What's Wrong With The Women Of ESPN?

In the past few years, the sports entertainment behemoth ESPN has done a remarkably great job of integrating female reporters into what has long been the ultimate boy's club. There are now women anchors, women side line reporters, women correspondents and a half-dozen other estrogen-laden categories.

Even better, ESPN has also done a great job pushing the boundaries of what people can look like on television. Balding guys, guys with weird comb-overs, fat guys, whatever. And the same rules seem to apply to their female reporters-which is pretty much a TV first as far as I can tell.

But the more interesting question is not what do this women look like, but why do they so often appear bad at their jobs?

I don't mean this in a sexist fashion. I think all the women working for ESPN deserve to be working for ESPN. It's actually a question of psychology. ESPN makes great television, but they make it in a very tight box. Tone and style are exceptionally important and, one suspects, tightly controlled. So why then, I keep wondering, does ESPN have its female reporters acting so peculiar.

If you've never seen it, it's a little hard to explain. It's not a lack of professionalism, it's over-professionalism. The women are very good, but somehow bloodless. Robotic. Comparison might be helpful. Most ESPN reporters have very big personalities. They have great fun with language. They make up words ("Gi-nor-mous" not too long ago), they elevate phrases (Chris Berman's ‘Rumblin, bumbling, stumbling: He-could-go-all-the-way!") and they often stop making sense mid-sentence (Stuart Scott, enough said).

But not the women.

The women are flat. They know their stuff, but their stuff doesn't shine. They don't make up new words. They don't coin phrases. Banter is the bread and butter of TV sport's journalism and most of the time these women don't banter. Instead, they are steady. Knowledgeable. Focused. Hard-working. There's nothing wrong with their information, there's something missing from their presentation.

What's the proof? Take Erin Andrews. Excellent reporter. Great at her job. But do I want to listen to her or to Lou Holtz and May talk football? Holtz and May win every time. And the same goes for just about every other female reporter on ESPN. The guys are more fun to listen to.

I'm trying to figure out why.

My assumption is this is intentional. Since these same standards seem to apply to most of the female reporters (the one consistent exception being the exceptional Linda Cohn) my assumption is this is a network decision. This is the flavor of female the executives like, so this is the flavor the public gets.

It's essentially a psychological choice. ESPN is a business. When they decided to truly intergrate women into their business, someone somewhere asked what flavor of women would be best for that business? What we see nightly is the answer to that question.

And to me, it seems a most peculiar answer, psychologically and otherwise . . .

More on this in my next post....