This week espnW has been running a series examining the possibilities of women competing in men’s professional sports leagues. Veteran reporter Jane McManus does a good job detailing the physical and cultural obstacles women face in football, while Pat Borzi does the same in baseball.

I do admire the women facing very long odds of ever succeeding on the most-dominated fields of play that exist in American sports, and I don’t suspect the cultures of baseball and football will ever embrace women as basketball and soccer have. Theirs is a passion bordering on obsession that is hard to deny — and it is generally a healthy obsession. Perhaps some of these women may parlay that passion into front office and off-the-field careers that are rarities today, or inspire other females to do so.

I also understand the media fascination with this subject, because this is another part of the women’s sports realm devoted to novelty. In fact, the entire field of women’s athletics for many — including some of its biggest advocates — is regarded as experimental ground for working through social issues.

Another trendy topic that gets women’s sports advocates all aflutter is American-style gridiron football — whether it’s championing the fledgling pro women’s league that’s been around for several years or condeming the new lingerie variety that has some of the Sisters of Perpetual Indignance absolutely beside themselves.

But while the latter is mildly amusing, the rest of all this is frankly boring. While women have made enormous athletic and physical strides in my lifetime, the constant obsession — and this is an unhealthy one — to see whether women can really hold their own against men is more than quixotic.

It takes away from acknowledging the most remarkable development there has ever been in women’s sports: The everyday exploits of females on fields, courts, pools and other venues of play, just to play. They’re not always doing so to chase a college scholarship, or aim for professional or Olympic glory, although some get that far. Hardly any do it to prove themselves against men.

It’s been this critical mass, built up over decades, that has helped lead to entities like the WNBA, which is holding its own after a sometimes-rocky decade and a half of existence. Yet in Thursday’s espnW installment, Diana Taurasi is asked the inevitable question about women playing in the NBA, and she handles it well enough. But her fellow pro hoopster Tina Thompson, the last active charter WNBA member, really throws it down the best:

“The question is insignificant. The point of creating the WNBA was to have a league of our own.”

Thank you.

With all due respect to an intriguing topic, what’s the point of all this? I thought it was a marvelous moment for women’s sports earlier this year when the frat boys of American sports media got all worked up with comparisons between the winning streaks of the UConn women and the UCLA men. These are the things that make sports great — the arguments on talk radio, message boards and social media that never end, and always fascinate. Who was better? Mays or Mantle? What about DiMaggio or Williams? Russell’s Celtics or Magic’s Lakers? Lombardi’s Packers or Montana’s 49ers? You’re forgetting the Bulls and the Steelers, idiots! Etc., etc.

That a women’s team sport had reached such a lofty perch in the mainstream sports spotlight was perhaps as notable as what it accomplished on the court. Even amid the clamor of this being apples and oranges, or claims that the UConn women could never beat the UCLA men on the floor.

That was never the point. Neither has it been the purpose of the development of women’s sports to see whether the best females they produce might have an actual shot against the men. There’s a fairly obvious reason why most sports are sex-segregated, and there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that. While the espnW series thankfully doesn’t address the absurd claims of Colette Dowling in “The Frailty Myth,” it still gives far too serious credence to an unrealistic, as well as an insignificant, question.

As I read these stories, I detected a ghost that haunts women’s sports advocates — the fear of invisibility. The barrier-busting, “woman in a man’s world” narrative holds media attention, but only as long as the novelty lasts.

Auriemma, who will lead the American national team in the London Olympics, said at a U.S. training camp this week in Las Vegas he doesn’t worry about the comparative lack of attention for women athletes:

“We could go 39-0 (at UConn) three years in a row and not get the amount of media that goes to a men’s Final Four. It’s just part of the deal. People are either going to appreciate you or they’re not. I’m sure there is an (Olympic) swimmer who says, ‘I’m up at 5 a.m. every day. Where is everyone?’ Or the guys on the crew team who say, ‘We’re in the water busting our ass every morning. Where is everyone?’

“Does it bug me? No. When you look back five years, the attention is better now than it has ever been. I would just like it if one of our players made a 3-pointer at the buzzer to win the gold medal, she wouldn’t have to take her shirt off to get the coverage it would deserve.”

I firmly believe that the biggest challenges facing women’s sports in America have nothing to do Title IX or wasted cultural obsessions, but with broadening their mainstream appeal, attracting corporate sponsors, working to establish the viability of professional leagues and taking the ideological fury out of getting in the game. Some may find it boring and even dispiriting, but some recent developments make this even more imperative:

– The extremely endangered state of the Women’s Professional Soccer league has taken another heartbreaking turn. If this 3-year-old circuit, now down to six teams, makes it through the season, it will be a miracle.

