• Stern wasn't making a flip remark. Sports Illustrator writer Ian Thomsen explains he sent the question to Stern a week ago so he'd have time to think about it. Stern said he really believes it may happen, but "when you look at tennis, and this is the argument against me... As great as the women are, and actually in some cases I think their serves are served at a higher speed than men on the tour, like Serena's (Williams) first serve — you still get the sense that they wouldn't do well on the men's side of the tour... But in basketball, where it's a five-person game and you have zones and you can do a variety of other things — a fast person with a good shot that can play on the team? I think we could see it in the next decade or so ... I'll leave it to the real experts to talk about the muscle factor. But there's going to be a very strong woman who has all the moves, who's going to want to play, and she's going to be good." • If you're sipping from a can of Slim-Fast right now, drop it. Unilever is recalling 10 million cans of ready-to-drink products, regardless of flavor, "best-by" date, or lot code, because they may be contaminated with Bacilus cereus bacteria, which causes diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. Customers should throw the cans out and contact the company for a refund. • A group of Danish prostitutes say they are offering free sex to delegates at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to protest city officials asking 160 hotels not to arrange prostitutes for guests during the meeting. Copehnhagen Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard also wrote to the 500 delegates asking them not to take the prostitutes up on their offer. A representative for the women said: "It's completely discriminatory. Ritt Bjerregaard is abusing her position when she uses her power to prevent us from carrying out our legal work." •  A 33-year-old bouncer and ex-con has been charged with raping a woman in a Manhattan nightclub. Hunter Dupree allegedly cornered the victim, who was drunk and vomiting, in a bathroom stall. But Dupree's lawyer claims that she made it all up: "You never know who is going to come and say, 'He attacked me.'" •  Car safety experts from Virginia Tech University are hard at work developing a better seat belt for pregnant woman. They are in the process of creating a highly advanced model of the human body to use in testing. For now, experts advise pregnant women make sure the seat belt rests on the bony parts of the body, and that they sit as far from the steering wheel as possible. •  Sgt. Kimberly Munley became a hero when she helped bring down the shooter at Ford Hood, but Munley says her injuries will shorten her career. Officials say they have not yet begun the process of assessing whether or not her wounds will prevent her from rejoining her beat. •  A team of researchers have confirmed what the scientific community has long suspected: female researchers are greatly underrepresented on research articles. Women account for only 10-15% of authorship of the overall reports studied. One researcher suggests this may be because women have "other obligations that prevent them from dedicating so much to research." • Researchers had mothers complete frustrating tasks with each of their same-sex twins separately and found the moms whose negativity was most strongly linked with their child's challenging behavior had the poorest working memory skills. Having a stronger working memory allows parents to reason quickly, rather than lashing out at their kids. • New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate was sentenced today to three years probation and 250 hours of community service for injuring his companion by dragging her through the lobby of his apartment building. He had been accused of slashing her in the face with broken glass while in his apartment, but the judge said he couldn't prove her face was cut in an intentional attack. A Senate committee is still investigating whether to censure, suspend or expel Monserrate, who said he won't resign. • Former Senator Paula Hawkins, who became the first woman elected to a full Senate term without a family political connection in 1980, died today at 82. The Republican backed legislation that helped housewives find jobs after getting divorced and supported equalizing pension benefits for women by taking the years they spent caring for children into account. She also found to get day care for the children of Senate employees and and forced fellow senators to wear bathing trunks in the Senate gym so she could work out there too. • Jody Trautwein, the Alabama pastor who tries to talk Sacha Baron Cohen's character out of being gay in Bruno is running for mayor of Birmingham against 13 other candidates. An election is being held next week to replace Larry Langford, who was convicted of 60 felony counts in a bribery scheme. • The chestnut tree that was outside Anne Frank's window while she was hiding from the Nazis is dying, but today in Amsterdam, a sapling from the tree was planted in Amsterdamse Bos. Other saplings will be sent to schools around the world named after Frank and 11 locations in the U.S., including the White House and the September 11 memorial in New York. •

The sexy pictures are part of a newly-launched campaign designed to appeal to both potential FSU basketball players and fans. The new website for the FSU team features many pictures like the one above. In the "meet the team" section, each player has her own profile page, which is overwhelmingly dominated by a shot of the athlete dressed in a satin dress, exiting a limo. Although some clutch basketballs - the only nod to the fact that these are basketball players, not debutantes - others are straight up glamor shots (the most obvious example is the image of Kayli Keough, guard/forward). The main page shows the entire team in a limo, perfectly coiffed and smiling at the camera. Yes, they look great. They fully live up to their claim of "Confidence. Strength. Beauty. We've got it all." But it is hard not to wonder, what does beauty have to do with anything?

