More people will watch Super Bowl XLV this Sunday than tuned in for the President’s State of the Union address last week.

It’s not even close (42.8 million watched President Barack Obama vs. an expected 110 million). That’s no dis to Obama because George W. Bush was out-viewed, too.

The issue is not just the NFL and the Super Bowl. As a sport, football obliterates all other sports in just about any category you can name – at any level. Share of athletic budgets? Number of players required? Cost of equipment? Institutional support? Media attention? Fan focus? Ticket prices?

Honestly, how many parents battle one another to work the concession stand at the high school gymnastics meet? Oh, they don’t have boosters selling snacks? Point made.

Why is football so culturally dominant – and is that a problem? I do not have answers, but I do have thoughts.

1.     Do we like football because it’s violent? The game has always been dangerous (when it was primarily a college sport, young men died every year playing until President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 called representatives from Yale, Harvard, and Princeton together to change the rules – and save the game). Ben McGrath in the New Yorker argues (and he’s not alone) that the concussion crisis is threatening the future of football. But is that bone-crushing intensity and threat of injury exactly why people watch (think auto racing and car crashes)? Does risk appeal?

2.     Is football popular because it’s popular? Has football become the de-facto community-gathering event because it’s where everyone is? The fact that it’s played once a week – and not every other day – makes it easier to follow and discuss because there’s less to miss. Plus, of course, we should thank TV for making it impossible to overlook any key pro or college play. Ever. Scary thought: Is football the closest thing we have to a shared discourse?

3.     Is the sport just a troublesome guilty pleasure? Because it’s a fun game to watch – a highly physical chess match that unfolds slowly enough to allow analysis between plays – we may overlook the negative messages and fallout, not only of the game, but of the hyper-celebrity, bad behavior, macho show-off trash-talking values. The game may have started as a noble effort to prepare college men for future leadership, but that faded long ago.

4.      If football is such a great and important game, shouldn’t more girls and women play it, too? The amount of social, cultural, and financial capital expended on football suggests that it matters beyond the gridiron. If that’s the case we owe it to females to have the same encouragement, support, and access to the game as their male counterparts. It’s not unlike barring women from combat roles in the military. Keeping them out in the name of “protection” also keeps them from experiences critical to career advancement.

5.     If football is special, is that a problem? Ever? The NFL may be the most lucrative sports league in the world, but when we get to levels below pro – grade school, high school, and college – shouldn’t there be some sober accounting of spending public dollars to amplify the status of a relatively small group of individuals just because they play football? Is it right for a Texas high school to spend $60 million on a football stadium? The NFL may be its own case, but the brand reaches all the way down the line, disrupting any semblance of equity between football programs and everybody else. That, in my mind, is a problem.

This is a good Monday for the NY Jets: A smashing victory against rival NE Patriots – and the team won’t face punishment from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for “unprofessional conduct” by coaches and players in the Ines Sainz case.

Or obvious punishment, that is. Jets owner Woody Johnson has agreed to underwrite a program to train players on appropriate conduct with the media in the workplace – something Christine Brennan has tweeted, could cost him $160,000.

The quick-thinking inoculation by the Jets to call in the Association for Women in Sports Media and Johnson to offer to underwrite the training shows there have been major advances in the NFL treatment of female reporters in the past 20 years. At least now, throwing balls and acting like a frat boy is considered wrong.

Not so on September 17, 1990 when Boston Herald reporter Lisa Olson was sexually harassed by NE Patriots players in the locker room. Despite an encounter that was so lewd and graphic that Olson called it “mind rape” – then Pats owner Victor Kiam labeled Olson “a classic bitch.”

Yes, there’s been progress. But it’s puzzling: Why is the NFL just getting to this sort of training now?  And if the Jets are essentially paying a $160,000 fine, why doesn’t Goodell use this incident to send a message (as he so often does)?

Is this case different because Sainz was wearing super-tight jeans? Naturally, some have suggested that Sainz – whose provocative dress and conduct – was “asking” for trouble or that she was just seeking attention for herself and TV Azteca (if so, mission accomplished!).

But for a league and group of professionals  1) whose life is spent learning, memorizing and practicing choreographed plays 2) whose game day dress rules are so precise that having a towel larger than 6”X 8” is a $2,500 uniform violation, and 3) whose entire chess-like match-ups reward forethought of the kind that if they run-this, we’ll-run-that, it seems 4) unbelievable that no one could have imagined this play.

Call it The Meadowlands Fool: A blonde TV journalist-slash-model steps up to the line of scrimmage before the snap and throws a few glances and then – with stunningly little effort – opposing players (and coaches, too!) jump offsides.

The NFL is all about gamesmanship, and having one more play than your opponent. Why weren’t the Jets ready for this? And if they erred, why does Goodell still have the penalty flag in his pocket?

The abrupt folding of the St. Louis Athletica, forcing the Women’s Professional Soccer league to mid-season reshuffle its schedule, was the latest reminder of a nagging problem: Making money in women’s pro sports. (Or merely staying solvent).

