Reviewer Meredith Grahl Counts Interviews Jane McManus, Author of The Fast Track
Are you in need of a reminder that discrimination in the United States can be addressed through the power of protest, courts, and legislation? Look no further than our educational system: as recently as 1972, there was no law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex in schools or universities. That’s right, public schools and universities were under no obligation to provide girls with the same level of education as boys and many schools and colleges chose to bar women from attending altogether. And if they did accept them, all manner of limits were put on the classes they were allowed to attend, extracurricular activities, and the sports programs available. Here’s a statistic for you: during the 1971–1972 school year, only 7 percent of high school athletes were girls.
That all changed after years of public pressure and the resilience of women legislators persuaded President Nixon to sign the 1972 Education Amendments, which included these thirty-seven words in Title IX: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
To round out the story of just how pivotal that legislation has been over the past fifty or so years, Jane McManus is with us today to talk about her new book, The Fast Track, with reviewer Meredith Grahl Counts.
Lastly, here’s another reminder that Foreword Reviews covers one-hundred-plus new independently-published books every issue and digital subscriptions are free.
A lot of info you present in The Fast Track really stuck with me, and has led to some great discussions. (I was just quoting your stats, about the high number of women executives with sports backgrounds, at a middle school cross country event.) When people outside your professional milieus learn about this book and that you study sports media, what kind of reactions do you get? Do you hear a lot of great stories?
I’m so glad to hear this was your reaction to the book.There is a lot of reflexive and genuine enthusiasm for women’s sports, but what isn’t discussed as often is the quiet resentment when women have success in an area they aren’t perceived as native to. This mirrors a lot of what women see in their own working lives in other fields, where you can be hired and not empowered. But it’s not just professionally.
Sometimes when I talk to people, women still tell me they don’t know much about sports, and then I come to find out they played varsity softball or were a high-level figure skater. So much of this is cultural, and I just wanted to peel back the curtain a bit on how those forces impact everything from job opportunities to feeling like we belong in the conversation.
Most of the time when I talk to people about the book, I hear a story that could have been in the book. They say in journalism when you do a lot of reporting, you are on the right track if you hear a lot of different stories that make the same point. And that’s what I often hear when I discuss this book.
You have this great story about Pat Lowry of ESPN literally moving the cameras to better showcase women basketballers for TV audiences. Another great example of changing the focus in storytelling is your account of tennis star Billie Jean King’s participation in the Battle of the Sexes tennis matches in the 1970s. Your telling concentrates on King, and shows that all the hoopla of that event was just one early hurdle in her pivotal career in sports and advocacy for women players. Why is it important, to be able to shift the focus on the way we watch and market women’s sports?
This is so crucial. For a lot of time in broadcasting, women’s sports were the more cheaply-produced version of men’s sports. If a camera was in one place for the NBA broadcasts, that’s where it remains. But you really can envision women’s sports differently in a lot of ways. Let’s take Nebraska’s Volleyball Day, which drew 90,000 fans to Memorial Stadium. Women’s sports fans like events like tournaments and World Cups, and you can package things differently, measure interest in different ways, and even reimagine the way games are shot and analyzed. When people in charge don’t actually believe women belong in sports, then they aren’t willing to try and fail in order to find a new formula. Think of how many alternative football leagues have been launched in the last two decades, the XFL alone, but when women’s sports underperform along some projections, the attitude reverts back to resisting them altogether.
That’s why the current moment is so exciting. Not only do we have the athletes, attendance, and ratings to prove people want to watch women’s sports, but we have some relentless and creative people helming new forms of data collection to prove the power women have in sponsorships and endorsements. Those numbers, that kind of storytelling, is a bulwark against the next wave of quiet disinvestment.
The book posits that women’s sports have grown so much because women tend to work well together in teams. Can you say a little more about that?
I think for this I’d point to Angel City as a collaborative model of ownership. When fans think about an NFL team, let’s take the Cowboys, they might think about Jerry Jones—his preferences, his willingness to spend, his party bus. But with the NWSL’s Angel City, those owners are part of the coolest and most elite club in professional sports. Natalie Portman, America Ferrera, Mia Hamm, and Julie Foudy? Yes, please! Particularly when many women, even rich ones, may not have the resources at scale to be a sole-owner, this is a great model to harness the cache of those names and enthusiasm they have as athletes and creatives.
A fascinating chapter on branding covers women’s basketball shoes from Air Swoopes in the 1990s up to the new brand Moolah Kicks, a woman-owned company making shoes designed for women, and soccer pro Megan Rapinoe’s recent partnership with Victoria’s Secret. After all these years, are businesses still figuring out how to successfully cater to women athletes and their fans?
