Jelena Jankovic beat Venus Williams like a child on Thursday. On Friday Rebel Jelena beat Venus’ sister like a slightly older child – a pre-teen boy, really.

World No.1 Serena Williams blamed the “apple in her throat” for her loss to No. 7 Jankovic at the Italian Open semis. “Choking,” “having a frog in one’s throat” or “butterflies in one’s stomach” are all common terms for being nervous, but a throat apple? Yeah, that’s an Adam’s apple; it means Williams’ voice is dropping (finally!)

They grow up (and out) so fast. Just a matter of time before she starts asking to borrow the family Hyundai.

While Serbia’s Weird Jel’ Jankovic now prepares to meet Spain’s Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez (and the rest of her surnames) in the tournament final round, Williams had to discuss her sudden bodily changes with the press. Soooo embarrassing. Gawd!

“I completely choked, I really should have won,” the 12-times grand slam champion told a news conference.

“I wasn’t unlucky. It was all on me. I think I had an apple in my throat.”

Williams really did choke. She was a point away from victory at 5-4 in the third set. It was worse than a 14-year-old boy asking a girl to the turnabout dance. The girls ask the guys, doofus!

As Williams found out Friday, it’s all a part of growing up.

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Photo courtesy of Flickr

It’s hard to tell if I’m arguing against the masses or with them on this one. Mostly because as far as the Andre Agassi autobio meth / wig / daddy issues bombshells goes … well, it’s unclear who’s even paying attention.

Once you strip away the people that will buy the book from whence all this hubbub sprang, simply because hubbub sprung from it, it will be interesting to see what repercussions Agassi’s admittances will have. And because the statute of limitations states that Agassi can’t be touched for drug use and lies from over a decade ago, the repercussions will have to come from the court of public opinion.

The question for the public will inevitably be “should we care?”

And this is where it gets interesting.

Martina Navratilova thinks we should care. Thinks Agassi should have a few titles taken away. Thinks he’s a cheater and a liar.

“Shocking,” Navratilova said Thursday. “Not as much shock that he did it as shock he lied about it and didn’t own up to it. He’s up there with Roger Clemens, as far as I’m concerned.”

Way to swing wild there, Tina. Navratilova is one of the most respected athletes in her field and has long been an ambassador to tennis, which is why it’s surprising that she’d take such a hard-line stance on a colleague who very likely has done more good for tennis than she has. Comparing Agassi to Clemens is wrong. Not only has Agassi owned up to his misdeeds, but he did it while being under no pressure to do so. No one made these claims against Agassi. No one sat him in front of a grand jury. No one put him under a microscope.

Navratilova went on to imply that “owning up” to his lies in an autobiography somehow doesn’t count.

“He owned up to it [in the book],” Navratilova said. “but it doesn’t help now.”

Would getting suspended for meth by a tribunal in 1998 have helped? Who would it have helped? How?

Do I condone drug use? Or lying? Or profiting from those lies? Or cheating? No. Not in a vacuum. We’re not in one though. But like it or not, we live in a world full of gray and sometimes yes or no answers just aren’t accurate.

By positioning Roger Clemens alongside Agassi, Navratilova (and the countless others who likely feel the same way she does) marked Agassi a cheater who used drugs to enhance his performance. But c’mon. Stop it. Hyperactivity may be a reaction from meth use, but so is shortness of breath, loss of coordination, dizziness, decreased appetite and numbness. Agassi started 1997 (the year he said he used methamphetamines) ranked No. 8 in the world. Throughout the season he dropped to as low as No. 141.

Worst enhanced performance ever.

So maybe it isn’t the performance enhancement, so much as the lying in 1998 at which the public should aim their negative opinions. Lying isn’t good. In the end, Agassi shouldn’t have done it. He should have taken his lumps. Hell, he might even be more beloved today had he gone through with his suspension publicly. Then again, the public wasn’t as jaded against public scandal 11 years ago as it is now. Maybe it wouldn’t have gone so well. And Navratilova seems not to have taken that last bit into consideration, or not care about the possibility that Agassi’s career seriously risked being finished.

