Are you upset about the lack of women’s coverage? Let your voice be heard! Post in the comments section of this post AND at the original article here. Post on Twitter with hashtag #2011CRC and mention @USASevensCRC as well.
Re-posted from Rugby Buzz:
This arrived in my in box in response to the lack of TV coverage on NBC during the USA Sevens Collegiate Rugby Championship earlier this month. If you feel the same, or differently, drop a line at RugbyBuzz@gmail.com and get the dialog going. The question NBC asks, though, is there an audience for women’s rugby? The note below would indicate yes.
BzMcRugby
Thank you for being one of the very few people to even pay attention to the fact that women competed in the CRC, and thank you too for not belittling their participation. I love Sevens. I certainly loved watching the men’s games, and the coverage of those games was commendable. But it’s regrettable, offensive, inexcusable, unjustifiable, patronizing, ridiculous, passively misogynistic, and (fill in your own various negatives here) that not only was the women’s competition barely mentioned, but there was zero coverage of it. We didn’t get to see it broadcast on TV and, to add insult, can’t even watch it on universalsports.com. Other than a couple highlight moments that can be found if one digs hard enough, it appears that, as far as Universal/NBC is concerned, there was no women’s competition. The biggest attention paid on-air was to rub salt in the wound by mentioning the inequitable GoDaddy scholarships — $20k to the men, $5k to the women. I’d like to believe we were slowly but at least surely evolving past the “oh, they’re just playing the girls’ version; girls can’t really play sports; no one cares or wants to watch them; men play the real game” mindset, but the complete lack of coverage combined with that discrepancy in scholarship rewards pretty much belies any hope of doing so. My mother’s and grandmother’s generations probably would have been less excited about Title IX if they’d known how little things would progress in the four decades since.
I understand that you were not personally responsible for Universal’s/NBC’s error, and in fact you’re to be applauded for not blindly following their lead in ignoring the women altogether. But yours was the address I managed to find when trying to figure out to whom I could send this complaint, so I’m afraid you “won” by default. Feel free to pass the message along to more appropriate recipients if you think there’s the slightest hope it would ever actually make a difference.
And now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I guess I’ll go don pearls, pumps, and hoopskirt and find something appropriately estrogen-acceptable and nonathletic to do. (I suppose if I wanted to preserve any chance of this viewpoint being paid attention, I should pretend I’m male, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.)
Thank you for your time and for your respectful articles.
Raven McKnight
Are you upset about the lack of women’s coverage? Let your voice be heard! Post in the comments section of this post AND at the original article here. Post on Twitter with hashtag #2011CRC and mention @USASevensCRC as well.
Share this:
Discover more from YSCRugby | Women's Rugby News
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
This is such BS!!! I can’t believe they posted that it WOULD be on TV and then didn’t follow through. Such a shame.
not only didn’t NBC show any of the women’s matches, but they showed the same matches at 4 that Versus showed at 2.
I know, that made me sad as well. Why not show some of the women’s games?
The WNBA is only on ESPN2 and not regular ESPN this week. Is that misogynistic as well? TV is a business and they showed what they thought their audience wanted to see.
I think you meant to say overreaction not overreation….
I think that about sums your comment up. If Women’s Rugby is never given the chance it will never grow. Isn’t growth at ANY level a good thing for the sport we love?
I think the women should show the CRC what up but doing their own event and getting it on TV. Show some leadership instead of just begging to sit at the same table.
I like that idea! It is exactly why YSC is starting a Media Company. Donate today to help move it forward!
https://www.scrumhalfconnection.com/tv/
Thanks,
Wendy
I know many people who don’t know much about rugby or watch it regularly and still stopped to watch some of the mens games going on. Its contagious, everyone who learns a tiny bit about rugby at the very least enjoys it. If womens rugby is never given the chance to be seen then it will continue to be just a foreign sport. Putting womens rugby in the public eye is what will make the difference between it becoming a more popular sport at the club and college level and watching all of our talented womens teams die out. I for one am sick of seeing world-class athletes go unnoticed.
If we don’t take a stand to change this it never will. We need to now so that the youth of womens rugby will grow and experience more than we did. Just because this is the way things are does not mean it’s right, women deserve the same respect as the men do.
Not covering ANY of the Women’s action is absurd and I know many many others who agree with me. Men, women, rugby players and non-athletes alike would have enjoyed and benefitted from watching. Thanks NBC and Versus for giving little girls the message that rugby is a sport solely played by boys. It’s insulting and should not be tolerated.
Since I’ve been playing rugby, I’ve been infuriated by the discrepancy in the media coverage between men and women’s rugby. NBC or any other broadcaster won’t be able to answer whether there’s a market for women’s rugby until they start airing it. Bloggers like Wendy and ScrumQueens in the UK do an outstanding job of keeping those of us who care in the know. But it’s time bigger media outlets stepped up their game.
We need more rugby coverage in general, and that includes women’s
rugby. As a player, U19, coach, and mom of a collegiate women’s all
star player, it’s disappointing to see the disparity between men’s and
women’s rugby. The olympic inclusion of 7′s rugby is a HUGE springboard
for 15′s also, and the potential to have rugby become a household word
should include ALL rugby. Let’s not waste this pivotal spotlight
moment…
The lack of women’s rugby coverage just about killed me because don’t they realize that some of the sport’s (both men’s and women’s) biggest fans are women ruggers? (Or in the case of me, former rugger.) Sadly enough, my bar for coverage wasn’t exactly high–I was just hoping to see the final game. Instead, what we all got was interviews of players and the same rehashed history of the men’s game.
I guess my reaction when it comes to a lot of this is: don’t you realize you’re leaving a bad taste in the mouth of a significant percentage of viewers? I mean I would think taking steps to avoid that would be a no-brainer.
Many sports have different rules for men and women, making for different views on television. Rugby does not change the rules for women and neither should NBC.
I thought NBC prided itself on being equal and showing all walks of life. Women playing rugby is a reality and we all want to watch. NBC should think about the half of the population it is missing when it doesn’t show women’s games.
Very frustrating. I’m interested in creating a facebook petition.
I am disappointed – I thought that at least the women’s final , or final highlights, would have made it on the telecast, and that at least a few of the women’s matches would have made it onto Versus.
Women’s rugby is boring, and women’s 7s is like watching paint dry. Nobody except for the players and their parents want to watch the women’s games. Quit whining and accept that the feats of athleticism demonstrated by the men’s teams were far more interesting and entertaining. If NBC was a charity organization maybe they would play the women’s games but they are a company that realizes what people want to watch and they catered to the demand.
The crc’s had 12 hours of air time… and they couldn’t be bothered to even play the 14 minute women’s championship game.