A hallmark of an ideologically shackled civilization is that everything is negatively politicized — even sports. Examples of this abound in our nation today, with kneeling professional football players and “Black Lives Matter” painted on NBA courts. So it’s no surprise that the magazine Sports Illustrated, which has long leaned left, has transitioned into peddling not just frivolity but also utter insanity.
As American Thinker’s Eric Utter reports:
The June edition of the magazine featured stories on the WNBA, the NBA, the NFL (about a player who left the league), the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics (and its effect on women’s sports), and basketball again, with reference to Prince and his song “Purple Rain.”
…But, for the second straight issue, there was no mention of the National Hockey League, though these issues came out just prior to and during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, one of sports [sic] most grueling and exhilarating events. This could not possibly be a simple oversight. Nor could it be a calculated capitalistic reflection of relative popularity and therefore its effect on the magazine’s all important bottom line. Is the league too white?
Moreover, there was no article on Major League Baseball. Really? A June issue with not one feature on the erstwhile “America’s Pastime?”
“Sports Illustrated used to have interesting special issues, including the ‘Sportsman of the Year’ issue and the iconic if notorious ‘Swimsuit Issue,’” Utter also writes. “‘Sportsman of the Year’ is, of course, right out, and has essentially been replaced by ‘Wokesperson of the Year.’ The swimsuit issue now features overweight and ‘trans women,’ and probably will soon sport photos of obese, transvestite, non-binary, genderfluid Communists involved in polyamorous relationships.”
But what really animated Utter’s pen was that June’s Sports Illustrated bore a cover featuring three Women’s Basketball Association players and reading, “NO EXCUSES: WHY IT’S TIME TO BUY IN ON THE WNBA (And why the reasons you haven’t are flawed).”
While sport is frivolity, this actually reflects a larger and deathly serious issue: how the Left has antipathy for market forces because they lead to the kind of unequal (or “inequitable”) outcomes leftists don’t appreciate. What’s more, the market lavishes wealth unjustly, the thinking goes, because it comprises knuckle-dragging great unwashed who are racist, sexist, bigoted, and “homophobic” unlike the enlightened economic oligarchy that should apportion wealth and fame.
If that oligarchy did, you might, for instance, actually know about the Colorado Silver Bullets. It was a women’s all-star baseball team, sponsored by Coors Brewing Company, that operated from 1994 through 1997 but is now defunct because, unlike the WNBA, it doesn’t have a sugar daddy.
That is to say, the WNBA has lost at least $10 million every year of its existence — which continues only because the NBA subsidizes the league.
The reality is that, as the Federalist reported in 2018, the WNBA draws fewer viewers on ESPN than does professional bowling. This is obviously because sports viewers are sexist — and probably racist, too.
Yes, and relatively few people watch amateur wrestling because they’re prejudiced against men in tights, heavyweight boxing is more popular than the lightweight class because Americans are “weightist,” and the market ignores premier high school athletes in favor of top-notch adults because it’s ageist.
Then again, it could just be that people want to see the better — and best.
Of course, there are exceptions to this. Consider that more people watch women play sports than 14- and 15-year-old boys. This is despite the fact that best among this age group outperform the women.
For example, our women’s national soccer team lost to under-15 boys, an FC Dallas academy squad, 5-2 in 2017. In fact, women’s pro soccer teams lose to young teen boys frequently, another example being Australia’s national team’s 7-0 defeat by an under-15 squad. Then there’s the 800-meter run, where the 14-year-old boys’ record is better than the women’s world record.
We could ask the leftists why, under their thinking, these boys shouldn’t get the same exposure and pay the women do. But the bottom line is that the NBA surpasses the WNBA for the same reason female fashion models earn more than their male counterparts: It pleases the market more.
And it does so because it’s a superior product (as the video below illustrates).
As the Federalist pointed out, “if anything,” WNBA players are “overpaid.” Relative to the market this is absolutely true.
Of course, don’t expect this to cut any ice with Sports Illustrated. After all, it apparently despises the market — perhaps because it’s failing within it, too.
