencing some badly needed changes on this side of the Atlantic, where competition-driven parents have long dictated the direction of youth sports. Even more ironically, it is that European system — which stresses technique and skill development over competition at the earliest ages — that may be torn apart in the process.

• At Extracurriculars I spent far too much time and too many words on the sorry sagas of Jason Whitlock, Jay Mariotti and sportswriters who insist on becoming the story. I’ll leave it to Deadspin to put the proper shine on the self-parodic figure that Whitlock has become:

“Jason Whitlock is Richard Hofstadter, if Ponderosa were Columbia University.”

• While far too many sports media “stars” are becoming disturbingly like the athletes they cover, the latter are in increasingly ample supply. Latest non-LeBron, non-Favre poster boy: Albert Haynesworth, who gets roundly spanked today by Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post. And deservedly so.

• The possibility of Ohio State and Michigan being placed in opposite divisions so they might potentially meet in the new Big Ten championship game has plenty of traditionalists up in arms. But the Wall Street Journal’s Darren Everson says there’s plenty more change afoot, far beyond the forthcoming college football conference realignment. So get used to it.

• If you’re a realignment geek, then Dennis Dodd of CBSSports.com is your scribe. He masterfully simplifies the mind-numbingly complex machinations of the BCS solons and those wishing to join them. His latest piece examines the risks schools take by jumping into the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly NCAA Division I-A). Think real hard before you leap.

• The Associated Press has obtained financial data showing how the Pittsburgh Pirates continue to make money by losing, and in grand fashion. They haven’t had a winning season since 1992, the longest such skid for a team in North American pro sports history. Naturally, team officials are incensed that the information was leaked, but they’ve got some serious ’splaining to do.

How sad to a once-proud franchise run into the ground by pure, unadulterated greed, without a care about its paying customers. It won’t be the last.

• No Career, But Women Get to Butt Heads, Too — The Women’s Rugby World Cup is underway in England with the event primed for the biggest spotlight it has ever enjoyed.

• Can Roger Clemens Learn From Marion Jones’ Mistakes? — Presumptuous both in headline and text. Here’s the more pertinent question: Why do we get all apoplectic over athletes allegedly lying to Congress about matters that shouldn’t concern Congress — that bastion of truth and light?

• Diana Nyad Rediscovers Her Passion for Swimming — Now 60, the lauded endurance athlete is preparing for a Cuba-to-Florida swim.

• Getting a Read on Summertime Books — Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports has a rather substantial pile of current titles on his nightstand.

• As soon as I Tweeted today about Bobby Thomson’s famous homerun, a friend messaged me about one of the famous stories that stemmed from that 1951 playoff game and one of the greatest moments in American sports history. Had I read it?

He was referring to the opening of Don DeLillo’s novel “Underworld.” Initially this chapter, “Pafko at the Wall,” was published in Harper’s magazine and later was released separately as a novella of its own.

Andy Pafko was the Brooklyn Dodgers’ left fielder who looked on helplessly as Thomson’s “Shot Heard Round the World” sailed over his head and beyond his reach.

The Giants won the pennant, and DeLillo’s fictionalized story — featuring true-life characters Jackie Gleason, Toots Shor and J. Edgar Hoover — populated a tale as rich and resonant as the real thing.

Thomson, who died this week at the age of 86, enjoyed an otherwise uneventful career, but as the Poynter Institute’s Roy Peter Clark points out in “The Story is Never Over,” one moment can be immortal, and can speak for much, much more than the moment itself:

“The Shot has become a story about what constitutes triumph and tragedy in America, about how sports defines our identity, about fame, celebrity, race, scandal, myth and mystery, recounted time and again in nonfiction books, documentaries, investigations, novels and even poetry.”

And this:

“Journalists can draw from this short history this moral: That the big story is never over. The Civil War is still not over. The Depression is not over. Nor the assassination of JFK. Nor the destruction of the World Trade Center. Hang in there — for a long time — on the Gulf oil spill.”

In a media age seemingly surrendered to the idea of the fleeting moment, these enduring truths are wonderfully encouraging to this old history hack.

• I’ve been spending a good part of this month writing offline, and it’s been vital to reconnect with a more immersive, contemplative process that I worried had escaped my attention span.

What’s also been deeply satisfying as the dog days of summer whittle away has been to reread some books, essays and magazine articles on a variety of topics that I had nearly forgotten about. I’ll post more about that soon, but for now the Pafko story is very high on the list of some fabulous rediscoveries.

• At the same time, old media habits do die hard. ESPN baseball writer Tim Kurkjian has given up his nearly 20-year habit of cutting out, and pasting, every single Major League Baseball box score into a notebook. With newspapers almost uniformly resigning box scores to their websites, Kurkjian, a former scribe for the Baltimore Sun, now reads them online as well. Yet he finds that something very important is missing:

“I’m not comfortable doing it but I have no other choice. I have saved time, as well as money on scotch tape and scissors. Since 9/11, I estimate having lost at least six pair of scissors because I forgot to remove them from my bag and the security men and women at airports thought I might hijack the plane using scissors as dull as NFL preseason games.

“But I still read box scores with the same vigor and interest every day for there is so much to learn in box scores, almost everything you need is in box scores, especially with the expanded ones that tell you, in some cases, more than you wanted to know.”

• Point/counterpoint op-eds are nothing new in journalism, but it’s rather interesting to see Women’s Sports Foundation advocacy director Nancy Hogshead-Makar being given the floor to respond to critical Title IX pieces in two major media outlets last week.

First, she got this full-length reply to Gregg Easterbrook’s heated piece on ESPN.com condemning a federal judge’s ruling against competitive cheerleading being counted as a sport for Title IX purposes at Quinnipiac University. She proceeds with her usual vigorous restatement of predictable WSF talking points and also gets the endorsement of the fair-minded Sports Law Blog to boot.

Over the weekend, the New York Daily News offered Hogshead-Makar ample room to counter sportswriter Ebenezer Samuel’s critical take on Quinnipiac and cheerleading. As in her ESPN.com rebuttal, Hogshead-Makar finished up with the latest cant from the sports feminist community, citing research showing the positive benefits to girls competing in sports.

A couple of things to note here: Why is the representative of a powerful organization whose views are already amply relayed in the media allowed to offer unscheduled rebuttals to the small handful of opinions that take issue with her own stance?

And why aren’t the critics of Title IX enforcement being offered the same chance to reply? Eric McErlain at the College Sports Council countered Hogshead-Makar’s data on that organization’s blog, but his request to rebut a pro-Title IX author this weekend on NPR’s Only A Game program was turned down.

There needs to be a reply to the one-sided interview conducted by host Bill Littlefield with Deborah Brake, whom he does not even identify as a major figure in Title IX activism during her days with the National Women’s Law Center. Instead, they both bemoaned the inability of college athletics directors to “rein in” the very men’s revenue sports that pay the bills for women’s teams.

Nor does he question Brake about a questionable claim in the introduction to her new book, “Getting in the Game,” that Title IX is about more than “place of women in sports” but also “the meaning of gender.” I would have liked to hear her explain what she means by that on the airwaves, but I’ll have to settle for reading the book.

Indeed, there were lots of slow-pitch softballs like that lobbed in Brake’s direction, and that’s the real state of media coverage of women’s sports. And so is this.

Most of the critics are political conservatives, with whom I have little in common. While I admire Christina Hoff Sommers for a number of reasons, her reaction to dubious claims about a lack of coverage of women’s sports have their own shortcomings that I will need to rebut sometime soon.