So the ATP tribunal owed Agassi a suspension. But what would they have been suspending him for, really? Cheating? He didn’t cheat. He used a banned substance that hurt him and his performance. For compromising the image of the ATP? He didn’t. He blamed his struggles on a sore wrist and some of the closest people to him were unaware of his drug use.

“Maybe it was me being naïve, but I had no clue,” Brad Gilbert, Agassi’s longtime coach, said in a telephone interview with the New York Times on Friday.

Would the suspension have been for Agassi’s fans who (unknowingly) watched him suffer through a horrific 1997? Well, if we’re looking out for the fans, it should be noted that he would have been suspended in 1998 for his positive test in ’97. By 1998, according to Agassi, he’d quit doing meth and mounted an astounding climb from No. 122 in January to No. 6 in December. The fans? They wouldn’t have seen that.

Agassi was the only victim of his meth use in 1997. Why punish him twice?

Back to an earlier point: There’s plenty of precedent that tennis didn’t owe Agassi a suspension in the first place. Eight cases of positive steroid tests were exonerated in 2003 after a similar-but-stricter tribunal than the one Agassi faced found that none of the players intended to enhance their performance with the substance. Earlier this year the Austrian Anti-Doping Agency (NADA) dismissed the WTA’s Tamira Paszek for illegally re-injecting blood that had been transfused, purified and then put back into her body. She wasn’t aware of its illegality and therefore, NADA exonerated her on the grounds that she didn’t intend to cheat.

No one’s accusing Agassi of using meth with the intention of enhancing his athletic ability.

Then there’s the profit aspect.

It’s possible and, in fact, likely that Agassi lied in 1998 so as not to lose his endorsements. It’s also possible and likely that we’re talking about Agassi’s addiction now because he’s got a book to sell next week. But he didn’t dabble in crank so that he could add to his bank account a decade later.

And if you think he did, then the irrational cynicism from which you suffer is non-refundable. Ain’t no comin’ back now.

Yeah. All this chatter will help push product. Should we hope our favorite celebrities write books filled with old anecdotes that we’ve all heard? If everything in his book is true, I don’t fault him for telling his story.

But that’s coming from someone who believes this to be the first time Agassi came out ahead from any of his past transgressions.

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Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images

Serena Williams started the 2009 WTA season as the clear world No. 1. A screwy scoring system and almost five months later and Dinara Safina usurped Williams at the top of the leaderboard. Another six months would pass with Safina as one of the weakest No. 1-ranked players in women’s tennis history and Serena Williams complaining that it was so. Order would seemingly be restored on October 12 when Serena regained the top rank, but by October 26, she would lose it to Safina again.

There is one tournament left to decide who will end the 2009 season on top.

I’d like to tell you that this will go down as a battle for the ages. I’d like to tell you that these two women respect each other and that respect drives them to the brink. I’d like to tell you that everything about their careers comes down to this season and everything about this season comes down to the final tournament in Qatar. I’d like to tell you where Qatar is on a map.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you any of these things.

This will be the WTA’s lede story heading into the final tournament. Because on paper, it’s dramatic. Because Serena Williams is so far ahead of her competition, any sniff of tribulation the association can throw in front of her to keep their best player compelling, they’ll do. Because it would be nice if the current ranking system wasn’t as bunk as it is and if Safina can pull one out – just one, even if it’s not a major – it will help keep that veneer alive.

But it’s not happening, or at least it shouldn’t happen. But instead of blaming the WTA’s scoring system, why not blame Williams and Safina? After all, if either of these women wanted the glory of the No. 1 rank, this match (and a few others) could be as epic as it will be hyped.

But Safina doesn’t want it because she’s not a killer. She’s efficient, but ultimately can’t handle the eyes on her. She’s a piano player that knows the notes backward and forward, but plays without enthusiasm. You hear it. You see it. You feel it. She wants to reach the No. 1 spot, but she doesn’t want to be the No. 1-ranked player in the world.

