Running Up The Score Is OK In Women’s Sports

By Nancy Lieberman

DURHAM- In a recent women’s college basketball game, Duke beat North Carolina Central 117-28. If you are a sports fan, you probably assume Duke head coach Joanne McCallie took a beating in the media and from the opposing coach for refusing to call off her players after the win was securely in hand. After all, we constantly hear the story about amateur athletes at small colleges who go into the hallowed stadiums and arenas of dynastic state schools to take a beating in exchange for their share of the gate receipts. The professionals- and by that I mean coaches, not USC’s entire recruiting class- have an understanding that they won’t embarrass one another.

So did the Duke women’s basketball team get chastised in the media the way that Steve Spurrier did when his Florida Gators would dominate other football teams and keep throwing in the fourth quarter? Of course not- running up the score is perfectly acceptable in women’s sports. Is that because it doesn’t hurt female athletes’ feelings as much as males’ feelings? As a woman, I can assure you that this is NOT the case.

Thus, the question remains unresolved as to why it’s acceptable to run up the score in women’s sports. There’s one possible and very simple explanation- that it’s sportsMANship and not sportsLADYship, so the rules of fair play would not apply in their games. Of course, such a rhetorical examination opens up a hopeless can of worms. What do you call the keystone defender on a softball team- a secondbasewoman? Far too clumsy. Is the key reserve on a women’s basketball team the sixth female? That sounds more like a bad science fiction movie than instant offense. I have never heard Bill Raftery excitedly announce that Stanford came out “in the womantawoman!” Therefore, I am going to assume that women run up the score for some reason other than the fact that sportsmanship is a gendered noun.

[LEFT- Candace Parker has been perfecting her deadly set shot since her days at Tennessee.]

Since I was having trouble pinpointing the reason for why women like to embarrass each other, I consulted the experts. I called Connecticut coaching legend Geno Auriemma to get his input as a frequent curb-stomper, but his assistant said he had an appointment with former Huskies players Rebecca Lobo, Sue Bird, and Diana Tuarasi. By hook-up, I am going to assume that she meant booty-call, because everybody knows that Auriemma sleeps with all of his current and former players. Why a man hell-bent on exploiting his position of power to coerce young women into having sex with him would work in a sport where 80% of the participants are lesbians remains a mystery to me, but I digress. When I was unable to get in touch with Auriemma, I called Hall of Fame Tennessee coach Pat Summit. Summit said that one reason women’s teams are not afraid to run up the score is that they do not have to fear retribution down the road since the exact same teams are good every year. Since there is no turnover whatsoever in women’s basketball, it’s not like Tennessee, UConn or Duke are ever going to be on the receiving end of one of those 80 point beatings.

Summit’s explanation got me thinking about the fundamental differences between men’s and women’s basketball. Primarily, the level of athleticism changes the game entirely. In men’s basketball, if one team is getting embarrassed, one of its players could lash out at the other team and unleash a hellacious dunk on the dominant team where he jumps so high that he puts his balls in the defender’s face. In women’s basketball, you are more likely to find someone with balls than you are to find someone with the vertical to put those balls in a defender’s face. I hate to say it, but there is something very unintimidating about a two-handed set shot. I have had many people tell me that the good fundamentals make up for the lack of athleticism, and there’s a word for those people: wrong.

[RIGHT- Vince Carter puts his balls in Frederick Weis' face. Pause. Lisa Leslie cannot jump high enough to put her balls in anyone's face.]

Maybe several factors contribute to why women enjoy running up the score against one another: the rules of sportsmanship do not apply, the downtrodden team will never have a chance at retribution, and the lack of athleticism means that nobody will ever be punished for going out of her way to make her opponent look bad. But one explanation trumps all of these- nobody cares. Think about it, the reason that you were not appalled that Duke beat North Carolina Central 117-28 has nothing to do with your opinion of Duke or North Carolina Central; you were not appalled that Duke beat North Carolina Central 117-28 because you did not know that Duke beat North Carolina Central 117-28. You would be outraged that a girls’ high school team in Minnesota pitched a shutout for an entire game against a hard-working but under-talented opponent… if you knew that it happened. An autistic kid chucks in four three-pointers in twelve attempts and he wins an ESPY, but women’s basketball teams win by triple digits and still nobody notices. So there you have it, nobody cares about running up the score in women’s sports because nobody cares about women’s sports.