By Katie Culver

Here’s a Super Bowl quiz question: Would you send your daughter to a football game in her underwear?

I wouldn’t. And yet, funny thing is, there’s women at every NFL football game in a close approximation of panties and bras. They just happen to be on the sidelines cheering — so does that mean it’s okay?

As a mom (and a football fan) who is raising children to believe they can be in the game, or at least relate to it, I’m disturbed by the skimpy cheerleader dress (or undress):

• They are the most visible representation of women at the game. They are on the sidelines; they are cheering for an all-male team in the patriarchal sport of football.
• Girls watching the game gravitate to the cheerleaders (most teams also have a “junior” cheer squad to capitalize) and the message they get is that their involvement in this multi-billion dollar, socially pervasive sport is limited to cheering on the sidelines, wearing inappropriate clothing. The subtext: Don’t bother competing because only your body is worth the attention.
• Those at home get up-close views of these women before and after every commercial break, which reinforces women’s “place” at the game (never mind that the commercials we’ve just seen typically feature disturbing images of women behaving in stereotypically, demeaning ways).

The question about cheerleader dress in public might spur a comparison to the beach. Sure, people wear revealing attire to swim and it’s no big deal. The difference is that men and women alike are dressed to swim.

Then there’s quasi-feminist argument claiming that women who have beautiful bodies should be able to proudly display them. The problem? In a setting in which the men are not only fully-clothed, but extra clothed (with more undergarments than anyone else present) women are objectified, and the presence of cheerleaders—displaying this much of their bodies— just reinforces hegemonic notions of women’s status in society.

Why should my daughter think the only “place” for her on a football field is on the sidelines, nearly naked?

I am willing to budge: When TV cameras show fully-clothed female coaches, assistants, or trainers – I’ll reconsider. Until then, I’ll push for cover-ups for cheerleaders. In some cold weather venues, I bet they’ll snatch them right up.

By Hannah Ritchie

Only one in four girls at Colleyville Heritage High School in Texas, my school, participate in sports while more than half of boys are on sports teams. This is NOT because girls aren’t interested.

Last December, 3,374  girls in grades 6-12 participated in a survey to gauge their interest in sports after a student filed a Title IX grievance. The results (and more so the comments girls wrote) were revealing. When asked the question, “If you tried out for a school sport but did not make the team, would you want to play that sport on a recreational level, for no credit, after school on your campus?” results showed 53.3 percent of girls answered “yes.”

In Texas, unlike some other parts of the country, students receive a required athletic credit by participating in sports only during the school day. Sports may also practice during, after and before school.

According to data from a Freedom of Information Act request I made to the district, even though my high school enrolled 1159 female and 1156 male students (in the 2007-2008 school year), only 287 — or 25 percent — of girls participated in sports. Meanwhile, 633 — or 55 percent — of boys did. Our girl’s participation rate is one of the lowest percentages in the country according to a study by the Women’s Sports Foundation.

So, why don’t more girls play sports at my high school?

1. Girls who played sports in middle school are shut out in high school – while boys are not (thanks to football)

In middle school, volleyball is an open-admission sport, mirroring the open-admission football program for boys. In fact, there are three middle school volleyball teams for girls, letting some who are new to the sports a chance to play on a developmental team. In some years, according to a Freedom of Information Act request I made to my district, more girls play middle school sports than do boys. Middle school athletics include options to play volleyball, football, tennis, basketball, track and cross country. Only tennis and basketball teams have try-outs.

In high school, however, boys are welcomed onto the football team without try-outs, which is why the football team has no cap (and in 2007-2008, for example, made room for 260 boys) while there is no comparable athletic team for girls (the largest team for girls that year was soccer with 58 participants).

2. You haven’t played club sports for more than 2 years

The message on the school website when I started high school two years ago (it’s since been removed) noted that, “High school athletics is not a place to learn a sport. You must be a skilled player to participate in athletics.”

At an information meeting for incoming 9^th graders, high school counselors told us that if we hadn’t played a club sport for at least two years we shouldn’t even try out for the team. Apparently it is a big hassle for counselors to rework your schedule if you sign up for a sport and then don’t make the team.