And Williams? She wants that top rank, but she wants Grand Slam titles more. And she wants her book to sell well and her clothing line to grow and her brand to enhance. That top rank is important, but not important enough for her to make it out of the second round in three separate small tournaments from April 6 to May 17. It wasn’t important enough for her to play in more than 14 tournaments like Caroline Wozniacki who played in 24 and climbed from No. 12 in the world to No. 4 in 12 months. Williams is a decade older than Wozniacki and has won more Grand Slams this summer than Wozniacki has in her career, but Williams greatness stunts many people from articulating that she expects things to be given to her. The WTA’s scoring system may be flawed, but Williams knew that going into the season. It was flawed in January ust as it is flawed now. If she wants that No. 1 rank, she could have had it. She wants it, but not bad enough.

From left: Caroline Wozniacki, Serena Williams and Dinara Safina at the October 25 draw for the WTA Championships in Doha, Qatar

These are the gladiators set to do battle one last time in 2009. One who can’t handle it and one who doesn’t want to work for it.

Sweet.

When the season ends the only compelling stories with Safina and Williams will be if Williams bothered stepping up when the stakes were less than “grand” and if Safina stepped up when … there were stakes. You’ll notice in both cases, the story is internal. Internal tennis is very often uninteresting tennis.

Wozniacki’s only 287 points out of third. I’m pulling for her to buzz saw through everyone and give both the No. 1 and 2 spot a reason to get motivated. If that’s possible anytime before the Aussie Open.

UPDATE: See? This is what I’m sayin’.

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Photos courtesy of Yahoo! via Getty Images

The WTA’s top two pupils were skirt-deep in the ongoing dilemma of the sport’s ranking system last week. The 52-week cumulative scoring system has ranked Russia’s Dinara Safina as the top female of the tour going for 17 weeks. Safina usurped No. 2-ranked Serena Williams, despite never having won a Grand Slam title at any point in her career. Wiliams has won two just this year (Wimbledon and the Australian, where she beat Safina in the finals) and 11 singles titles since 1999.

Last week, Williams repeated her familiar cry that she is “the people’s champ” and that no one who is winless in Grand Slam tournaments should be considered the best in the world. It’s no secret that Williams was sore about losing her No. 1 rank back in April, but others including Williams’ sister Venus and former World No. 1 Jelena Jankovic are joining into the chorus.

“To be number one,” said Jankovic, “you should be complete and if you are number one you have to be beating the Williams sisters.”

If Serena is right about Safina not deserving her top rank, why does she have it?

It’s that pesky rankings system and the fact that Safina is one of the few women whose play has helped uncover the weaknesses of it. The WTA’s system assigns points to each tournament and each round of that tournament. For example: the winner of Wimbledon will walk away with 1,000 points, loser earns 700 and decreases each round down to two points simply for being one of the 128 players to show up.

The four Grand Slams offer the most points because they offer the most difficult competition. Safina does well in these tournaments, but as we said, she doesn’t win. What she does win are all the other tournaments that aren’t as publicized or as competitive. She’s the biggest fish in the smaller ponds.

The top-ranked Russian has reached the finals in seven of the 12 tournaments she’s entered in 2009. She’s won three of them, but all of the tourney’s she’s won were smaller events that yielded half the points of the Grand Slams. The trick is, she’s entering more competitions than Serena Williams (she’s only entered 10 this year) and has taken more advantage of those smaller competitions (Serena has often been accused of losing focus in smaller tournaments). Earning only 500 points at Wimbledon can be supplemented by winning a tiny tournament during a week that Williams had taken off or spent playing in non-WTA Tour competitions. Last week when Williams played in the World Team Tennis, which does not count toward WTA points, Safina earned an additional 75 by making it into the third round of the L.A. Championships.

