Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 at 1:45 pm  |  9 responses

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Guest Post: Connecticut Sun’s Renee Montgomery

Time for a change.

Averaging career highs in nearly every statistical category, Renee Montgomery has helped the Connecticut Sun take charge of the WNBA’s Eastern Conference. In her first blog entry for SLAMonline, Montgomery talks about women’s basketball media coverage and what needs to change. – Ben Y.

By Renee Montgomery / @Da20One

The WNBA is in its 15th season and I feel like we are inches away from emerging into a sport that will be in full rotation on ESPN and SportsCenter.

Now, I use this show as an example because, first of all, its name: SPORTSCenter. If it were called NFLCenter, NBACenter, or MLBCenter I wouldn’t think anything of it.

It’s the fact that the dominant sports station of ESPN has a show that a large amount of Americans watch in order to be informed about what’s going on in the sports world and it confuses me that it rarely shows highlights of a WNBA game.

ESPN isn’t completely at fault, because I do understand as a network you show what the people want to see. I’m also grateful that ESPN, as well as ESPN2, show a good amount of WNBA games on their station because there’s nothing like being an athlete and playing on national television.

I just think it’s about time for a change. (By no means am I “bashing” ESPN.)

In this 15th season alone, there have been multiple buzzer beaters, shots that made people jump out of their seats, and controversial plays involving players going head to head. I mentioned those things because NONE of those plays made the Top 10 Highlights.

And don’t get me wrong, there have been WNBA highlights on ESPN but I’m just passionate about women’s basketball and the advancement of the WNBA so I’m always wanting more. I have spoken to our new WNBA President, Laurel Richie aka Madre (the nickname I gave her), multiple times and I love the way she gets it. She may not have a history in sports but one thing is for sure — successful people all have certain things in common and they aren’t successful by accident.

Normally, I like to write comical blogs and talk about subjects that are entertaining. But with President Obama’s birthday recently, I couldn’t think of a better topic to write about than change.

Ok, I’m done now.

(*turns on SportsCenter and eats a bag of Funyuns*)

Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Until next time….Be Blessed.

Renee Montgomery