I’m against the concept of espnW in general because I feel like it’s says, “it’s cool that you’re women, and you like sports, but here’s your own web site because ESPN.com is for boys only.” It’s the internet’s version of a 7th grade dance: boys on one side, girls on the other.

If you go to the About Us section of espnW, you get this description:

espnW’s mission is to serve women as fans and athletes. espnW.com provides an engaging environment that offers total access to female athletes and the sports they play, takes fans inside the biggest events, and shares a unique point of view on the sports stories that matter most to women.

If that is the case, and espnW is really interested in serving female sports fans, then what in the crap is this Fantasy Football ranking by marriage material doing on their site??? espnW has employed three sisters from Her Fantasy Football to dish out advice for the coming season with all the patronizing you can humanly withstand. The players are ranked in sections straight from a guide to internet dating…

“…Allow us to introduce you to our style of evaluating players. We have the nuts-and-bolts rankings. But we also break players down into categories. Elite stars are considered “Marriage Material,” in our books. That next crop of guys is “Boyfriend Potential.” Then “It’s Complicated,” “Friends With Benefits,” “Flirts” and our version of the waiver-wire pickups — “One-Night Stands.”

If you want to be taken seriously as a fan, why are you equating an athlete’s performance on the field with whether or not they would be a good husband? LeSean McCoy is their #1 ranked player for his stats, but does he also not leave the toilet seat up? I can’t even process this in a rational way, but I’m trying.

Exhibit A: Their definition of “Boyfriend Material” is “shows flashes of being elite but no ring yet” – I hope they don’t mean Super Bowl ring, because these gals lumped Peyton Manning in there WHO HAS A SUPER BOWL RING I AM PRETTY SURE. And Aaron Rodgers. And Drew Brees. Those two guys have not shown “flashes” of being elite – they ARE elite.

Am I so blinded by the idiocy of this concept that I am taking it too literally?

They put poor Tom Brady under “it’s complicated,” which is a little hard to believe. They also put Jay Cutler down there, which is accurate, I’ll give them that one.

The content and analysis is decent enough, but feeling the need to frame this in such a condescending way is infuriating.

We’ve written before about how the Girls Guide to anything is a tired and insulting method of trying to dumb down sports for us. And if there’s any website that shouldn’t be publishing this stuff, it’s espnW. Shouldn’t espnW be breaking down these lazy stereotypes about female sports fans instead of advancing them??

This list is just another one to lump into that category and I personally will not be using it for my two drafts on Sunday. Like a lot of other female sports fans, I don’t need to understand football players based on whether or not they’d be marriage material.

[espnW]

About Reva Friedel

Reva is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and the AP Party. She lives in Orange County and roots for zero California teams.

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