Mama, Don’t Let Your Daughters Grow Up To Be Sportscasters

Just read Julie DeCaro’s new book, Sidelined: Sports, Culture, and Being a Woman in America, which details what a slime pit the world of sports broadcasting really is.

DeCaro is an attorney turned sports talk radio host who, in her book, decries the piggish nature of virtually all men in the world of sports, from the male broadcasters to the executives who run teams and broadcast outlets, to many of the players, and certainly to the fans.

She’s right.

Men are pigs.

We are!

And nowhere are we more piggish or disgusting than when we are talking about sports.

Men love to talk about sports, and mostly in a very critical vein.

If you listen to sports talk radio, it’s a hate fest, and no one is spared.

The hosts and the fans alike chew up and spit out the athletes, the coaches and managers, the team owners, other broadcasters, the callers, and pretty much everyone else on God’s green earth.

The more you criticize, the hotter your takes are, the more notorious you become, and the faster you rise up the greasy pole that is the sports broadcasting ladder.

Women remain stuck at the bottom, DeCaro reports, trying to cadge “news” from football head coaches so they can breathlessly pass that news along to the (invariably male) anchors up in the warm confines of the broadcasting booth.

The “news” they cadge from the head coaches invariably boils down to, “We need to score more points” or “I don’t know how badly he’s injured.”

Uh, thanks.

DeCaro is right on the money when she talks about the despicable expectation on the part of team management that broadcasters cover up for players’ violence against women, because “you’re supposed to be on our side.”

Point taken.

But I have trouble with DeCaro’s core desire to work in a field that is negative and disgusting by nature.

In the law, there’s a concept called “coming to the nuisance,” in other words, if you buy a house next to a pigsty, and I mean a real pigsty with real pigs, don’t complain about the smell.

You moved there, and you knew pigs lived next door.

So don’t come crying to the courthouse.

DeCaro is guilty of “coming to the nuisance” — of trying to make her way into a disgusting pigsty…and then complaining that it’s disgusting.

There is nothing positive that you can say about sports talk radio, or most of sports broadcasting.

It’s just a bunch of guys ripping other guys, with no socially redeeming value.

And I say this as a dedicated, lifelong sports fan.

So don’t come around telling me that you’re shocked, shocked, that you don’t get treated any better than the men do.

About ten years ago, I was working on a book on the Olympics with Jim Lampley, a broadcaster who loved the Olympics and had covered something like twelve in a row.

At the last minute, however, Al Michaels decided that he wanted to cover the Olympics, and since Michaels was a bigger name than Lampley, he booted Lampley right out of the Olympics.

Just like that.

Which also destroyed the chances of our book getting published.

So it’s no better at the top of the greasy pole, where the superstars are, than it is at the bottom.

The whole entertainment/media world is a disgusting place, especially today.

Anywhere that let Harvey Weinstein go unchecked for more than a decade…need I say any more?

The short of it is that you can’t have it both ways.

If you want to be appreciated and supported, go into an industry where people are halfway decent and where appreciation and support are part of the culture.

You have to take the world as it is.

Sure, you can nibble at the edges, but you, DeCaro, and everyone in the world, myself included, will eventually go to our reward, and a new generation of negative, mean, crass, bullying sports talk radio hosts, guests, listeners, callers, and trolls will arise to take the places of the current ones.

I wish the world were a nicer place, not just for Julie DeCaro, but for all of us.

I hope she finds another career where she and her contributions are valued more highly, and where they actually contribute to society.

I’ll take my answer off the air.