It is sad to say, but being put on the backburner is not something new to the world of women's athletics. Even in today's media rich world where athletes are tweeting from locker rooms and sports writers are live blogging from events, it is hard for women's sports to gain any positive attention. Even when the University of Connecticut women's basketball team was in the process of breaking the record of consecutive wins set decades before by John Wooden's historic UCLA teams, the media still managed to minimize the accomplishment by somehow arguing that this type of winning streak may be bad for their sport. Therefore diminishing the amazing accomplishment of these athletes, and the fact that they have done something no men's team ever has. Then this spring when March Madness was coming to a close and it was time for the championship games, the women again managed to outperform the men, staging a much more exciting title game. However, instead of being praised for their skills on the court, the women's game was only used for a negative comparison to the "boring" and low scoring men's game.

In her entry on the Sports, Media & Society blog, Erin Whiteside discussing the minor "Twitter assaults" that were being launched by men in order to emphasize just how little they were entertained by the men's national championship game of UCONN v. Butler. Immediately there were tweets being fired out to emphasize the point, and not only by the casual basketball fan but even professionals were joining in. Even CBS analyst, Roland S. Martin tweeted that "It is not a stretch to say that the women's national championship game will be far more interesting." This is a statement laced with contempt. As if the men's game was so painfully bad that even the women could manage to outperform them. What an insult to every female athlete in the country. Statements like thist succeed in reinforcing our culture's male dominated sporting ideology and consequently relegate women's athletics to second rate activities, only worthy of our attention when the male's are done doing the real competing. For a country that is supposed to be based on fair and equal rights, we are certainly judgemental to those things that don't 'live up' to our standards. Like women's athletics. I hope for the sake of any female athlete that women can succeed in sports without receiving fair media coverage, because if our contry has supposively come so far in women's rights yet we still react in this manner, I don't see things changing soon.