And that’s the problem, the WTA rankings don’t weigh the tournaments properly. Why not double the points players receive for advancing through Grand Slams and getting rid of the limit to how many smaller tournaments the Tour will count toward the point system? The Tour only counts the best 17 tournaments for each player in one season. There are 55 WTA Tours per year. Obviously some of them are played at the same time, but a healthy player could either play in 40-44 tourneys a season, or with the purchase of a truly kickass jetpack, go for all 55.

It’s a shame that some of the attacks have felt in nature, if not in fact, to be attacks on Safina and not on the WTA scoring, a detail that had been lost on some, but not on Safina.

“I didn’t do the ranking system,” said Safina. “If [Serena] has questions, she can give these questions to the WTA who is doing the ranking system. It’s the result of how you play the whole year, not just the four grand slams.”

The rankings do little other than provide a point of reference for fans, tournament seeders and Serena Williams’ ego. That being said, if you’re going to do something, do it accurately. Serena’s the best, now let’s hope the WTA finds a way to get her to stop talking about it.

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Photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images

Last week, Forbes Magazine, through E-Poll surveys, polled its readers and compiled a top 10 list of the most disliked people in sports. I was confused at first why it was Forbes and not, say, Sports Illustrated executing such a poll. I mean, these are sports figures we’re talking about, isn’t ESPN’s magazine better equipped? Forbes may not be the foremost expert on sports, but flip through any issue of their magazine or click on any page of their web site … dudes know a lot about hateable personalities.

But the list isn’t as much of a reflection of the Forbes company as it is about the company’s readers (ages 13 and up). And what’s reflected is a severe case of “lemmingism.” Everyone who made the list makes sense, but are they a true reflection of the most disliked sports figures?

I mean, hockey is one of the five largest sports in the country (and Canada, if you care) and no one from the NHL represented. Most of the names you’ll see here are hated because of overexposure more than their actions that caused the overexposure. Can they be blamed for that? And if they can, why isn’t Erin Andrews at the top of this list? (She’s not) Heck, one of these guys retired 17 years ago. Is that the best (worst) Forbes readers could come up with? Do they even follow sports?

In the words of the 10th most disliked athlete, “you cannot be serious.”

1. Michael Vick
Why he’s here? Yeah, okay. This isn’t surprising. He had dogs kill one another in his off time. Honestly, if Vick had murdered a human, his jail sentence would have been longer, but he’d be no more hated than he is now.
Does he belong? I’ll put it this way … yes. Yes, he does.
Possible replacement Brett Favre. Vick’s infamy was brutal and awful, but it was also original. You know what isn’t original? Brett Favre’s annual hijacking of the sports pages while he decides if he wants to be a professional suckwad or a retired suckwad. Most of the guys on this list are on here because people are tired of hearing about them. On that front, Favre is head, shoulders and suckwad ahead of everyone else.

2. Manny Ramirez
Why he’s here? Steroids. He used ‘em. He got caught for using ‘em and he missed almost a third of the season for using ‘em.
Does he belong? Dodger fans don’t think so. Manny gets L.A. fans giggly-er than girls at a sleepover.
Possible replacement Sean Avery. I wanted to put a woman on here, but I’m unconvinced that Serena Williams counts. I guess Avery is as close as we’re going to get. I mean, c’mon … these are women’s sunglasses, dude. New York’s self-proclaimed bad boy has literally lobbied to be marketed like a WWE villain, which is not only a tacit admittance that he’s a wanker on the ice, but he’s seemingly badmouthed every last one of his hot and famous ex-girlfriends. Anyone who badmouths Elisha Cuthbert: unlikable. That’s a rule.