3. You ride the bus

No sports are offered exclusively within school hours. If you want to work out without competing, you are out of luck. There are not even free weight times to lift, unless a student is enrolled in an athletics class.

4. You are almost, but not quite poor

The reality these days is that students have to pay fees to participate in classes above the basic offerings — including band, choir, drill team and athletics. These fees are only waived if you qualify for free or reduced lunch (about 20 percent of our community).

5. A coach or other school official discourages you from playing

The executive summary of the survey showed that 99 girls said they didn’t play sports because they were discouraged by coaches; another 93 who had played sports in the past said they were not playing now because they were discouraged by negative remarks by a coach; and 54 who were presently playing would not play the following year because of negative remarks made to them by a coach. Ironically, the survey results showed that 77 to 89 percent of girls (depending on the grade) who participated in sports reported “really” or “somewhat” liking the experience.

When I reviewed the comments girls made on the surveys, here are some things they wrote:

— This year for my team at school (varsity volleyball) I thought that our coach was very harsh and did not have the rights to say that stuff to us. She really hurt some girls’ feelings and to do that is not what a coach should do.

— Transportation, cost, and practice times don’t work out for me… I can’t do after school practices at all because of my schedule at home and my classes, but I really would like to join school clubs and sports, if only the school could work with my schedule and with mine and my parents budget.

— I do not play soccer for the school because I was cut from the team and I do not plan to try out next year because the coach was not encouraging.

— The coaches play favorites and it is obvious to everyone and it hurts my feelings when they don’t have to work as hard in the sport as a non-favorite athlete.

— My coach makes fun of me frequently in front of everybody and he thinks its hilarious but it isn’t! I don’t think its mean — it’s just annoying!!!

Adults in the district may point to figures showing they are doing enough. But I think there is something wrong when twice as many boys as girls in my high school are participating in sports. Girls DO want to play!

Hannah Ritchie is a senior at Colleyville Heritage High School in Colleyville, Texas. She played volleyball in grades 7-9. She began looking into gender equity issues in sports in her school district as part of an English project on Title IX her sophomore year. The differences between gender opportunities became vastly apparent when her younger brother entered high school and was able to walk onto the football team. She hopes that in the future girls are given the same opportunities as boys.

Lebanon Valley College photo

By Laura Pappano

The phrase “college football” evokes testosterone-charged pre-U.S. Marine-style intensity and mammoth bodies colliding at ridiculously odd angles and high speeds.

That may accurately describe DI teams on Saturday TV or at bowl game time, but how about the 0-6 Amcats at Anna Maria college, outscored this season 302-90? (And the college just spent $2 million to build “Amcat Field” with real NFL turf!)

The team’s problem? Many players are “undersized.” On the upside, the school draws more tuition-paying student/players, kids get to play college football – and people love to watch and cheer on Saturday afternoon.

On some campuses, in other words, football is more about the “event” than about the quality of play. It is this community-enhancing aspect we hear about when colleges start football teams, which they have been doing in recent years.

According to an NCAA study, even as wrestling lost a net of 101 teams between the 1988-1989 academic year and 2006-2007, football added 78 teams (some football teams were cut; the net gain is 31 over that time).

But guess what? Most of the new teams – 49 of them – have been in Division III. (And this current year – not part of the study – is turning out to be a popular time for starting new football programs, the Amcats among them.)

So why can’t DIII football be coed?

There are – and have been – girls playing high school and even college football. Two seasons ago, Holley Mangold (who weighed 315, bench pressed 264 and squatted 525) was certainly not undersized or under-abled to compete for Alter High School in Ohio (they lost the championships by one point).

Mangold played the on the offensive line. But not everyone on the field needs to be as big or as strong as she is. At Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania, 5-6, 129-lb No. 93 is the Dutchmen’s kicker, Brittany Ryan (see photo). And at Trotwood-Madison High School in Ohio, No. 85 (nickname: Ocho Cinco) is 5-2, 114 lb. senior placeholder and wide receiver Kryshana Pierce.

