Womens Athletic Organizations :: Pro Con Essays

Pro's and Con's of Women's Athletic Organizations being Incorporated by Men's Athletic Organizations When the American Basketball League (ABL) started up, I was one of the wide-eyed young athletes who dreamed of playing in it when I grew up. I had always had lots of women role models as athletes, but this gave me something that I could aspire to do with my life. These women were playing basketball as a career. My parents took me to games to see the New England Blizzard and the Columbus Quest play. One time we stayed in the same hotel as the Columbus team, and they all came out of their rooms and talked to me and autographed a program for me. That summer that Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) initiated by the National Basketball Association (NBA). I was adamantly against the WNBA from the moment I heard its name. Take the men's league and stick 'women' in front of it, and you had the WNBA. The WNBA wasn't even playing basketball during the right time. No one should have a basketball season during the summer. Of course, they couldn't play during the winter because then th ey would be interfering with the men's games. The NBA couldn't let women's games draw support away from the men's games. In my thirteen-year-old eyes, the ABL was a league made for women by former female players. It had female coaches and it was the true basketball league that would give women an equal chance. The WNBA was thought up as a novelty by fat white men in business suits who thought that with the NBA's backing and money, they could do just about anything. So why not let women play basketball and see how it went over? In retrospect, I can see that neither of my opinions on the two leagues was exactly correct. However, I still resent the NBA-supported WNBA for breaking the first women's basketball league that had a real chance of surviving. I resent it more because I know that the WNBA did have a better chance of competing in the business world of professional sports because they did have support from the men's league. The WNBA would get more sponsors than the ABL would, and it could afford to not make a profit for a few years with the financial support from the NBA. I can also see that with my height and lack of natural athletic ability there was no way I would have ever made it into either league.