This is the question posed by Jayda Evans. In her column for the Seattle Times, Evans examines the re-designed site for the No. 15 team, ultimately coming to the conclusion that the emphasis on femininity and beauty indicates an underlying fear of being viewed as anything other than straight. She mentions the documentary Training Rules, about former Penn State coach Rene Portland, who allegedly had just three rules for her players: No drinking, no drugs, and absolutely no lesbians. Portland may have been more explicit about her homophobia, but the FSU website reveals a certain desire to move away from the actual game - where players are sweaty, strong and accomplished, perhaps frighteningly so - towards a much more polished image of female athletes as celebrities first, players second. Evans points out that attempt to make female athletes appear "powerful, beautiful, strong and accomplished" is just another way to gloss over the fact that they are being overtly feminized. For Evans, "beautiful" is translated as "attractive to men," and implicitly, heterosexual.

In a press release for the newly launched website, FSU coach Sue Semrau explains their decision to depict their players en route to some fancy shindig: "We feel it is important to set ourselves apart as much as we can... We wanted to have a product that would stand out to the people we are trying to reach." The "product" being not only the game, but the individual players. At Carnal San Francisco, editor Tim McElreavy suggests that Semrau's attempt to "sell" the game reveals a disheartening focus on the bottom line: "While it would be naïve to believe that college sports isn't or shouldn't be concerned with the bottom line, such words, especially from a coach, really seem to instrumentalize the players' achievements. Add to this business rhetoric the stereotype of the pretty woman, and women's sports marketing moves further and further away from the actual sport," he writes.

And to drive home this point, take a look at the website for the FSU men's team, where the players are portrayed in a rather different light. There is no doubt that this is about the "actual sport." Their website features pictures of the players in action. Their faces are contorted into grimaces of concentration while sweat pours off their bodies. Okay, it's not unattractive, but it's also not purposefully sexy. The emphasis is on the game, not the dolled-up players. While FSU women have to be "sold" and "appeal" to the public, the men's team can safely coast on the knowledge that people watch them play for reasons other than their sex appeal.

Women's Hoops Media Guides And Web Sites Getting Sexier [Seattle Times]
Glam Photos Show The Ugly Side Of Women's Basketball [Carnal San Francisco]
Glammed Up B'Ball Stars Spark Uproar [Newser]
Florida State University Women's Basketball [Official Site]

As evidence that the WNBA is still struggling, Levin cites the demise of the Houston Comets, and the fact that the Phoenix Mercury had to give away free tickets in order to fill the stadium for its championship series. The league is also a target of insults. Levin writes,

As the finals wound down, ESPN.com's most-popular writer, Bill Simmons, mocked his own network's coverage of women's hoops. "Tweets you won't see tonight," Simmons wrote. "Flip over to ESPN2, the 4th quarter of the climactic WNBA Finals game is on right now!" A few months earlier, Simmons encouraged one of his readers to go to a WNBA game wearing a T-shirt reading "EXPECT LAYUPS." And last month, the desperate-to-be-edgy Foxsports.com video series "Cubed" played host to a debate about which activity was more palatable, women's hoops or gay porn. (Fox Sports later cut that bit, explaining in a statement that it had been "experimental.")

Leaving aside the question of what's more "palatable," sexism or homophobia, it remains uncertain whether the WNBA will ever be able to pay for itself. As of 2007, Levin says, the league was losing between 1.5 and 2 million dollars a year. Explaining why, he writes,

The fundamental problem is that the sports world's primary spenders-adult men-have never shown much interest in watching women play basketball. For all the people like John Wooden who enthuse over the superior fundamentals of the women's game, there are thousands more who focus on what women can't do on the court. Dunking is not all there is to basketball-as your high school coach used to say, a slam is worth just as many points as a layup. But it's also true that nobody pays $1,000 for courtside seats to watch a layup line.

Of course, the lack of slam dunks may not be the only problem — there are probably many men who simply don't want to watch women play basketball. Fox's "gay porn" comparison may be revealing. The WNBA is popular with the gay and lesbian communities (as Levin mentions later), and some men who consider themselves red-blooded American sports fans may be uncomfortable with this association. Other RBASFs may not want to watch women play a sport they think of as masculine (as opposed to, say, gymnastics). Slurs about the "manliness" of female athletes were around long before Caster Semenya, and some viewers may think of WNBA players as like men, but worse. While some fans probably disdain the WNBA on gameplay alone, it's important to note that there may be other issues at work here.