Football is a spectacularly appealing sport with too much of a “No Girls Allowed” culture. It doesn’t need to be that way — especially in DIII.

By Laura Pappano

I can’t wait to see what happens when I tune in to the NFL this weekend. Will we see more dropped passes? Missed routes? Hugging and giggling in the huddle?

After all, the league is kicking off a month-long effort to support breast cancer awareness through its “Crucial Catch” campaign to encourage regular mammograms. Unlike last year, when teams handed out pink ribbons and sold pink fan T-shirts, this year players, coaches, and refs will be having actual pink-colored items touching their bodies.

Smartly, however, the NFL (as it does so well) has imposed limits on the amount of pink. About 100 players will be wearing pink cleats like this, others will wear pink wristbands, gloves, and helmet decals. The captain’s patches will be pink and they’ll use a pink coin for the toss.

Pink, as I’m sure you know, is a very dangerous color.

The explosion of pink merchandise (MLB, NFL, among others), like pink sports gear — from baseball and softball gloves to soccer balls and lax sticks — after all, has been positioned as a concession to female fans and girl athletes. Turn it pink and it’s a little less threatening. We’ve been conditioned to think of pink as soft, gentle, diminutive, a little ditzy, perky, bubbly….(you get the idea). Not hard core competitive stuff.

Of course, that’s precisely what University of Iowa football coach Hayden Fry insisted when in the 1970s he had the walls of the visiting team’s locker room painted pink to “weaken and debilitate opposing football players.” (In 2005 the color was extended to the carpet, urinals and lockers – setting off more than a little debate — photo here).

To be fair, the Iowa shade is a bit paler than the NFL is showing this month. Perhaps it is the difference between dusty rose and a near magenta? We can call it “Power Pink,” but there’s no doubt that the psychological signaling around this color is getting awfully confusing (for a change).

Just 10 days ago Nicole Lavoi wrote on her blog One Sport Voice, about the still-alive-and-well practice of a hockey coach belittling a player by making him wear pink gloves. Did this coach not know about NFL players wearing pink gloves? Or might pink –gasp! — be on the cusp of an image makeover?

Credit those who take a stand and raise awareness about the critical importance of cancer screening (and kudos to Susan G. Komen for the Cure for pioneering the pink ribbon as a symbol of breast cancer awareness in 1991). Heck, the other day I saw a pink oil tank truck and yesterday a pink newspaper landed in my driveway. If this isn’t a sign of success, what is?

Yet, how can we normalize the overly-loaded color pink when guys like my friend, political writer Dave Denison, point out that they have been trained since childhood to find the color repellant? (And Dave in print and in person is the quintessential fair-minded dude).

Can Dave be persuaded by the likes of Brett Favre to rethink his pink aversion? (To be fair, I’m not nutty about the color, either, but perhaps I, too, have fallen under Fry’s spell?) Maybe the NFL needs to stop being so timid and go full tilt. Make the jerseys and helmets pink (think of the merchandising – it could rival throwbacks!). Why not make the football pink? And who says the lines on the field have to be white?

Then maybe we could move past all this silliness about pink – and onto whatever is next.  Like, say, What color is prostate cancer awareness?

By Laura Pappano

Of course being hot helps. Good-looking athletes get our attention, whether we’re talking Danica Patrick or Tom Brady. It doesn’t make them any better on the racetrack or the football field, but it does attract fans and sponsors.

I get that.

But there’s trouble when we consider the broader implications of who gets a hearing and some respect in our society – whether it’s on the field – or on a campaign trail or in a boardroom.

Do we need sex to sell women’s sports? Do women have to be attractive to be listened to? Unfortunately, women are forced to occupy a very narrow cultural space in our society (bitch, bunny, or mom?) that’s tightly tied to our bodies.

Michele Obama may be smart and accomplished, but we are most comfortable talking about her outfits and messages about organic gardening and family nutrition. That’s not as scary as hearing what she thinks.

