Though women’s sports programs have grown, attention — and thus, resources — aren’t where they should be.
During the Women’s Football Alliance season, players find themselves traveling around their states — if not the country — to flash their pigskin prowess. They’ll do anything to chase that championship.
That includes shelling out a lot of cash.
Talking to several people from the Tampa Bay Inferno organization, I learned that the women’s semi-pro football scene is purely a passion play. When money from sponsorships runs out, the players are covering all of their own costs out of pocket. It’s not so bad during the regular season, traveling around Florida, but a playoff appearance means the Inferno and other teams are quickly doubling or tripling that number in half the time.
Players certainly go into the season knowing full well a championship run will require them to work more to foot the bills. If they didn’t love playing football, they wouldn’t do it. But a lot of that financial burden could be avoided with more sponsorships, which would be the next natural step from getting more eyes on the games.
I confess, I had no idea that the Tampa Bay Inferno existed until I got an email from quarterback Kim Shaw. I had no idea the Women’s Football Alliance existed until Staff Writer Breanne Williams, who is a fan of the Inferno, got excited when I mentioned I’d just heard about a women’s football team in Tampa. The only women’s football organization I knew of was the Lingerie Football League, which definitely wasn’t created because its audience wanted to watch women playing football for the love of the game. It’s refreshing to see a league for women operating as a similar men’s league would, and it’s great to hear from Shaw that many women are participating.
As the WFA is governed by the NCAA’s rules and has a 65 teams in several divisions, it’s theoretically a lot like watching college football as played by women in full gear. I know a lot of our readers love them some college football.
Of course, women’s sports are normally nowhere near men’s in terms of popularity — even when there are few differences from game to game.
It’s pretty good at the Olympics, especially for gymnastics. Because the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team is so successful, especially compared to our men’s unit, those women get a lot of deserved attention. And I have quite a few friends who can and will get hyped for women’s tennis or college softball at any time. But things tend to drop off then.
For example, a 2016 Syracuse Daily Orange story stated that, for the 2015-16 Syracuse University basketball seasons, an average of 21,909 fans attended then men’s games while around 752 showed up to each women’s game. Both teams play in the Carrier Dome, and both are highly-respected programs with a history of NCAA tournament appearances. The men lost 12 games that season, but the women only lost six. Both teams made the Final Four that season — for college hoops, that is extremely rare.
There are plenty of differences between the men’s and the women’s game and, having seen plenty of both, I know that people who grew up with the hype surrounding male athletes just think women are boring because far fewer of them can dunk.
I’ve noticed people chalk up their disinterest in women’s sports to the differences in the game. If you don’t like that women’s basketball, softball and others function differently from men’s sports as a result of physical differences, fine — not all sports excite me either. But if you take from that a belief that women aren’t athletic and don’t belong on the fields or courts, that’s just absurd.
I encourage anyone who doesn’t think women are athletic enough to play your favorite sports to watch them play your favorite sports. When people change their minds about women’s sports, we’ll see them flourish in ways they never have before and, hopefully, the Inferno’s women and other semi-pro players will be able to save on out-of-pocket costs. You can’t knock it until you try it.
