Social media has made sports rivalries that much better

Have you ever attended a sporting event and without hesitation booed a player on the opposing team? You’re not alone. The entire sporting world loves a good rivalry. “It typically emerges when competitors are similar, when they face off repeatedly, and when they’re about evenly matched. When these circumstances are present, they can lend a given competitive event a psychological weight that goes well beyond its tangible stakes” (Hutson). The concept of a rivalry is something most enjoy, something that pushes our levels of fandom to heights they have never been before. The emergence of social media within the sports world has paved the way for sports rivalries to grow immensely (and feature the clever use of emojis when trash talking).

Before going any further, I think it’s important to address just how many sports fans are actually taking to social media. The two most popular sports franchises in the word on twitter and Facebook are Barcelona and Real Madrid, two football clubs in La Liga, Spain’s premier soccer division. Barcelona has a collective 100.9 million fans while Real Madrid is close behind with 99.8 million followers. Believe it or not, 10 of the top 14 most followed sports franchises in the world are soccer clubs, with the closet non soccer team being the LA Lakers at 25.6 million fans. “The NFL and MLB have global ambitions, but its social media fan bases pale in comparison to the world’s top soccer clubs. The NFL’s 32 teams have a combined following on Twitter and Facebook of 98 million, or less than both Barcelona and Real Madrid. The Dallas Cowboys are the NFL’s top team on social media with 9.3 million followers. MLB is even further behind with only 66 million followers for its 30 teams. The New York Yankees are baseball’s top franchise with 9.8 million fans” (Badenhausen).

            You may be asking yourself  “Ok I get that sports are popular on social media, but how has it sparked rivalries?” The answer is rather simple actually. It gives casual fans a platform to be informed on exactly what is brewing between a rivalry their team is participating in, while giving devout fans an outlet to actually allow their voices to be heard and appreciated on specific fan pages. For example the following Facebook pages actually exist: Boston Red Sox Suck!!!, Yankees HATER!, and the very intriguing New England Patriots Suck and their fans are morons!. These sites are for the extremists who take sports rivalries just a little too seriously, but it is still pretty great that the medium exists for fans to absolutely destroy their friends feelings in a playful way, rather than fans who turn to physical violence at actual games. In 2013, a Los Angeles Dodgers fan drunkenly beat a San Francisco Giants fan after a regular season game leaving the Giants fan with residual brain damage and physical disabilities. I am all for rivalries, some of my fondest memories in my life have some from going to Yankees/ Sox or Islanders/Rangers games, but no fan should ever be subject to any sort of physical abuse simply because you love a team, that is simply wrong.

Not all rivalries need to be bitter or even violent though, some can just be entertaining and silly. The first exchange that comes to mind is the “Twitter War” that the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs had during this past MLB offseason. A Yankees fan simply tweeted “Yankees twitter > Cubs Twitter”. The cubs account (811k followers) replied with a twitter poll asking fans to pick the Yankees or the Cubs. The Yankees and Cubs followed up with a series of gifs and tweets that were all in good fun, until the Yankees put the nail in the coffin. The Yankees twitter (1.61 million followers) tweeted at the Cubs saying “Were new to this poll thing @Cubs, do the #Yankees have a) More rings b) a lot more rings c) Cubs fans, what’s a ring?” In case you were unaware, the Cubs haven’t won a World Series title in over 100 years while the Yankees have won 27. This banter on social media connected two of the sports biggest teams in a fun, engaging way that any sports fan who appreciates a rivalry can get behind. You can read the entire exchange here http://m.mlb.com/cutfour/2016/02/08/163970396/cubs-and-yankees-fought-on-twitter

Ultimately, rivalries are a staple of sports culture, giving reasons to root for the home team harder than you would on another occasion. Social media has developed into the perfect platform for fans to chirp and cheer unlike they ever have before.

Works Cited

Badenhausen, Kurt. Forbes. Forbes Magazine, n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.

"Cubs and Yankees Stage Epic Fight through Twitter GIFs and Polls before Making up." Major League Baseball. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.

"Dodger Fans Plead Guilty to Beating, Disabling Giants Fan Bryan Stow on Opening Day 2011 at Dodger Stadium." CBSNews. CBS Interactive, n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.

Hutson, Matthew. "How Rivalries Bring Out Our Best - and Worst." Science of Us. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.

Female Athletes; why so different?

