I think the only way that I could be happier about John Smallwood getting outed for being the uninformed, lazy sack of meat he is would be if someone in the national blogosphere, which is currently roasting him over an open flame, would point out that he has the argumentative skills of a porcupine in a silk shop– he just does more damage every time he opens his mouth.

Smallwood has taken up the fight for (or against?) the USA women’s hockey players who are campaigning for higher pay and equal treatment. In doing so, Smallwood has both angered women’s hockey Twitter and ultra-left leaning Twitter (lots of overlap there) and literally argued against himself, as he is wont to do, by devoting his most recent column on the matter to the need for a professional women’s hockey league, which already exists, and which he cited in his previous column(!!!).

First up, the anger part. From Puck Daddy:

Which leads to another point made by Smallwood, “Professional sports are businesses, not charities. An athlete’s income is directly related to how much revenue he/she can generate, individually, or as part of a team and league.”

How can the Women’s Team be expected to generate revenue when the constant drumbeat is ‘women don’t make money’ in sports?

Say it enough and people start to believe it.

It’s also pretty damn hard to generate any revenue without investing in the product. It goes beyond wages. No one can expect to grow an audience when they don’t put it on TV or stream online live.

I mostly agree with Smallwood here, but we’ll get to that in a moment. The most Smallwood-y part of this is best summed up by Awful Announcing:

Some general sports columnists have frequently been criticized for not learning enough about particular subjects they occasionally touch on, and the latest to fall right into that appears to be John Smallwood of the Philadelphia Daily News. Smallwood decided to write about the U.S. women’s hockey team’s ongoing dispute with their federation, and suggested that many of their issues could be solved by forming a league.

The problem? Smallwood’s column doesn’t mention the leagues they currently have, the National Women’s Hockey League and Canadian Women’s Hockey League, at all. (It also has a terrible “Smallwood: U.S. women’s ice hockey players need a league of their own” headline, and a bizarre photo choice; a photo of the Philadelphia Flyers’ bench. No idea what’s going on there.)

Heh. Oh, John.

Anyway, my delight about Smallwood looking like a buffoon here aside, he’s not wholly wrong with his points about why it’s largely not feasible to pay women’s hockey players a sustainable salary. It baffles me that no one in the left-leaning hockey blogosphere can even find a gentle way to point out that women’s hockey simply doesn’t have mass appeal. Full stop. Puck Daddy hides behind the needs more promotion and needs to be on TV arguments, and cites successes like the USA-Canada Gold Medal Game as reasons why it could work. But hey, genius, gold medal volleyball, curling, swimming and hurdles events are smashing ratings successes, too, but that doesn’t make them viable mainstream sports in the three years that no one pays attention to them. The women’s game is not as fast as the men’s game, not even close, and therefore there’s not enough of an appetite for it to be a mainstream success. It’s that simple. Does it suck? Sure. But it also sucks to be a world-class curler who can’t earn a decent living because the public doesn’t want to consume your craft all that much. The same way it sucks to be world-class male gymnast who doesn’t get the same amount of attention or money as his female counterparts. Some sports and activities, like tennis, track and field, and figure skating have equal or at least similar appeal between the two genders. Others don’t. It’s not a sexist argument just because some people have physical traits which better translate to a sport the public at-large would pay to watch. In this case, it breaks down along gender lines (men are bigger, stronger, can skate faster and shoot harder), but what about the highly skilled 5’4 point guard who has a good enough handle and shot to play in the NBA, or WNBA for that matter, but simply isn’t tall enough? There’s real-world economics at-play here. No one is arguing that women hockey players shouldn’t be paid fairly or certainly treated fairly – and problems do exist in this regard – but I’m arguing that if the public appetite doesn’t exist for the product, there’s no sustainable way to pay them an amount that is disproportionately higher than what they can generate.

Reader Tom seems to know much more about this debate than I do, and he sent a lengthy email (with citations!) explaining the economics:

For starters, the women have valid points in that there currently exist some fundamental inequalities between the two national teams, namely, the absence of a development program for young girlsdifferent travel and accommodation during tournaments, no insurance plans for injuries sustained during competition, and even a lack of institutional recognition of their victories. It’s pretty indefensible that USA Hockey would let such blatant inequalities exist and downright embarrassing that they offered 15 year olds roster spots to break up the strike. However, one key component of the protest is female team’s compensation and there are key problems with how this issue is being framed:

1.) It’s not a matter of paying the women what they’re worth. Both male and female national teams appear to operate at a loss for USA Hockey. This is not a simple thing of ad dollars, TV contracts, or ticket revenues needing to be shared with those that generate them like the NCAA. USA Hockey is propped up by membership fees at the club level (where women account for < 15% of the membership in recent years) and donations (of which the NHL gives ~$9,000,000), and would fold if it had to rely solely on the national team. The full financials are here.

2.) It’s not a matter of equality. Unlike the national soccer team, where men earn more from the national federation than their female counterparts, men and women are, by all accounts, paid EQUALLY by USA Hockey. The women are actually asking for more than their male counterparts with their request to be employees of USA Hockey for $68,000/yr. This is also a strange request because USA hockey does not, until this point, employ athletes of any gender. USA Hockey has offered to break this policy and pay the women $24,000/yr but that proposal was ultimately rejected. This is on top of the current performance bonuses, which again are equal for men and women. An Olympic gold medal nets $90,000 and silver is $74,000 for each player, though this bonus comes from the US Olympic Comittee and not the USA Hockey coffers. However, this bonus is all but a guarantee when you look at the lack of international parity on the women’s side.

3.) If it’s not a matter of equality then it’s a matter of equity. The women do not make enough as professional hockey players. The average NWHL salary (only 18 games a season) is about $7,000.  The rumored max is about $13,000 for Amanda Kessel, “sister” of Phil Kessel (I use the term “sister” because she somehow doesn’t look like a member of the Avery family from Making a Murderer). The NWHL instituted a form of revenue sharing with the players but this doesn’t help because the league’s attendance is abysmal. If any NWHL game can sell even 500 tickets, then the NWHL views it as a success and gives all the revenue for each additional ticket sold to the players. The good news for supporters of the women’s protest is that this is a very real way for fans to increase the compensation for female hockey players—the ticket sales literally go into the athletes’ pockets. The bad news is that it really questions the viability of the sport when the league views 500 people in the stands as a successful turn out. Is it really on USA Hockey to take money, largely generated from youth hockey fees, to subsidize this?

So the women do really have some valid concerns in terms of equality (development, travel, accomodations, and insurance) but I’m glad you poured some water on the internet outrage. When it comes to compensation, the women are squeezing blood from a stone in terms of revenue and they actually already have equal pay with the men.

Well said.