Female analysis neglected in sports

I don’t really know what to do with myself without a USC football game this weekend. And for a while, I really didn’t know what to write about, especially since I already used up my “Since there’s no football this weekend, you should support your other Trojan teams” column back in September.

(While we’re on that topic, please do try to make it out to the diving match today, the women’s soccer game tonight, and the men’s and women’s basketball exhibition games this Saturday and Sunday, respectively.)

But the bye truly gives us all a little more time to relax and take a look at the world around us, rather than being buried in the drama of Trojan football.

Sometimes that world, though, can be pretty messed up.

If you’re reading this column, I’m sure you’re a sports fan (or my grandma or something), and if you’re a sports fan, I’m sure you’ve watched ESPN’s First Take, which features Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith yelling over each other about their man crushes on America’s finest athletes.

The show has always been a lightning rod for controversy, but for once, it’s not Smith’s insensitive advice to domestic abuse victims or Bayless’ insinuation that Kobe Bryant’s rape charges made him more marketable that’s bringing attention to the show. Rather, it’s the disgusting tweets comedian Artie Lange posted about First Take host Cari Champion.

On Nov. 4, Lange, whose past work includes stints on MADtv and The Howard Stern Show, sent quite a few regrettable tweets about Champion, starting with “The chick on ESPNs First Take is so f—-n hot!”

Though many might attempt to rationalize that as a compliment that Champion should have been flattered to receive (a common indictment of women who stand up to sexual harassment), the tweets only got worse.

Lange went off on a rape fantasy set on a slave plantation, and likened himself to Thomas Jefferson and Champion to his slave in a number of explicit tweets.

The racism and sexism Lange displayed — which he defended by saying he knew black women who could handle the jokes — is unfathomable.

The first problem here is that females in sports media are much more likely to be valued for their appearance than are men who appear on screen, which explains why old men like John Clayton is still featured prominently on ESPN, while Fox’s Pam Oliver was booted from sideline reporting in lieu of the younger Erin Andrews.

I’m sure that women fawn over male sportscasters at an equal rate that men do over females. In fact, I’d like to extend a big thank you to Fox Sports 1 for putting Matt Leinart and Brady Quinn on America’s Pregame. The problem, though, is that our culture has deemed it acceptable for men to voice these desires in vulgar fashion.

Lange’s rant reflects this as well as some of the other problems in our society, which are magnified in the male-dominated world of sports media.

As Fox Sports’ Katie Nolan noted on her digital series, “No Filter,” women in sports media are “allowed to read headlines, patrol sidelines and generally facilitate conversation for their male colleagues.”

But females in sports media are pushing for more. Here I am, as the sports editor of the Daily Trojan, and I’m thankful to say I’ve never caught any flak for it — except when I wrote my column on disliking ASU and students over there found it and called me ugly.

Here at USC, the executive producer of The Water Cooler, a sports talk show on Trojan Vision, is female, and some of the most prominent producers and talent on Annenberg Television News’ sports desk are females.

My point here is that there are a lot of up-and-coming women in the sports media industry, and these women deserve the right to voice their opinions about issues in sports, not just to sit back and ask their male colleagues to give theirs.

There is nothing about being born with two X chromosomes that means a person shouldn’t be allowed to engage in a debate about Brady versus Manning, whether Kobe is over the hill, or if the Trojans ever had a legitimate shot to make the college football playoff.

Women in sports media should be valued for their analysis, not solely for their appearances. Yes, Champion is beautiful, but that’s not all she is.

Champion is a UCLA-educated journalist who has to wake up every morning and listen to Skip Bayless’ mental gymnastics on why LeBron James isn’t the best basketball player in the world. This alone makes Champion worthy of praise.

Twitter showed its support by starting an #iSupportCari trend. ESPN mirrored those sentiments by banning Lange from ever appearing on the network, and Comedy Central canceled his appearance on its show @midnight, which was scheduled for Thursday. Champion herself hasn’t made any public comment, nor have her co-stars on the show, but many other members of the sports media landscape, from Sports Illustrated’s Peter King to ESPN’s Hannah Storm have voiced their horror at Lange’s comments.

I’ll even take Chad Johnson’s tweet, “I want to go to Starbucks w/Cari Champion…” as an implicit show of solidarity.

I support Cari. Do you?

Aubrey Kragen is a senior majoring in communication. She is also the sports editor of the Daily Trojan. Her column, “Release the Kragen,” runs Fridays.