3. Alex Rodriguez
Why he’s here? Overexposure. Perhaps the overwhelming disgust for both Madonna and Kate Hudson has spilled over onto him as well.
Does he belong? If you take into account America’s tendency to convert jealousy into hatred along with the fact that he’s dating a movie starlet, makes $25 million a year to play a game in the most famous city in the world and cheated so as to help him achieve all these things, then yeah. I reckon he belongs.
Possible replacement Kyle Busch. This little pipsqueak. This picture best illustrates why he really ought to have made this list. And if you’re a NASCAR apologist, then what about when he snapped the Nashville Superspeedway Les Paul guitar trophy into shards ’cause he was just so gosh darned excited. A-Rod’s a tool that seems embarrassed by himself a lot of the time. Busch shares no such embarrassment.

4. Terrell Owens
Why he’s here? An inability to censor his narcissism.
Does he belong? He belongs for the amount of time various media outlets have spent talking about him over the years, but generally, Owens has done very little to warrant the ire of the American people. At worst, he’s been a bad teammate. Then again, his statistics suggest he’s made his teams better. It’s all about perception.
Possible replacement Tom Brady. Oh no! Not my sweet Tom. What’s he ever done to anyone except urinate awesomeness and use unicorn horns to pick Superbowl glory out of his teeth? Well go ask Bridget Moynahan. He knocked up Coyote Ugly, split while she was pregnant, ignored the birth while pretending not to ignore the birth, hooked up with a Brazilian supermodel (superfluous pic here) and impotently allowed her to treat Moynahan’s kid as if it were her own. Oh, then he had the gall to skip the 2008 season. So I ask you, what’s worse: being a bad teammate with good stats or being a bad husband, father and man with no stats?

5. Kobe Bryant
Why he’s here? Smugness and possibly rape. Mostly smugness.
Does he belong? For the smugness? Yes. For the possible rape? I’d have to visit Denver a few more times to say for certain.
Possible replacement Fedor Emelianenko. People just don’t like it when someone so obviously talented doesn’t need fans’ approval to stay talented. We don’t like when talented people clamor for it either (see: Rod, A) but when you’re good and you know it and no one can do a damn thing about it, it tends to alienate fans. Fans want to feel a part of it all and when they know they’re not a part of any of it, it pisses them off. Now you tell me, which one of these two was I just talking about?

6. Allen Iverson
Why he’s here? Because people like “gangsters,” not “gangstas.”
Does he belong? Iverson hasn’t been relevant in two years. Right now, only three teams have shown any interest in paying him to play basketball and one of those teams is in Greece. Hating an irrelevant Iverson is like hating the words to a song a toddler just wrote.
Possible replacement Mark Cuban. If the fine readers over at Forbes want to flippantly throw Iverson on here because he came into the NBA with cornrows and tattoos and everyone was depressed that Michael Jordan was gone, that’s fine. Now allow me to retort by submitting my own irrationally-justified basketball personality. Mark Cuban is loud, he picks fights with players, his hair is often mussed, he likes Jason Kidd too much, his cha-cha-cha is a 1/2-step too slow and he was accused of insider trading. But go ahead, convince me a neck tattoo is worse.

7. Isiah Thomas
Why he’s here? Sexual harassment … and because he hasn’t done anything well since 1993.
Does he belong? Oh yeah. He might have tried to kill himself and when it didn’t work, he might have tried convincing authorities that his daughter was the one who was ill. Also he sexual harassed a woman (not daughter related).
Possible replacement I had a whole case for either Al Davis or George Steinbrenner and although they both totally deserve to be on here, the readers polled by Forbes accidentally got this one right. Isiah Thomas is awful.

8. Stephon Marbury
Why he’s here? Sociopathology.
Does he belong? Absolutely not. Oh sure he’s been a locker room cancer on each of the last four teams he’s played before arriving in Boston, but few noticed until he got to New York and became Isiah Thomas’ cancer. But seeing as how Thomas is more disliked than Starbury, isn’t this a clear-cut case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend?” Friends don’t put friends on disliked lists. Think of it this way: Stephon Marbury builds the character of every NBA player with whom he comes in contact. Good for the game.
Possible replacement Brock Lesnar. And since very often “bad” is good for the game, who better to illustrate this than the UFC’s Brock Lesnar? Look, you don’t get more white than Brock. He’s a 6-foot-3, 265-pound farm boy who lives and trains in the Minnesota woods, has a drooling problem, drinks Coors and signifies that “he’s No. 1″ with the wrong fingers. He’s thoroughly unlikeable, yet UFC has never been more popular. It’s far more fun to hate than to love.

