Women's Soccer USA

Coverage of women's soccer in the US. If it's not here...it's not important...

September 10, 2008

Sex differences in sports

"But what this study is showing you is that, on some level, there's just less variance in performance, independent of the culture. You can give me any reason you like as to why that is, but it doesn't really matter; the sun rises in the East, water is wet, and men have greater competitive differences.
Strong variances make for better viewing. When teams and athletes are similar in abilities and performance, you don't have upsets, drama, storylines; you have parity on an individual competitor basis, which is to say you've got a lot of the middle muddling about.

Sports is about seeing who is better, and feeling that the differences are not utterly random, and that the differences matter. Women's sports simply have less of that; you can juice it up all you like with all kinds of reverse engineering and marketing, but it is what it is."