Johnette Howard and Christine Brennan

Johnette--

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You're right. The Warner story is terrific. Why don't we hear more of these stories? Is it because they are so rare? Or because sportswriters don't spend much time searching for them? I hate to say it, but I think the answer might be the latter. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying there are dozens of Kurt Warners out there. Not at all. This is rare and heart-warming and really quite nice. I'm just wondering out loud if some of our colleagues--us even?--miss great stories in order to continue to pump out the continual steam of game stories and side bars and advances and follows that have inspired millions of readers to put down their newspapers and run to the Internet.

I continue to be amazed at the lack of creativity in our sports sections, especially regarding women's sports and features that will attract women readers, such as the Warner saga. Newspapers need new readers desperately. The sports section in many ways is the gateway to the paper, especially for children. (It was for me.) Girls now love sports almost as much as boys. These girls have parents who buy products. And yet, pick up the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or the Miami Herald, or even USA Today (which covers more women's sports than any paper I know), and it's all men's sports. Or almost all.

Blood and guts. X's and O's. My God, some papers still use the headings "basketball" and "women's basketball." Can you imagine? Like one's real and the other's fake. Of course it should be "men's basketball" and "women's basketball." It's little stuff, but it means a lot.

Because of all this, a 12-year-old girl (unless she's a total sports nut like you or me) slides the paper back across the breakfast table, goes to the computer, and clicks on Mia Hamm's Web site. Good-bye to her, probably forever.

Here's my new favorite quote:

Buffalo quarterback Doug Flutie is watching last summer's wildly popular Women's World Cup soccer tournament with his 10-year-old daughter Alexa.

A commercial comes on, the Gatorade "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better" ad featuring Mia Hamm and Michael Jordan.

When it ends, Alexa looks at her dad and asks, "Who's the guy with Mia?"

I'm not making this up. How many 8-to-12-year-old girls know Mia but don't know Michael? Apparently, a few. And how many of them are being lured into our sports sections? Zero.

The Women's World Cup soccer tournament became the sports story of the year. The U.S. team won every major end-of-the-year award. And yet the number of American sports editors who chose to cover the event is far less than the number who chose to not cover it.

Huge papers, the Houston Chronicle for instance, didn't send a staff writer. Another major metropolitan daily in the South told its reporter that it would not pay her airfare or expenses. She went to the World Cup final in L.A. anyway. When the paper used this reporter's stories on A1 for five consecutive days, she came home and submitted the expenses. The paper reimbursed her.

Can you believe this?

The minivan revolution has hit America, but most sports editors refuse to notice. Don't these guys drive by soccer fields on their way to work? Don't they have daughters?

Why didn't every sports editor in the country start devoting even a little more space to skating after Tonya-Nancy, which was a fiasco, absolutely, but also was the sixth-highest-rated TV program in history? Not sports program. All of television.

The top six: The last M*A*S*H, Who shot J.R.?, an episode of Roots, two Super Bowls, and Tonya-Nancy.

This is why skating is on TV all the time. Any newspaper that covered it even a little would attract scores of new readers. As you know, I've found skating to be a worthy news subject--AIDS, pushy parents, eating disorders, you name it. You could tell me to shut up and go back to my little Olympic world if--if--newspaper circulation numbers weren't plummeting. But they are.

I'm on a roll here. Don't stop me. Another thing: Why do 50-something male columnists criticize the Women's World Cup team as being "overhyped," when, in fact, that story was the complete opposite of hype (fans packing stadiums and surprising everyone, forcing sports editors to scramble to send reporters to cover a burgeoning story)? Some of these columnists have been supporting women's rights and liberal issues for years, yet when something this refreshing and fun comes along in women's sports, they invariably begin to attack it. Why?

(I don't sound like a Republican today, do I?)

Why aren't we thinking differently as an industry, before we're not an industry anymore?

Send answers, and fast.

Chris

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