Isn’t it obvious that we need to expand the depth and breadth of female public images? We need women pioneers (more females on Supreme Court, in Congress, in executive suites, on Little League teams, represented as artists in museums, as directors in Hollywood, etc…). In other words: Normalize female leadership so it’s not FIRST about how you look.

Artist Lillian Hsu has just launched an art action and held a mass event last weekend in which supporters placed 8.5 X 11 posters reading “Beautiful Just the Way You Are” in front of magazine covers featuring all-too-familiar representations of glam-only objectified female bodies. Her point:  Intervene and interrupt the auto-absorption process that makes smart women feel inadequate if they aren’t skinny with perfect teeth and skin.

As Hsu puts it: “Before we are ten, and then without pause throughout our lives, we internalize the lesson that our bodies are how we will be first judged as individuals, and that there is a body type that we must attain to be judged worthy of attention.” And the judging of bodies she is talking about isn’t about what athletic feats those bodies can perform, but how hot they are doing it.

I’m not burning my bra  (‘specially my sports bra!) or throwing out the lipstick. It’s all right with me if Danica Patrick takes a Madonna-like command of her sexuality. But just as everyone knows that because Tom-Brady-the-model is pretty, doesn’t mean Tom-Brady-the-football-player isn’t tough, we need to extend that flexibility to women.

While we’re at it, let’s lose those tramp-victim-slut ads for jeans and perfume and popularize the scent of real female power.

By Laura Pappano

School districts are sweating. Budgets are tight and they are cutting in the same old places, including middle and high school sports. (A recent American Association of School Administrators survey shows the proportion of school districts cutting extracurricular activities, including sports, will triple from 10 to 28 percent from this academic year to next.)

There is also recycled talk about “pay to play” – not in the political-access- Rod-Blagojevich sense of the phrase, of course – but in the fee to participate. The downside: If the fee is too high some kids get left out. It does cost money to play sports and there may be a place for a nominal charge (say you buy your own uniform…or provide your own equipment). But one budget balancing option to consider: Pay to watch. And not just football.

Of course folks are used to paying $8 or $10 to attend high school football and, as a result, there is obvious focus these days on those revenues. The question is: Why do we pay this and what does it mean now, when budgets are tight – and later when this fiscal calamity has passed?

There is obvious attention these days on high school football revenues. The Tennessee Secondary School Association is fretting because dollars from post-season football play have been falling steadily since 2005, from $830,667 to $610,090 this past season. The Board of Control’s solution? They raised ticket prices for next year’s playoffs from $10 to $12.

They are leaning on the fact that people are used to paying to see high school football. At Gainesville High School in Florida, for example, the football team brought in $83,589 of the school’s $132,667 in sports ticket sales – plus about $105,000 through a booster’s club (including $60,000 for ads in the football program).

The high school’s athletic director, Wayne Vickery, told the Gainesville Times that football money is key: “Other coaches don’t want to hear it, but I’m sorry, football is a driving force,” Vickery said. “But that’s the way it is in the South. … Whether people like it or not, football pays the bills.”

The problem with this reality is the underlying presumption: Football (and maybe men’s basketball) are the only sports “worth” paying to see (or buy programs for, or support through booster fundraising).  It’s part of a familiar hierarchy in which football games are scheduled as Friday night community entertainment (or say Thanksgiving).

This budget crisis is an opportunity to insert some equity into the revenue-respect equation. It’s time to re-evaluate the paternalistic attention-sucking power structure that is high school football and share some of the wealth – and responsibility – with other athletic teams. Yes, I said, “responsibility.” It’s time for supporters of other teams to realize that athletics cost money and that it’s also worth dollars to watch soccer, cross country, gymnastics, wrestling, volleyball, swimming…

What would happen if a school district took turns featuring key athletic match-ups on Friday nights (and promoting and charging for them)? Track under the lights? Field hockey? Softball? Lacrosse? In the process, maybe school districts could expand their base of support beyond the football boosters to an audience (and pool of funders) that is largely untapped.

Sure, officials in Tennessee attributed their falling football playoff revenues on things beyond their control: poor weather and unexciting match-ups. But maybe we’re giving too much to and expecting too much from high school football.