Every year we hear about a distinct drop off in viewership towards women's athletics and every year we seem to turn a cheek to that issue. People talk about it all they want, but nothing seems to be changing when it comes to the popularity of female sports. Believe me, it's not because the U.S. doesn't enjoy watching sports on television...According to Nielsen, "There is an enormous amount of sports content to choose from and a shocking amount of hours viewed. In 2015, there were 127,000 hours of sports programming available on broadcast and cable TV and 31+ hours spent viewing sports, which is up 160% and 41% respectively from 2005. (Nielsen)" So, why does a business such as the WNBA get so much less attention than the NBA? Well, one of the issues I'll be discussing is the debate about lowering the hoop that way the women can dunk more. My other two issues I'l be talking about revolve around the "sex appeal" aspect of the women's game. Ronda Rousey dominating her sport and being rewarded with a Sports Illustrated cover and Raymond Moore's comments towards women tennis players at a recent press conference. The world of sports certainly gives women athletes attention, but is it the right kind of attention?

Male athletes dominate the conversation when it comes to the highest paid players both domestically and nationally. As I'm sure it comes to no surprise, not one female athlete is even in the top 100. Of those highest paid athletes, 18 were from the NBA with James Harden rounding out the group at number 100 (By the Numbers). Now, we're all aware of the high flying and exciting game that the NBA plays. What most of society doesn't seem to realize is that the WNBA is a highly more efficient game as far as statistics show. There are far less turn overs, fouls, ejections and personal fouls, so it seems like the women play a better brand of the game. We just don't see Skylar Diggins and Maya Moore throwing down monster dunks on a daily basis like we do from LeBron James and Russell Westbrook. Recently, head coach of the UCONN women's basketball team Geno Auriemma and WNBA superstar Elena Delle Donne were asked if lowering the hoop in the women's game is something they'd support. Without even hesitating, they both said "absolutely." Quickly following those comments, another WNBA star Diana Taurasi was asked the same question and responded differently, "If that's what they want to do then they might as well have us put on an apron and stick us back in the kitchen (USA Today)." Geno and Elena backed up there stance by explaining how lowering the hoop would allow these professional female athletes to show how athletic they really are. It seems to me that there's not only outside pressure, but an internal issue with this particular sport as to which direction to move forward in. 

A more popular female athlete, Ronda Rousey, has actually been all over the news. From her consistent coverage on ESPN to her recent Sports Illustrated cover where she was wearing nothing but body paint, Ronda has become a woman many young girls can look up to. Not only has she dominated the gruesome sport of the UFC, but she’s using her looks to market herself as well. However, many people seem to believe that the whole “sex appeal” market is the driving force as to why professional female athletes aren’t as respected as they should be. “According to Janet Fink, an associate professor in the department of sports management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. "Another thing we are finding, and this makes sense, is that each time a female athlete is pictured in a sexualized way, it diminishes the perception of her athletic ability," said Fink, who specializes in sports consumer behavior, as well as media and marketing depictions of female athletes. (ESPNW).” Is it wrong for Ronda Rousey to take her looks as well as her talent and put them in the public eye? I guess we’ll always be the judges when it comes to what’s right and wrong for sports stars/celebrities, but that’s an entirely different issue.

My final point of emphasis on the issues surrounding women’s sports and athletes is the press conference of Indian Wells CEO Raymond Moore. Below you’ll see the link to the press conference and what he said was pretty shocking to say the least.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSVcgNwgLc8

I don’t know if saying “to his credit” applies here, but Moore did issue a public apology the following morning. You know who wasn’t buying it? The sport’s arguably biggest star, Serena Williams and she made her point very clear during her interview that same day. She stated that Mr. Moore knew exactly what he was saying and that the women in the sport of tennis would not accept an apology from him.

It’s hard not to completely agree with Williams based on what was actually said by the aforementioned CEO.

In the end, it’s difficult to completely understand why the majority of society doesn’t pay attention to women’s sports. However, what we do know is that it’s easy for people to scrutinize and judge every aspect of their game. Sports act as somewhat of a religion in the United States and to have such a drop off of interest based on gender is quite concerning. Will these women ever get the respect they deserve? Who knows, but in the meantime we can at least respect them and hope that the internal conflicts within the female athletic world get settled.

Http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHcMBLFJ7zzY_hrMio8sWzQ. "Raymond Moore,Indian Wells CEO 

Shocking Comments." YouTube. YouTube, 20 Mar. 2016. Web. 09 Apr. 2016.

Bodenhauser, Kurt. "The World's Highest Paid Athletes 2015: Behind the Numbers." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 10 June 2015. Web. 09 Apr. 2016.

Fagan, Kate. "Sex Sells? Trend May Be Changing." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 14 Oct. 2014. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.

Fagan, Kate. "Elena Delle Donne Says Diana Taurasi Is Hurting the Sport with Quips about Skirts, Kitchen." For The Win. N.p., 30 Mar. 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.