A question often raised about women’s athletics — and it’s usually posed as a rhetorical one — resurfaced recently following a suggestion from a WNBA coach that her players might just be too “nice” when the reality of competitive sports gets a little nasty:

“Could women’s sports use some bad girls?”

The attempt at an answer revolved around the usual ingredients: Among women athletes in general, there are much lower instances of self-absorbed, narcissistic comportment during games and controversial personae away from them. Rare is the story of a female athlete in trouble with the law.

The writer above, Chicago Daily Herald columnist Patricia Babcock McGraw, a former basketball player at Northwestern, is clearly on the side of better behavior, but she is also careful to repeat the all-important mantra that female athletes ought to serve as “role models” (plenty more on that in a bit).

Yet there’s still this nagging question that she seems to understand works against her preference:

“Would women’s sports get more of a following if the athletes were edgier, more outspoken, more brash?”

In praise of the human carnival

The answer may have been provided on Sunday during the U.S. women’s soccer team’s epic victory over Brazil in the quarterfinal of the Women’s World Cup.

What was on display — in addition to Abby Wambach’s ferocious extra-time equalizer — was the stuff that makes sports so compelling for fans: High drama, intrigue, controversy, dubious sports(wo)manship and ultimately, a comeback for the ages.

This involved all females, including the Australian referee, in a sport about which Americans are generally indifferent.

It was pure spectacle, with a healthy dose of American sports patriotism/exceptionalism thrown in, as is the case during the Olympics.

Above all, it was entertainment. Incredibly memorable entertainment.

That’s a word that rarely crops up in discussions about women’s sports, especially at the professional level. Even in the 15-year-old WNBA, the default mode for talking about how to broaden its audience revolves around the “role model” ideal. New WNBA president Laurel Richie mentions this repeatedly as she makes her way to all 12 league cities this summer.

While watching Minnesota Lynx rookie Maya Moore torch the Connecticut Sun for 26 points over the weekend, Richie rattled through the same litany of praise during a telecast on NBA TV. Yes, Moore is humble and is the perfect emobidment of what Richie and others in women’s sports desire above all: A great player who’s also a “good girl.”

But as I watched Moore, all I could blurt out was: “This woman’s going to tear this league apart. Absolutely destroy it.”

Her entertainment value is undeniable because of the way she plays the game. Moore’s blend of supreme skill and burning desire have already rendered her one of the best players in the history of women’s college basketball. She’ll likely have the same impact as a pro and as an Olympian. She is a basketball purist’s dream.

Yet somehow that’s not enough.

For the “role model” burden is a product of a women’s sports movement that preaches the urgency of teaching young girls well, in hopes that they will soon follow along. And further the claim that they can provide a morally superior alternative to the male sports culture feminists loathe.

While it is a good thing to exhibit good behavior and teamwork, respect for opponents and the games they play, the extent to which this demand is made also has the effect of making women athletes one-dimensional characters. It denies the reality that they are human beings, filled with the same contradictions, grievances, anger and unbecoming traits as men. Women may act out them out differently, and I’ll set aside for now the issue of whether that’s due to real gender distinctions or social conditioning, or some of both.

Role models or robots?

What is noticeable is how the desire to be “good girls” is a strong notion among many female athletes. They’ve learned well the lessons of their foremothers about being wholesome role models, instead of scantily-clad models in racy magazine pictorials emphasizing looks over athletic talent.

The rare cases of bad deeds off the court get a good denunciation within The Sisterhood as well. When WNBA star Diana Taurasi was charged with DUI two years ago, ESPN.com columnist MeChelle Voepel was especially harsh, suggesting Taurasi should be banned from the league’s all-star game. This is more than just another case of a sportswriter preaching morality at an athlete. Taurasi’s offense apparently was against not only the Phoenix community, but her team, league and sport as well:

“She is the first truly high-profile WNBA player to get in any serious legal trouble.

“Considering what a popular, visible and vocal presence she is for her franchise, the league and the sport of women’s basketball, this is as much a worst-case scenario as the WNBA hopes it ever has to deal with.”

Taurasi’s brash style is comparable to that of U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo, whose outburst after being benched in the 2007 Women’s World Cup semifinals catapulted her into a different kind of female athletic notoreity.

As Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl examined prior to the 2008 Olympics, Solo was frozen out by her teammates, not allowed to be in uniform or on the bench for the third place game and even the team’s flight home from China. He addresses the sisterly bonding established by the celebrated 1999 U.S. Women’s World Cup team that the fiercely independent Solo breached:

“No episode in U.S. women’s soccer history has convulsed the team more than the Solo saga, which has strained friendships and sparked fundamental questions about the nature of women’s sports. Did Solo’s outburst violate a team-first ethos that was a cornerstone of the U.S. women’s appeal and success, or was that mentality naive in the first place? Did her punishment fit the crime? And would it even have been imposed on a men’s team? ‘In England guys get in fights and arguments all the time, and usually within an hour or by the next day everything’s fine,’ says former U.S. men’s keeper Kasey Keller, who has played 17 seasons in Europe. ‘But to be completely ostracized? I’ve never heard of anything like that.’ “

And yet the meme of innate female virtue persists. In last Sunday’s game, Brazilian defender Erika feigned an injury that ironically might have yielded the Americans enough stoppage time to score. In The New York Times this morning, Jeré Longman referred to recent research claiming that women do things like this very rarely, as compared to male soccer players. Former U.S. captain Julie Foudy, now ESPN’s lead Women’s World Cup commentator:

“Men have a tendency to draw the foul much better than women. They know and understand pressure, when to go down even though they’re not hit hard. Some are brilliant at it. Women play far too honest sometimes. They take the hit, ride the tackle and stay on their feet. I do think that will change.”

Just let them be

Ironically, one of the teammates most adamant about banishing Solo in 2007 was Wambach. After beating Brazil, they appeared together on the ESPN Women’s World Cup set from Germany, talking about the mutual respect they had developed.

They’ve shared the same amount of sporting hell and now glory together, the staples of all great compelling sports entertainment. Braced around Wambach’s heroics were Solo’s moments: She saved a second-half penalty kick, only to have Brazil given a retake because of an encroachment call that has not been fully explained; in the penalty kick phase she made the clinching save.

This is the sort of thing that draws people to sports. Too see athletes struggle, and lift themselves back up, and the way the American team did, and not just against Brazil, but over the last four years, has been mesmerizing.

While I was covering the 1999 Women’s World Cup — still the best gig I’ve ever had — the euphoria of an unexpected moment was intoxicating. So was the too-good-to-be-true saga of the girls next door, hoisted as perfect “role models” for all the little girls of America and beyond.

This was employed to create the first fully professional women’s soccer league in the world. Longman again, following the demise of Women’s United Soccer Association, with blunt post-mortems from sports marketers:

“In other words, if the league had played down ’sugar and spice’ wholesomeness campaigns meant to attract 8- to 12-year-olds, and sold the concept of the players as strong women, the W.U.S.A. could have kept the youth audience and also made itself relevant to a much wider group of adolescent girls and young women.”

When WUSA’s successor, Women’s Professional Soccer, had barely gotten underway in 2009, there were calls to draw paying spectators with an appeal to social activism. Having covered the WUSA, I responded very emphatically that this wasn’t going to cut it either. Women’s sports has got to stop being about a cause, and at the pro level needs to be treated as a business. The business of sports entertainment.

What’s going to sell women’s sports in the long haul will not be an incessant appeal to virtue but rather to sparkling, dramatic entertainment that attracts adults and youngsters alike. As a female marketing friend who’s a fan of women’s sports often tells me, people don’t watch or buy tickets to sporting events to see role models. They want to be entertained.

It’s not a matter of needing more “bad girls” but rather allowing women athletes to be the fully human, adult creatures they are.

The United States takes on North Korea in its Women’s World Cup opener today (11:45 a.m., ESPN), and the center of attention is in the nets.

Perhaps the most memorable moment in U.S. women’s soccer since the 1999 World Cup was Solo being dropped in China after lashing out at then-coach Greg Ryan, who had benched her for a semifinal match the Americans would lose to Brazil.

Solo hasn’t backed off her claims, but more recently has been dealing with a more challenging obstacle as she recovers from  serious shoulder injury.

ESPN.com’s Jeff Carlisle details her comeback. Love it that Solo takes issue with the label of “outspoken.”

