Jemele Hill is probably one of the worst sports journalists to ever live. How she continues to get paid for saying some of the dumbest shit I have ever heard is beyond me. Everyone knows she sucks major balls so i wont devote much time to it, but her writing consists of either something completely obvious (sort of like me saying that she sucks) or something completely--and unnecessarily--race-oriented (like Scoop Jackson). My little rant on Jemele is neither here nor there because in the end she never really takes any risks (like saying that steroid testing in cycling is better than in American sports [where it is non-existent because we as fans just don't really want to know]) and that's a good thing because she would come off looking a lot dumber; just like her Page 2 buddy Scoop does every few days.
Now as I sit and dick around on Page 2 (ESPN.com) during work, contemplating suicide because all of the writing is horrible (besides Bill Simmons who is my boy because he likes the Sox and Pats) and completely useless to anyone who wants any information even remotely related to sports, I scroll down and start to look through Scoop Jackson's archive until I see a story titled Battle of the Sexes, which has got to be one of the single craziest articles "on sports" I have ever seen.
Before I get to why this exact article is completely and utterly ridiculous i want to point out a few huge topics that are taboo for me whenever you are supposed to be writing a "sports column:"
1. "Who's Now?"---This is probably one of the most retarded ideas that ESPN (thanks to the dumbasses at Page 2) has ever come up with. A bracket style tournament to see who is more "now" in sports? What does that even mean? It really has nothing to do with sports and more to do with who is more popular with the voters. This would be fine if it was airing on vH1 or E! or some other shitty pop culture station but instead they put this garbage on SportsCenter and then parade out some celebrities to talk about how much they want to fudge Maria Sharapova in her tennis outfit. Who the fuck cares if Peyton Manning is more "Now" than Vince Carter and more importantly what the fuck does matter! I didn't think that an athletes popularity mattered nearly as much as how they were performing on the field. There should never be an article debating this crap on any website, even if the TV station affiliated with it is running it.
2. Women's sports and Title IX ---I am moderately anti-women's sports, but as non-chauvinistically as possible. I mean there is no one on earth that can honestly tell me that watching the women's versions of a certain sport is nearly as exciting as watching the men's version. That being said, I am not saying that women's sports have no value and I am certainly not saying that we should not encourage and sponsor them at all levels. All I'm saying is that Title IX handicaps colleges and forces them to compensate for the large amount of scholarships that football eats up. It is completely unfair that in order to be PC and keep everyone happy we must get rid of baseball and wrestling at a great deal of schools. Why do the same amount of women and men have to get sports scholarships when interest in watching and playing sports is so far skewed toward men. I would compromise and say that all sports must be equal except for football because there is no single women's sport that takes up that many scholarships. I do not want to do away with women's sports because the competition, camaraderie and life lessons that they provide should be easily accessible to everyone, but at the same time we should not deny the access of some men to these virtues simply to keep the number of scholarships the same.
3. Be at total fucking idiot that and try to say something provocative but in reality you're only making yourself look like an ass---this is pretty self-explanatory and should not be a part of any journalism, sports or not. I hate it when people try to say something important simply to sell books or get website views. Scoop's entire article hinges on this idea and this leads me to my criticism of the article "Battle of the Sexes"
His argument is summed up by this gem, "This is not about greatness as much as it's about dominance. And how women athletes in their respective sports have come to define dominance better than men have."
----Let that seep in, really let that seep in and then try not to go kick the nearest cat. My problem with this statement is not that it is entirely wrong because sure these women (he references Stefi Graf, Annika Sorenstam, Laila Ali, and some track lady which we wont talk about because its track and no on cares about men's or women's track besides the Olympics which only happens once every four years) were very dominant, but they were dominant in women's sports; if you placed them up against any men from their respective sport they would get absolutely hammered. He makes a ridiculously vapid point by trying to assert that somehow being more dominant in women's sports is more of an accomplishment than being slightly less dominant comparatively in men's sports. Even if they do have more wins, KO's, whatever; there is no way that any of them could touch the most dominant men in sports.
It pretty much boils down to who really freaking cares if they were dominant in women's sports. It is a million times harder to be dominant in any sense of the word in men's sports when compared to women's sports. I mean how many female boxers are there? Probably about 7 and so if you are the best you are dominant over an entire sport of people, but for Michael Jordan to be as dominant has we was he had to beat the best competition in the world. Scoop also talks about how Stefi Graf is "more dominant" than Roger Federer, but Feds is in the prime of his career so we can't possibly know now if he will be more dominant numerically than Stefi who has been retired for 15 years. People might look at my counter argument and say well Scoop is right because technically they have more wins (or whatever stat) so they are technically more dominant if you look at the definition of dominant. To that I say you are dumb. That's all you can really say. Maybe if we didn't want sexism all through sports we should all only have one league where men and women should play and then we could really see how dominant they all were.
Scoop ends this groundbreakingly moronic article by saying, "Sad, ain't it? But that's the Title IX axis this sports world spins on. Makes you feel good that Billie Jean King was even able to get a bracket named after her, but at the same time makes you wonder why all four brackets (the brackets for the fucking 'Who's Now' bullshit which are Jordan, Muhammad Ali--not fucking Laila, Babe Ruth, and Bille Jean King) weren't named after women." Scoop misses a huge contradiction in his own logic that dominance is the most important thing in sports. He gets payed way too much money to write about sports and I'm willing to fucking bet that 99.9% of his articles are about men's sports because that is way more important to pretty much everyone. Also it actually pisses me off more that Bille Jean King got a bracket (instead of someone like Barry Sanders or Joe Montana) because besides beating an ancient Bobby Riggs 40 years ago no one gives a shit about her and in all actuality no one gives a shit about tennis on the whole (comparatively in the US to other sports aka ESPN viewers). Just to top off the bullshit in his stinkbomb of an article, women's sports are the exact opposite of "Who's Now" so for them to make even one of the brackets a women is contradictory to the entire concept. But I do not wanna go against my rule of sports journalism and debate this shit, but come on now Scoop don't kid yourself and try to convince people that being dominant in women's sports is even close to being dominant in men's sports. You should probably just shut up and stop trying to be controversial.
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