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Wendy Parker

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As seen in: East Cobb News, Sports Biblio Reader, Medium, MSN Canada, CBC Manitoba, WABE-FM (Atlanta, GA), Atlanta Magazine, Overdrive, BlueStar Media
Covers:  soccer, sports and culture, women's sports, sports history, olympics, college athletics, sports books, sports business
Local news yokel: editor and publisher @EastCobbNewsNow; recovering sportswriter @AJC.
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Soccer's American television evolution

Soccer's American television evolution

www.wendyparker.org — (This is the second in a series of posts this week about the World Cup, which kicks off June 12 in Brazil. Monday's post was about FIFA dealing with match-fixing and corruption allegations.) Twenty years ago this summer, the lead announcers for ESPN 's coverage of the World Cup in the United States were Roger Twibell and Seamus Malin. Remember them? For anyone tuning in then, or old enough to remember, those were heady days for American soccer. Finally, the sport was coming out of some very dark shadows and into the sunlight of international sporting prominence.
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The World Cup and FIFA's discontents

The World Cup and FIFA's discontents

www.wendyparker.org — (This is the first in a series of posts this week about the World Cup, which kicks off June 12 in Brazil.) FIFA, the international soccer governing body, is no stranger to facing serious allegations of corruption over bids, match-fixing and disorganization related to the World Cup. But with a week and a half before the 20th World Cup kicks off in Brazil, the Lords of FIFA have been sledgehammered with concerns over all three without much time for anything but a defensive reaction.
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The enigmatic legacy of Landon Donovan

The enigmatic legacy of Landon Donovan

www.wendyparker.org — A few days before the United States played Germany in the 2002 World Cup quarterfinals, some of us in the American press corps got to spend extended time with Landon Donovan. After his dazzling goal against Mexico in the second round, Donovan was becoming the prodigal face of American soccer that had been anticipated. A newspaper columnist in Riverside, Calif., near Donovan's hometown and who had tracked Donovan's stellar youth career, was dispatched to South Korea. For more than an hour in the players' recreational suite at the U.S. team hotel in downtown Seoul, Donovan answered question after question, patiently, matter-of-factly, without any hesitation.
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Here we go again: Gender and coaching women's basketball

Here we go again: Gender and coaching women's basketball

bluestarmedia.org — I really don't want to revisit this in June, but a couple of recent, widely-distributed pieces by mainstream media outlets about one of the persistent bugaboos of women's college basketball -- the gender of the coach -- need a proper response. When Arkansas hired Jimmy Dykes more than two months ago to lead the women's program, I wrote at the time that I didn't think much of the choice because he had absolutely no background in the women's game. I heard from a number of coaches, including men in the women's ranks, who felt the same way.
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Gender and Coaching: The Myth of 'The Glass Sneaker'

Gender and Coaching: The Myth of 'The Glass Sneaker'

bluestarmedia.org — The problem with studies like these is that the conclusions are based only on a facile collection of statistics, and rooted in a three-decades-old grievance that the college sports establishment is routinely conspiring to deny women career opportunities in coaching.
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Beyond Title IX: The Book

Beyond Title IX: The Book

www.amazon.com — This is a self-published e-book (available on Amazon.com) that is an extension of my 2011 blog series, Women's Sports Without Illusions. This is a contrarian view of women's athletics, a strong departure from the orthodoxy of the Women's Sports Foundation, et al, but one that I believe is truer to the intent and spirit of Title IX.
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How to become a coach, the Arkansas way

How to become a coach, the Arkansas way

bluestarmedia.org — On the agenda of the Women's Basketball Coaches Association convention at the Women's Final Four later this week is a workshop in the "Learning Lab" category entitled "So You Want to Be a Head Coach Someday? Let Us Tell You About It." The featured speakers are Cori Close of UCLA, Mike Neighbors of Washington and Tennessee assistant Jolette Law, formerly the Illinois head coach. They've long cultivated the vineyards as they worked their way to the top, patiently paying their dues, developing relationships and taking advantage of opportunities. All three undoubtedly will dispense time-honored wisdom and sound advice for those aspiring to join them.
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Why won't K-State let Leticia Romero go?