This has nothing to do with quality of play or competition.  The games are terrific, fan-friendly, compelling sporting events. It is not about the product.

Yet, the WPS can feel more like an old-style barnstorming circuit than a league. Granted, when one talks of sports “leagues” these days, the NFL jumps to mind with its attendant successes  and challenges  (such as the Supreme Court’s rejection of the NFL’s argument that it should be immune from anti-trust violations because it is a single entity not a collection of 32 teams or a possible player lockout in 2011.)

Unfortunately, these are headaches that WPS (or the WNBA, for that matter) could only dream of having. It is blatantly unfair to compare the NFL and women’s sports. But what turned the NFL from an afterthought to dominance in America’s (and soon the world…?) sporting conscious was effective marketing and promotion. (Book recommendation: America’s Game by Michael MacCambridge).

Here’s where Australian Netball comes in.

Last month in Sydney I had a chance to talk with Kate Palmer, the CEO of Netball Australia about how they revamped this women’s pro sport and in two years have made it into a $21 million business (I know, not NFL figures, but a start…) with a large fan following, TV exposure, and full sponsorship.

What they did reflects a strategy that recognizes that fans watch sports not just because they inherently love the sport, but because they are entertained. Who would have thought netball would be compelling TV? This is not to suggest that the WNBA or the WPS are not building a market (they are), but to offer a window on something that’s working.

“We refreshed the product,” says Palmer. “We looked at the way it was presented. It’s an entertainment product, not just a sport.”

Here’s what Palmer and her team did to take a sport played by 1.3 million Australian women and about 30,000 men and make it a popular fan sport:

1. In revamping the sport, they focused on what customers wanted who watched on TV and attended games.
2. Created competition with New Zealand. Research shows that women’s sports coverage increases during the Olympics; there is also heightened interest in nation-based competition.
3. Got an agreement with ABC in Australia ( the public broadcasting station) to show the games on TV.
4. They changed the rules to speed up the game.
5. They put more cameras on the court to be able to get closer to the action and show more angles of play.
6. Changed the women’s uniforms, says Palmer, to make them, “not as girly.” Now, she says, “they look really athletic.”
7. Uniform courts/branding. The court areas are uniform at every venue and Netball Australia brings in its own branding and marketing to every game venue. (This uniformity obviously also serves sponsors who know how they will be presented at every game).

As a result, says Palmer, the average women’s professional netball player makes about $30,000 for the April through August season. Stars (with sponsorship dollars) earn about $100,000.

“We did a lot of research. It was really about understanding the market and making sure our partners leveraged the heck out of us,” she says. “We’ve created a $21 million business. We are financially sustainable. We are oversubscribed with sponsors.”

Netball Australia CEO Kate Palmer

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.

1. A legitimately equal opportunity to develop athletic skills and play sports — from the start.

This means: girls should be handed a ball (instead of a doll or toy purse) as soon as they can hold something. They should be dressed appropriately so they can run, climb, jump as much as boys do. Girls should be taken to watch sporting events and have pictures of female athlete role models hanging on their walls. And girls should have as many options as boys to play sports as early as possible in their lives.

2.     Equal air time on major networks and ESPN for MY sporting events, such as prime time for Women’s college basketball and (can I add LESS time and money spent on #*&$@&^$ football?)

3. Hot male commentators at every televised game (and yes, we should wonder if they really know anything about the game as they interview coaches). They should also be dressed interestingly enough that we viewers can comment on their clothes and hair.

4.   Commercials that offend men during football games (is it possible?!) Men in speedos (and heels?) serving drinks to women in a bar or women picking up men with ridiculous lines using  actual film clips taken from top female coaches’ press conferences.

5.     A major stadium built primarily for women’s sports (with luxury boxes featuring top women-owned companies, actually clean bathrooms, and that sell jerseys of female athletes in XXL).

6. The cover of ESPN devoted to top female athletes (wearing clothes).

And while you’re at it, Santa, please bring all of those poor NFL cheerleaders some football-weather appropriate outerwear.

It’s Thanksgiving and aside from turkey and family, this holiday is about football. What does a celebration of early American settlers and indigenous people coming together in prayerful feasting have to do with gladiator-style battle for territory and pigskin? It hardly matters. Football (plus turkey) rules.

I love football. I will actually play in a family football game today (yes, I brought my cleats, family — watch out!) and will absolutely relish body-faking my kids and (hopefully) catching a well-thrown pass (attention: Derek) in the endzone.

I love watching football on TV. The NFL is a study in effective marketing, packaging, and production of something that before TV was in danger of being just another sport (kudos, Bert Bell).

But here’s the problem: Like a dominating older sibling who takes up all the air in the room, football simply commands too much money, attention, and status in settings in which fairness and equity matter (READ: high school and college). The issue is amplified — not caused — by football’s identity as a testosterone-charged game that discourages female participation.

Today, high school football stands will be populated by people who like lapsed parishioners  on important holidays make the pilgrimage to celebrate the community’s men-in-training. Tonight, local TV news stations will feature highlights of teenage boys battling storied rivals.