Because of this, is Solo an example of a woman athlete being punished for her blunt nature, when male athletes don’t face the same scrutiny? In The Post Game, Eric Adelson makes the case that this is the case:

“Solo apologized to her teammates, and boasting she would have made saves Scurry didn’t was not smart. But Solo is a competitor. She worked her entire life to win a World Cup for her country. She felt unfairly deprived of that chance. Of course she was upset. And she should be praised, not reviled, for answering a question honestly. The ‘I Am Woman Hear Me Roar’ shouldn’t only apply to positive sentiments. It sure isn’t that way on the men’s side.

“So if Chastain’s display of pride became an historic step, Solo’s display of defiance should as well. It’s sexist and condescending to think women athletes should be ‘ladylike.’ That’s a myth that’s propagated by (mostly male) media and enabled by a fearful female sports machine. Solo is a refreshing antidote to all that.”

The headline here is off the mark: It’s not sexism in American society, but rather a prevailing ideal in women’s sports in America, that makes this so.

Remember, now: Solo is brash and unapologetic about it, and doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with this. This is the flip side of Mia Hamm and the girls-next-door collective persona of the 1999 U.S. team. In Women’s Professional Soccer, Solo has come under additional fire for complaining about officiating and blasting opposing fans.

The very leaders of women’s sports themselves preach humility and stress the importance of adult women athletes being role models above all else. They don’t let these athletes breathe, painting them as one-dimensional, wholesome individuals whose behavior on and off the field is beyond reproach. They must be like this, for the sake of all the young girls who need positive examples.

Certainly Maya Moore, named yesterday as the repeat winner of the NCAA female athlete of the year, fits this vision like a glove. Moore’s personality, like that of Hamm, lends to this ideal. And that’s just fine.

But Solo can’t bury her personality. She dares to show that being an adult is complicated and messy, and that’s not a bad thing for young girls to understand. She knows that being a professional athlete, and now on the biggest stage in her sport, goes far beyond being somebody else’s idea of a cartoon character of circumspection. It’s about being an entertainer, and allowing yourself to be fully human.

The media may dwell on this about Solo all through the World Cup, but the women’s sports realm is the real handmaiden of this suffocating culture of virtue.

So long, Centre Court

The women’s draw at Wimbledon took a big hit Monday with the losses of Venus and Serena Williams, as well as Caroline Wozniacki, who’s got to be one of the weakest No. 1 players there’s been in years. Women’s tennis, writes SI.com’s Jon Wertheim, is in a state of disarray. That’s putting it mildly. It’s not even all that compelling any more, especially with another Federer/Nadal clash anticipated on the men’s side.

Quicker than Tiger

Biggest story in sports — not just women’s sports — that’s flown under the radar: The dominance of Yani Tseng, who won the LPGA Championship and became the youngest golfer since 1872, male or female, to bag four majors. The Chinese sensation is only 22, two years younger than Tiger Woods when he won his fourth. Yet Brian Murphy is troubled by the anonymity of all this:

“Yani Tseng is deserving of our attention not just because she plays the game with such power and precision, but also because we in the media were barking up the wrong tree for years. I was part of a media brigade that fell in love with Michelle Wie’s golf swing and charisma, and prematurely anointed Hawaii’s darling as the future of golf. Meanwhile, Tseng was the player who knocked Wie off her perch at the 2004 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links, when they were both 14 years old, and hasn’t stopped knocking competitors down since.

“If we were looking for the next great star who hit the ball so far it drew comparisons with the men, it was Yani, not Michelle. If we were looking for the next great star who would attack majors with a fire and hunger, it was Yani, not Michelle. If we were looking for the next great star unafraid to make history, it was Yani, not Michelle.”

Remembering the Babe

Donald Van Natta of The New York Times has recaptured the spirit and personality of one of the greatest golfing and women’s sports legends in his new biography of Babe Didrikson Zaharias, who would have turned 100 on Sunday. An interview with NPR, and an excerpt from “Wonder Girl:”

“She would show up and say, you know, who’s going to come in second today, Babe is here! And that over-confidence — really, she was a pain in the neck — I think intimidated many of her opponents throughout her career and really worked in her favor.”

Hope Solo, you’ve met your match.

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