Why won't K-State let Leticia Romero go?

bluestarmedia.org — One of the most heralded freshmen in the nation rocked her sport this week with the news that she's transferring . But while Diamond DeShields figures out her next move, with the apparent blessing of a release by Sylvia Hatchell, her stunned coach at North Carolina, another top freshman performer is being blocked by the athletic department at the university she attends from going elsewhere without losing her scholarship. Even before the DeShields drama unfolded, Leticia Romero spoke out about Kansas State's refusal to let her transfer following a coaching change that she decided wasn't in her best interest.
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Conversation continues on Ackerman white paper

Conversation continues on Ackerman white paper

bluestarmedia.org — Several months after the Val Ackerman white paper sprung several influential corners of the women's college basketball community into action, the NCAA invited the so-called "stakeholders" of the sport to meet about it at the Women's Final Four. The NCAA didn't wait to make significant changes to the tournament format, reverting back to top 16 seeds hosting next year and moving back to Friday-Sunday Final Four playing dates starting in 2017. The Women's Basketball Coaches Association summoned board members to Atlanta in late summer, forming several working groups on topics ranging from youth and coach development to business and marketing, the latter of which became the focus of a special all-day meeting at the start of the WBCA convention.
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Ain't misbehavin': Celebrating women athletes as entertainers

Ain't misbehavin': Celebrating women athletes as entertainers

www.wendyparker.org — What’s going to sell women’s sports in the long haul will not be an incessant appeal to virtue but rather to sparkling, dramatic entertainment that attracts adults and youngsters alike. As a female marketing friend who’s a fan of women’s sports often tells me, people don’t watch or buy tickets to sporting events to see role models. They want to be entertained.
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Women’s Sports Without Illusions: The Series

Women’s Sports Without Illusions: The Series

Extracurriculars (wendyparker.org) — This series, published in 2011, examines nearly four decades of the women’s sports movement, and assesses the next phase of the development of athletics for girls and women.
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The eternal lure and brutal eloquence of football

The eternal lure and brutal eloquence of football

www.wendyparker.org — In all the fulminating over violence, concussions, brain damage, suicides, lawsuits, bloodlust, carnage and bounty-hunting, what’s missing is an acknowledgement of an aspect of human nature that draws young men to the game, and always will.
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The selling -- and mishandling -- of Michael Sam

The selling -- and mishandling -- of Michael Sam

www.wendyparker.org — The feel-good story of Michael Sam lost some of its sheen last week when Oprah Winfrey announced the production of a "docu-series" on her OWN cable outlet that would chronicle the story of the openly gay St. Louis Rams draftee as he attempts to make a National Football League roster. The carefully planned disclosure by the University of Missouri All-American defensive end and his handlers in February was greeted with effusion by the mainstream media, as if Sam were Lindbergh landing in Paris.
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The imaginative life of Dr. Jack Ramsay

The imaginative life of Dr. Jack Ramsay

www.wendyparker.org — The tributes for Naismith Hall of Famer Jack Ramsay upon his death at the start of the week were moving and powerful, perhaps most of all by his son, Chris, who concluded by quoting his father: "Use your imagination. Imagine the life you want to live, and live it." Dr. Jack - he really was a Ph.D. - deeply embodied that ethos during his 89 years, doing so much beyond his wondrous playing, coaching and broadcasting career. He crafted a lifestyle that included a vigorous fitness routine and he competed in numerous triathlons into his 70s, pushing ahead even after he began battling several bouts of cancer for 15 years.
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Billie Jean King in the arena, Part 1

Billie Jean King in the arena, Part 1

www.wendyparker.org — This week I'm devoting this blog to a three-part retrospective on Billie Jean King, who defeated Bobby Riggs in "The Battle of the Sexes" on Sept. 20, 1973. I'm particularly interested in her enduring public persona and how she embodies an ideal that has eluded other women's sports leaders. Other posts in this series will appear on Wednesday and Friday. My first heroines were women who simply got out into the world, and because I could read about them: Clara Barton and Florence Nightingale, war-time nurses and social reformers, and Juliette Low, the founder of the Girl Scouts.
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Billie Jean King in the arena, Part 2

Billie Jean King in the arena, Part 2

www.wendyparker.org — This week I'm devoting this blog to a three-part retrospective on Billie Jean King, who defeated Bobby Riggs in "The Battle of the Sexes" on Sept. 20, 1973. I'm particularly interested in her enduring public persona and how she embodies an ideal that has eluded other women's sports leaders. Here's Part 1 from Monday; the final part will be posted on Friday. * * * * * * * * "Billie Jean liked seeing her face on the cover of Ms., but she loved seeing it on the cover of Sports Illustrated more."
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Billie Jean King in the arena, Part 3