This moment was such a revelation to me. I was at a TedX event in Boston to interview Swoopes, and Moolah founder Natalie White was one of the speakers. She was in her 20s and grew up playing basketball in men’s sneakers—just like I did in the 90s. It was so frustrating but also so instructive. You solve a problem—Air Swoopes were a signature shoe made for women—but it didn’t stay solved. There are millions of women and girls playing basketball in this country. There is a market that has been generationally underserved. Athletes become icons with a shoe, but that pipeline was slender and then closed completely for a time. Now, I’m sure those companies had reasons not to keep making women’s shoes, and you can read more about it in that chapter, but this is a fundamental issue around marketing women as athletes and to women who are recreational and competitive players. The respect just hasn’t always been there.
Now women are demanding it. They want to watch games, they want the stars to be icons, they want these players to be paid. The size of the women’s market is always compared to the NFL or the NBA, but the WNBA has comparable interest and engagement to the PGA Tour, NASCAR, and MLS. And plenty of companies want to market to fans of those leagues. Particularly when the purchasing power of women has been so well demonstrated, many companies want to connect with women’s sports audiences.
Another big idea in the book is that you measure big developments in women’s sports not by moments but by decades. For fun, would you venture some guesses about the sports trends in future decades? What kind of playing and products might we see in 2040 or 2050?
One thing I’d love to see, and this is going to seem so obvious, is a daily show about women’s sports on ESPN. It has never had this, even though internally it has been pitched and explored a half dozen times. The network has had daily NFL and baseball shows, but never one about women’s sports or even a women’s property whose broadcast rights it owns. Maybe by 2040?
But bigger picture, virtual reality tickets where you can “be” in the locker room after a win and listen to the coach’s victory speech. Could you one day watch a WNBA game through Caitlin Clark’s eyes?
Sports betting is making such inroads that you could have broadcasts through a casino operator, where your bets are on screen as you watch and with each touchdown or basket, virtual coins light up the screen to show how your bets are faring. It will be a combination of Candy Crush and the Super Bowl. AI could even make it so the announcer says your name and suggests custom in-game bets. You and your friends might even have a virtual broadcast room—the winner of your fantasy NWSL team is interviewed on your feed. If this sounds like a dystopia, the casino could let you pay to opt out. Only those with a lot of disposable income would be able to afford to watch a game without animation. Betting will also transform the live experience, where your stadium seat has a console reminding you to bet and keeping track of your losses.
One great recent story in The Fast Track is about the WNBA bubble that kept players and staff safe during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, and you profile the Atlanta Dream who in addition to their work on the courts had this huge impact on Georgia politics! It’s this great example of how powerfully sports capture our imaginations, with excitement, problem-solving, achievement. Is gender an important part of that story? Could a men’s team or league do what The Dream did?
It was a huge part. You have a small league, the WNBA was 144 players at that moment, predominantly Black women, and the political environment was roiling after the death of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Part of being a WNBA player of any color or background, is to see first-hand the experiences Black women often have. Recently, Caitlin Clark has done a good job acknowledging this as some people give her credit for building a league that was brought to this moment by a thousand people before her.
Now, not everyone has to think or believe the same thing, but understanding and empathy can go a long way. And a big part of that was the WNBA Player Association led by Terry Jackson. Staci Abrams was on that advisory board. When the opportunity came to speak with one voice, there was the willingness. And for the WNBA players at that time, where salaries were lower, there wasn’t the same financial incentive to stay silent. The benefits of that solidarity were more obvious, and that changed history. Some men’s teams have done similar things in the NBA, but often the expectations and incentives for men are different, culturally and professionally.
Even today you posit that women’s sports aren’t guaranteed to get appropriate broadcast slots to meet audience interest. That can make it a challenge for casual fans to know when to tune in. What are some great women’s sports events to look forward to in 2025? Are there games or players you’re really looking forward to, that readers ought to put on our calendars this year?
I’m heading to the Australian Open this month so that’s one I’m excited about! Grand Slam tennis is always exciting. After that, the Women’s Final Four is the next big one to watch. There are so many new leagues to watch, from women’s hockey and volleyball to baseball coming up. Can the Liberty repeat as WNBA champs? What does expansion look like for the NWSL? Above all, if you want these leagues to succeed, buy a ticket or a jersey. Check out a game with a friend. And if you do it after reading The Fast Track, even better!
Meredith Grahl Counts
