CUMMINGS: Sports can be a woman’s world, too

Growing up with two older brothers, I was conditioned to think that sports were God’s gift to mankind. When I was five, my mom thrust me into the world of sports by forcing me to play soccer. (And by “forced” I mean dragged me kicking and screaming until the neighbors wondered if I was reenacting a scene from “The Exorcist.”)

I eventually learned to love it &- all screaming exercises aside &- but part of the reason was because I saw my brother racing up and down the field chasing a ball. Like any other younger sibling, I wanted to be just like him, even if that meant abandoning my Barbies, putting on shin guards and devoting hours of my day kicking around a ball. We played friendly games against each other, and although he was stronger and faster than me and usually ended up winning, I was convinced that I could play against boys.

I’m sure you’ve seen all of the clich? movies where the tomboy girl battles the arrogant, pigheaded boy who has Kobe Bryant’s ego at seven years old. (Unfortunately, I never had the pleasure of meeting a boy who called himself “Black Mamba.” Bummer, I know.) Well, I hate to break it to you, but that’s exactly what most girls experience when they begin to play sports at a young age.

That same experience is the reason women’s sports, and women’s college sports specifically, aren’t popular. (That fluttering groan you heard was every man on campus collectively muttering under his breath.)

If you need an example of the supreme dominance of men’s college sports over women’s, look no further than our great school. Freshman forward Marie-Philip Poulin skates for the women’s hockey team. Not ringing any bells? Well, let me enlighten you.

By all accounts, Poulin is the Sidney Crosby of women’s hockey, an absolute freshman phenomenon who has thus far lived up to every word of the hype she received before arriving here. (If you don’t know who Sidney Crosby is, just consider him the Peyton Manning of professional hockey.) Yet, despite the fact that we have the female version of Sidney Freaking Crosby skating for our team, do you hear anyone volunteering their Saturday nights to support it?

Yeah, neither have I, and I literally scour BU’s campus to find mutants like me who live and breathe sports. Maybe I’m not exposed to the right crowd of people, but I think I speak for everyone when I say that women’s college sports aren’t popular. And they definitely don’t get the recognition they so richly deserve.

If you love sports at all, you’ll know that women’s college sports get the short end of the stick. You don’t see any women’s hockey or volleyball or basketball games leading SportsCenter, and you definitely never see a women’s college game on ESPN, unless it’s 3 a.m. and they either lost the tape of the 1976 NBA Finals, or remembered that poker doesn’t count as a sport. I mean, God forbid ESPN runs anything related to women.

Sure, college women aren’t prone to the pure brutal force that is frequently on display during men’s games and is consequently thought to be required to make a sport enjoyable, but couldn’t that be a good thing? With concussions and various other brain injuries on the rise in professional and college sports, couldn’t women provide a much needed break from all that violence?

Call me crazy, but I don’t like having a three-second panic attack every time Wes Welker runs across the middle and has Ray Lewis waiting for him like a cobra waiting to strike. (A huge, freight-train sized cobra, that is.) I will always, always love football, but that feeling of impending doom that clouds over me whenever I watch a linebacker pummel a receiver into the ground is not an emotion I particularly enjoy, especially in college when these players are 20-year-old kids.

I’m fully aware that that the violence involved in some sports is part of the reason so many people appreciate them, but after watching various brain-related injuries plague sports like football and hockey, I think women’s college sports are just what our culture needs. Yes, I’m a female, so I’m automatically biased (and therefore have a smaller brain, right guys?), but let’s face it, women’s college sports are just as legitimate as men’s, even if other schools don’t have the privilege of seeing the female Sidney Crosby on their college hockey team.

At the end of the day, college women devote just as much time to their respective sport as men do, so why aren’t they the subjects of eight-minute debate sessions on “PTI?” Just because they aren’t as physical doesn’t mean that the games can’t be enjoyable.

Look, I know for a fact that when given the choice, the majority of sports fans would pick a men’s game over a women’s any day of the week, and twice on Sundays. I’ll even admit that I’ve made fun of women’s basketball once or twice to appease my group of mostly male friends. (I grew up with two brothers, OK? Give me a break.)

But whether you like it or not, college women deserve a place in the sports world, and I’m sure it’ll take dozens of women Sidney Crosbys for the morons at ESPN to figure that out, but when they do, I’ll be waiting anxiously.