Billie Jean King in the arena, Part 3

www.wendyparker.org — This week I'm devoting this blog to a three-part retrospective on Billie Jean King, who defeated Bobby Riggs in "The Battle of the Sexes" on Sept. 20, 1973. I'm particularly interested in her enduring public persona and how she embodies an ideal that has eluded other women's sports leaders. Here's from Monday and from Wednesday. * * * * * * * * Before the modern-day feminist movement arrived in the 1970s, women weren't strangers to the public arena, and quite a few were more than capable of scrapping it out with men for respect and public acclaim.
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Why there is no Title IX for media

Why there is no Title IX for media

www.wendyparker.org — I don't want to rain on a parade. I really don't, even though the local forecast does call for showers as my hometown's annual Independence Day parade is scheduled to take place on Thursday. The parade I'm referring to begins tonight, with the first of ESPN's new women's sports film series "Nine for IX," and continues weekly through the end of August. These are the so-called dog days of summer, when only baseball, the WNBA and MLS regularly dot the televised sports map in the United States.
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The surprising odyssey of putting women in charge

The surprising odyssey of putting women in charge

www.wendyparker.org — The future of Julie Hermann as the Rutgers athletic director - specifically, if she is to have a future at the New Jersey school - may be determined soon, with reports that she'll be on campus this week ahead of her official June 17 start date. One of the most most important components of this saga is hiding in plain sight, to a certain degree, but it's not a new twist for those familiar with the history of women and leadership in intercollegiate athletics.
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Saving a museum for a forgotten team

Saving a museum for a forgotten team

www.wendyparker.org — Some good news for sports museums, which were challenged for visitors and revenues even before the recession: The Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society has been saved from likely closure. The small museum devoted to a largely unsuccessful team that left that town nearly 60 years ago moved into trophy company space as part of the reconstituted Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame at the end of April. After operating since 1998 in suburban Hatboro, the A's museum fell upon hard financial times (and some claim mismanagement), and earlier this year appeared to be on the brink of shutting down.
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A proper tribute for the historian of women's golf

A proper tribute for the historian of women's golf

www.wendyparker.org — In The New York Times on Sunday, Lisa Mickey penned a fine tribute to the golfing writer and journalist Rhonda Glenn, who has retired from the United States Golf Association after nearly 50 years of mostly uninterrupted service. While she's done a bit of television - incuding a brief stint as the first female sportscaster at ESPN in 1981 - Glenn is best known to hardcore golf fans as the author of "The Illustrated History of Women's Golf," published in 1991. Glenn displays a subtle sense of humor and playfulness when writing about Mary Queen of Scots as "the game's first famous female player."
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The genuflection of the baseball poets

The genuflection of the baseball poets

www.wendyparker.org — I love baseball. I love poetry. But I hate baseball poetry. Or, more precisely, I absolutely despise the pretentiousness of baseball poets, no time more than the present, with another season soon upon us and the exhortations of spring and splendor are being uttered. There is nothing subtle about how I feel, and it hurts me to confess that my favorite poet and the forever bard of America, Walt Whitman, is to blame for all this. The Poetry Foundation, which sponsors The Writers Almanac that Garrison Keillor narrates daily on NPR, features on its website an essay entitled "Baseball and Verse, from Tinker to Evers to Big Papi: Grand slam poetry: our twin national pastimes," which makes me want to hurl.
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Baseball, winter and remembranc

Baseball, winter and remembranc

www.wendyparker.org — Before the winter set in, Alex Belth penned this marvelous tribute to his late father and how "his remaining connection to the sport was the two Rogers, Roger Angell and Roger Kahn. They have been linked in my mind ever since." The SB Nation Longform article delves deeply into that linkage, what "The Old Man" thought of the writers and their works, and Belth's more recent encounters with both Rogers after his father's death. Afterward, as he held his father's copy of "The Boys of Summer," the son admitted it was "about a father and son connecting through baseball:" I imagined Dad reading the book when it was published forty years ago.
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Sports Illustrated, swimsuits and the cause of women's sports

Sports Illustrated, swimsuits and the cause of women's sports

www.wendyparker.org — It's mid-to-late February. The Super Bowl is over, conference play in college basketball is heating up, and pitchers and catchers have reported. Which means it's time for the annual flogging of Sports Illustrated for its popular and highly lucrative swimsuit issue, now hitting the stands with Kate Upton leaving little to the imagination. But instead of the usual sports feminist scolds doing the complaining, we have two middle-aged male sportswriters echoing similar concerns, and in some cases employing buzzwords found in a NOW press release.
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