The cameras will not glimpse, unless by accident, the girls in short skirts  who have worshipfully decorated lockers, baked treats, and shouted encouragement to the hero-boys. There will be no recognition of girls and boys who have run record times in cross country meets, no nod to the state championship field hockey team nor to the soccer players who finished a spectacular season.

It does not matter whether the football teams are actually any good. The booster clubs selling snacks and talking about players as if they were NFL prospects, don’t care. They — we — have collectively decided to make them the centerpiece of our communities.

It is a lot for the players to bear. And even more to bear for all the other athletes who play to empty stands and tiny agate at the end of the sports pages. Who says football must be the only sport worth gathering for on Thanksgiving Day?

NM soccer player Elizabeth Lambert’s hair yanking, punching, and nasty behavior have gone viral. She’s being labeled the “dirtiest player” in women’s soccer and – depending on who’s writing or talking – all of women’s sports.

What makes Lambert’s behavior so outrageous (aside from being captured on video) is that girls are supposed to play nice.

The image of female athletes as more than skilled players – as good, wholesome people – is a centerpiece of women’s sports and a staple of marketing, promotion, and ticket-selling, particularly in basketball and soccer.

This has been both a benefit and a limitation that has helped shape women’s sports as “gentler” fare.

Of course, Lambert is not the first athlete to get in trouble for hair pulling. Last month, Oakland Raider’s defensive tackle Richard Seymour was reportedly fined $7,500 for pulling Broncos tackle Ryan Clady’s hair (also caught on tape). In August, Semi Tadulala, a Fijian rugby player, faced a one match suspension after pulling the ponytail of Eorl Crabtree during play between the Bradford Bulls and Hudderfield Giants.

Hairpulling, like grabbing opponents’ privates in the football pile-up or purposely seeking to injure another player, is blatant dirty play. Unfortunately, nasty play is more common than you’d think, though less so among female athletes.

A study on sportsmanship by the Josephson Institute asked male and female high school athlete about questionable scenarios (test your own sportsmanship here). They found:

–    29 percent of males felt it was all right to “attack” a pre-existing injury of a top scorer on the opposing team (another 22 percent were unsure). Among female athletes, 66 percent knew such behavior was improper.
–  69 percent of males and 55 percent of females felt it was all right for a hockey coach to put a player on the ice specifically to intimidate opponents and protect the team’s players.
–   43 percent of males and 22 percent of females believed it was okay for a basketball coach to teach young players how to illegally push and hold in ways that were difficult for referees to detect.

A family-friendly, role-model-for-kids image hardly holds up with someone like Lambert on the field. On the other hand, this is likely the first time SportsCenter, the NFL pre-game show on Fox (from Afghanistan no less!), and thousands of sports talk radio shows across the country gave air time to women’s college soccer.

This is where men’s sports (and the broadcasters whose definition of “hockey highlights” are on-ice brawls) could use a little self-reflection. As a society and fans who value fair play, we should spend some airtime and outrage on bad on-field behavior among male athletes, too. The integrity of players — male and female — is what makes sports bigger than the game.

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.

Pink is nice, but how about baby blue?

If the NFL wants to leverage the resources of Monday Night Football (and Sunday day and night football, too) on a public health issue — and do it in a gender-coded manner — how about a prostate cancer campaign?

Why not speckle the player’s arms, coaches hats and referees shirts with a bit of baby blue?  Prostate is the number one cancer among U.S. men (breast cancer is #2 among women – behind lung) and messaging about prostate cancer screenings could reach more than 8 million men.

Or, could the NFL draw attention to testicular cancer, known to strike young men aged 20-34? Sounds like prime viewership of NFL football to me.

Sadly, the men watching this testosterone-charged sport hear strikingly little about prostate or testicular cancer when compared with the flood of breast cancer awareness messages women receive.

Absolutely: Breast cancer awareness is an incredibly important cause, but it is already heavily lobbied by a variety of non-governmental organizations and businesses. (Last year, the National Cancer Institute spent more than $572 million on breast cancer research, nearly twice as much as on prostate cancer. Even though they have about he same number of new cases each year, the mortality rates for prostate cancer are slightly higher overall — and significantly higher among African American men, according to a 2008 American Cancer Society report – see p. 44).

Breast cancer is an almost entirely female disease, and the messaging that was most clearly delivered last night by the announcers (get mammograms!) is aimed at women over 40. One has only to consider the viewership to see that the NFL message hit a relatively small “target” audience. (The NFL audience is 66% men, with an average age of 45 — hence all the ads for beer and erectile dysfunction drugs.)

My point is not that the breast cancer campaign is worthless — or even bad. No doubt, the NFL effort contributes to breast cancer awareness and helps to keep this burdensome disease center stage.

But just think what the NFL could achieve were it more strategic with the health messaging it chooses to endorse rather than simply jumping on the breast cancer bandwagon.

Lauren Taylor is assistant lacrosse coach at Yale, former three-time college All-American, and 2009 graduate of the Yale School of Public Health who now works for the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute.

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?