your weekend rant
also links!
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Before we get into this week’s rant and recommended reading (a format that went so well last week that I thought we’d try it again), I had a pretty big week and I’d like to make sure you didn’t miss anything:
Perhaps coolest and most importantly, you can now buy NWFL team t-shirts from HOMAGE. Liiiiike, our book did that???
I was also on the Unladylike podcast last week discussing Hail Mary and the NWFL
And finally,
republished my award-winning 2017 story, “The Hidden Queer History Behind A League of Their Own,” with an updated author’s note from me
This week’s rant comes courtesy of a new Professional Women’s Hockey League sponsor, Molson (apparently “the official beer of hockey”). The multi-year partnership was announced last week, pegged to International Women’s Day on March 8th. From the press release:
The Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) and Molson today announced a multi-year partnership that will launch through Molson’s See My Name campaign, an initiative introducing an updated jersey design intended to bring greater visibility and recognition to the league’s players. To bring more visibility and recognition to PWHL players, Molson, the official beer of hockey, will be sponsoring the space above PWHL jersey numbers, usually covered by the players’ hair, this International Women’s Day. By shifting the player’s name below their number, Molson is covering its name so hers can be seen.
The release goes on to say that these jerseys will make “a special appearance for International Women’s Day at the March 8 Toronto vs. Montréal game at the Mattamy Athletic Centre.”
The response to this new initiative has been intense, with the PWHL and Molson being wildly celebrated for this move. Alex Friedman, who is a founder and angel investor in tech startups, called it “the best marketing play I’ve seen in a long time.”
Front Office Sports, a publication that covers the business side of sports, shared the news by explaining that “for years, many women’s hockey players’ hair has covered their last name on their jerseys.” Molson promoted the new jerseys with the tagline “we covered our name so hers could be seen,” which is admittedly quite catchy and seems to be one of those obvious solutions that happens when people actually pay attention and invest a little bit of interest.
But here’s the thing: not only is this not a new problem, putting the names on the bottom of the jersey isn’t even a new solution. In fact, the Premier Hockey Federation, the league that was purchased by/folded into the PWHL, had names on the bottom of their jerseys from its inception.
Add to that the fact that these jerseys were only for one game—ONE GAME—and we have entered performative allyship and gimmick territory. I hate how many cookies the PWHL and Molson have gotten for (temporarily) “fixing” a problem that already had a well-known and implemented solution. A better question is why the PWHL uniforms didn’t have the names down there to begin with tbh.
I don’t expect people who have never followed women’s hockey to know this context so I do understand why something like this seems groundbreaking. But this is where some of the larger issues of PWHL coverage have come in this season. Because it’s the first women’s professional hockey league to have the level of visibility and investment that it does, it’s receiving mainstream coverage in a way the sport never has. The result has been journalists essentially parachuting in and missing a lot of really important context with their reporting.
Sports links
Letter for support from athletes (including WNBA players) for Muslim basketballers in France who are excluded from sports because of their hijabs. It’s upsetting that France’s ban on hijab in sport isn’t discussed more, especially in a year where the Olympics are taking place in Paris
The men’s basketball team at Dartmouth College voted to unionize last week and we got several great pieces written in response. Let's start with “Dartmouth’s vote to unionize could help end college sports’ plantation dynamics” at The Guardian
Dave Zirin at The Nation on why the future of college sports is unionized
- at on why college sports is one of the best unionizing opportunities out there
Speaking of unions, The Ringer union has a deal!
Speaking of PWHL partnerships, they also added Barbie as an official sponsor (yes, that Barbie)
On the End of Sport podcast, a discussion of the Netflix sports doc as genre and its increasing influence in shaping how we understand sports
In early February, Formula One team Red Bull Racing received a complaint from a female employee of inappropriate behavior from team principal Christian Horner. This week, the team suspended the woman who accused him. Many people within the sport are speaking out and calling for transparency, including seven-time world champion Sir Lewis Hamilton.
A former Northeastern University track and field coach was sentenced to five years in prison for scamming women for nude photos, including former athletes of his
At Awful Announcing, Lyndsey D’Arcangelo wonders if the media is ready for the women’s basketball boom
The CANWNT v USWNT game this week was played in an absolute downpour and the memes were on point
Also on point? USWNT goalie Alyssa Naeher
Nikki Hiltz won the silver medal in the 1500m at the World Indoor Championships, running a personal best 4:02.32 to take home their first world medal
You can now play as a woman in MLB The Show ‘24 with their “Women Pave Their Way” mode1 (former Negro Leagues player Toni Stone will become the first woman to be featured in the game)
A girls’ basketball team in an Ohio boys’ league kept winning so they were banned from the championship tournament
At She’s A Beast, Casey Johnston got the details on Katy O’Brien’s lifting program to prepare for her role in Love Lies Bleeding
11-year-old Kortnee Solomon became the first Black cowgirl to compete in a nationally televised rodeo
Ali Krieger was on Julie Foudy’s “Laughter Permitted” podcast and apparently Ali found out Ashlyn Harris filed for divorce when Midge Purse broke the news to her mid-training, like Midge pulled her off the field and said there’s an article out about the divorce and Ali’s response was “what divorce? what filing?” LIIIIIKE
Sam Kerr has been charged with the alleged racially aggravated harassment of a police officer in London after apparently calling the cop “a stupid white bastard” and the internet had A TIME
Culture links
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