– The WNBA continues to get a strong endorsement from David Stern, and as long as he feels that way it isn’t going anywhere. But he didn’t dance around his rationale for recently hiring successful marketing executive Laurel Richie as the new WNBA president. He wants to strengthen the league as a business.

– Even the venerable LPGA, now 61 years old, remains on enough fragile financial ground that a respected and fair-minded golf journalist not long ago created a possible scenario for how it might thrive as part of the PGA.

The next barriers to be broken for women in spectator sports will not be about crashing men’s leagues, but making the leagues they have and the games they play compelling and worthy to just more than a small, intense few.

In some ways, not becoming a novelty might be a more difficult feat to pull off.

In The New York Times, Katie Thomas details the lawsuit retired police officer Lana Lawless has filed against the LPGA for banning potential competitors like her who are not born female.

Among the other targets of her legal action — and I’m not making any of this up, including her name — are the Long Drivers of America and Dick’s Sporting Goods, which are among the sponsors of this weekend’s LPGA event in California.

God forbid what the frat boy sports sites are going to do with all that, but I doubt it will be no more edifying than the latest Brett Favre brouhaha.

Thomas offers some interesting perspective from Renee Richards, who doesn’t agree with this claim by Lawless that goes to the heart of the transgender identity:

“There is no such thing as born female. Either you’re female, or you’re not.”

I appreciate the principles that people like Lawless are fighting for, but that declaration also goes to to the heart of what animates those who assert that gender is not fixed biologically but rather is a “social construct.”

I won’t wade into those troublesome waters here, and I haven’t been able yet to pore through this study on how to address the concerns of transgender athletes into high school and competitive sports.

Where this may fit into the larger spectrum of women and sports presents another quandary. How much time and energy should the women’s sports movement spend fighting for the rights of transgender athletes when there are so many pressing issues? I simply don’t know.

What I do know is that this is not what the LPGA had in mind when it was seeking greater mainstream media attention.

• At Extracurriculars I have written about “Female athletes, their bodies and distorted perceptions” that only figure to continue to heat up: Serena Williams and her body, the LPGA Tour’s mommy conundrum, media coverage of women athletes and the return of Caster Semenya to the women’s track and field fold.

For all the caterwauling about women athletes not getting a lot of press, that’s just a tiny sampling of what’s going on out there. I’m not going to pronounce a forthcoming “Golden Age” or anything, but the agony aunts who fuss that women in sports are invisible are focused on all the wrong things. As usual.

To those of you weary about reading about these topics here: Soon there will be a new home for these missives, so I do appreciate your patience. The Gonzo post above has further crystallized ideas I’ve had about these matters for close to two decades now, and shortly I will be realizing them elsewhere, and at long, long last.

What I’m reading about sports and the media on Monday, July 5:

• The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review examines the travails of the LPGA as the U.S. Women’s Open gets underway at Oakmont Country Club. The recession and the lack of high-profile American stars to succeed the retired Annika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa have given new commissioner Michael Whan plenty to tackle. He sounds like many of his predecessors over the years, however, with this age-old pronouncement that is unlikely to resonate:

“There’s nothing wrong with our product. We just need to have more people see it.”

Tell that to women’s sports activists who can’t be bothered with something that isn’t related directly to Title IX, or can’t be blamed on the male sports culture. Sports business has never been their strong suit, but the ailing women’s sports industry needs all the backing it can get. The challenges facing the 60-year-old LPGA are far more critical than whether cheerleading should be declared a college sport, but guess what is getting most of the heat and light this summer?

Argh, exhale! It’s only Monday, right? To say that I’m restless about the way things are, and especially the conventional “wisdom” that informs perceptions of women in sports from the very women who claim to exalt them, would be a severe understatement.

• Another topic I’ve gotten really interested in following seriously in recent months is athlete development. My friend Tom Dunmore at Pitch Invasion today rounds up some good pieces exploring how the German youth soccer system was completely overhauled a decade ago, and is now yielding many of the young players who have been setting the World Cup on fire. This article from Ralph Honigstein at SI.com also explains how at the very youngest levels, skill development and the mastery of fundamentals is stressed over competition. Hello, USA?

• Stefan Fatsis has left South Africa, but gives the whole FIFA aristocracy a good spanking over at The New Republic’s World Cup blog. Like many American sports journalists digging into the politics, cronyism and corruption at FIFA, Fatsis is aghast at what he sees. These guys make the IOC look like pikers, but as the controversy over refereeing illustrates, Sepp Blatter and the boys are accountable to no one.