Levin says the solution for the WNBA isn't to resolve these issues, but to concentrate on its base:

The audience for the WNBA is, by various accounts, between 60 percent and 80 percent female. The league also has a major following in the gay and lesbian community, a community that some franchises court and others aggressively alienate. If the WNBA focuses primarily on these fans, they can still have a large enough customer base to survive and succeed.

According to Levin, the WNBA will never score big TV or merchandising deals like its male counterpart does, and must instead maximize ticket sales by appealing to existing fans and possibly moving "toward smaller markets that are more likely to come out and support a professional women's basketball team." He cites as a model Women's Pro Soccer, a "grassroots-focused league that appears committed to sensible growth" and whose "core audience is 8-to-18-year-old girls who play soccer, their families, and 'fitness-minded women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.'" The idea of the WNBA succeeding on female support alone, simply ignoring male RBASFs, has a certain sisters-are-doing-it-for-themselves appeal. And Levin's statement that "you're more likely to succeed by marketing your product to people who already like it than by trying to win over people who don't" makes good business sense. Still, it's sad that in a country where so many women watch men play sports, we have to accept that men will never watch women.

How To Fix The WNBA [Slate]

[Washington, D.C., July 27. Image via Getty]

US President Barack Obama, holding a commemorative basketball and Obama jersey, stands alongside members of the WNBA championship Detroit Shock basketball team during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, July 27, 2009. AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEB (Photo credit should read SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Last Thursday, Summitt reached another career milestone, as the Lady Vols handed her her 1,000th victory, a milestone which, as The New York Times points out, "many feel is a milestone that will not be reached by another college basketball coach." Summitt, who has been coaching for 34 years, began at the age of 22, and said on Thursday night: "Never ever did I think I would coach this long, never did I envision this program winning 1,000 games. The fact this program was the first to do it is a great source of pride."

Full disclosure: I grew up in Connecticut, where, during women's basketball season, Pat Summitt was Public Enemy No. 1. She was our Darth Vader, our Joker, our Lord Voldemort, set to steal victory away from the hands of the Huskies. But like those legendary villains, I could not help but be fascinated by her. She was so badass. She was tough and ruthless and whenever the Vols beat the Huskies, you couldn't deny that they'd earned it— that she'd earned it.

Her impact on women's basketball is legendary: the UConn/Tennessee rivalry alone boosted the sport into the public eye, and 45 of Summitt's former players have gone on to become coaches in their own right, taking her intense coaching style with them. "The ones that choose to go into coaching," Summitt says, "people usually say, ‘Well, there's a little Pat.'" Nikki Caldwell, a former Vol who now coaches at U.C.L.A., claims that Summitt's style has been an inspiration: ""Pat just has a balance," Caldwell says. "She makes time for people. She treats her players like family. It's really admirable."

Summitt's latest accomplishment only ensures her legendary status. As Joan Cronin, Lady Vols' athletic director tells the Times: "She was hired at 22, she's coached 35 years. I can't imagine anyone doing what she has done ever again."

Summitt's 1000th victory can be seen here:



Pat Summitt Makes Tennessee A Cradle Of Coaches
In Her 35th Season At Tennessee, Summitt Reaches 1,000 Victories

USA's Lisa Leslie (R) tries to break away from Korea's Jungja Sin during their women's quarter-final basketball match USA vs. Korea c at the Olympic basketball gymnasium on August 19, 2008 in Beijing, as part of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. AFP PHOTO / FILIPPO MONTEFORTE (Photo credit should read FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images)

Susan Ziegler, a sports psychologist, thinks that the focus on the players' appearances isn't healthy for the athletes, as it diminishes their legitimacy. "Once you begin to worry about how the person looks as opposed to how she plays, you've crossed the line into dangerous play," Ziegler said to the Trib. "We're not really focused on marketing them as athletes but as feminine objects."

We live in a looksist society — you can be sure that Michael Jordan made so much money on endorsements not only because he was the best player in the NBA, but also because he was gorgeous. You think Larry Bird made anywhere near that kind of dough? But the WNBA's assumption that the perceived attractiveness of their players will draw men — and otherwise disinterested females — to the court seems foolhardy. Whenever I hear a man complain about women's basketball, he's whining that the quality of play is somehow inferior to that in the NBA, not that the players are "ugly". The Chicago Tribune asked Ziegler for advice on how to market Parker, and she offered, "As a pure athlete... As the top athlete in the country. Leave it at that."

WNBA Offers Advice To Rookies [Chicago Tribune]

Earlier: Tennessee Lady Vols Trounce Stanford To Win NCAA Title