9. Nick Saban
Why he’s here? Bullying. Lying. Willfully living in Alabama.
Does he belong? Nah. For $32 million, I’d probably live in Alabama too. But I wouldn’t talk to anybody.
Possible replacement Brett Favre (again). Yes, but what better way to emphasize how disliked he is than by having him wear out his welcome on this list, just as he’s worn out his welcome in the NFL. Remember in “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out” when you beat Bald Bull and then later in the game a meaner, tougher Bald Bull returned? Such is Favre. Just when his awfulness seems to subside, another offseason arrives and it takes three star punches to get him to go away.

10. John McEnroe
Why he’s here? Because he was really outspoken three decades ago.
Does he belong? About as much as a polar bear at the Pyramids.
Possible replacement O.J. Simpson. McEnroe was a loudmouth infamous for throwing hissyfits (and rackets) and complaining about almost every call that didn’t go his way. Essentially he was an NBA player. But all of this happened in the past. He’s retired from the pro tour now. So if inactive players are suddenly eligible for this list, why not pick an athlete who, you know, probably murdered two people? Bonus: How great would it be to have two Buffalo Bills in the top 10?

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Vick, Ramirez, Rodriguez, McEnroe photos courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images
All other photos courtesy of Flickr

This post does not suggest that women don’t have a place in professional sports. It does ask what exactly that place is, especially given sports’ current climate.

What is this climate I speak of? Well, the six women pictured above are considered among the best in their particular sports and most people can’t name half of them. Can you? I bet you can’t. And that’s the climate of women’s sport; a climate in which fans may have accepted female athletes, but haven’t come close to accepting the leagues and organizations in which they play.

Let’s see if we can’t figure out some of the reasons.

We’ll spend little time discussing those female athletes that have proven marketable. We all know players Gabrielle Reece, Mia Hamm and the highest earning female athlete, Serena Williams have been able to mix elements of skill, personality and physical beauty into a packaged persona that more defies each of their sports rather than defines it. It’s important to note that most of these athletes are marketed as individuals. Few female athletes on team sports have endorsement deals.

Recently NBA commissioner David Stern announced that his league failed to turn an overall profit in 2009 and that the WNBA was far more profitable. But considering Stern’s funhouse definition of “profitable” is breaking even, his claim lacks accuracy. The WNBA, in its 13 years, has gone down in yearly attendance five more times than it has gone up. Since 1997, the average attendance of a game has fallen 19.6 percent and teams like the Phoenix LifeLock Mercury and Indiana Fever are selling off pounds of their corporate flesh in order to gain sponsorship and stay afloat. The league isn’t growing. And in sports terms, if you’re standing still, you’re going backwards.

The leading mixed martial arts promotion, UFC, started as a messy $2 million business in 2001, five years after the WNBA. Doggedly fighting for recognition by the same mainstream media who also ignored the WNBA, UFC has become a $1 billion force, despite hustling in the same economic environment as lady hoops. How? Because the UFC marketed their legitimate fighting organization the only way they could: bu spotlighting the fact that they have he entertainment value of fake wrestling like WWE … except that it’s real. So when sponsors and fans alike asked, “why should I watch you when I already watch boxing and pro wrestling?” UFC was able to illustrate the niche they had carved out.

Women’s sports, including the WNBA, haven’t come close to articulating (or even identifying) their niche.

When an individual player gets singled out in ads, it’s because that athlete is special. Women’s athletic promotions have followed this same logic, but it’s backfired in many ways.  At some point, marketing whiz-bangs owe it to their clients to admit that some marketable female athletes are not as athletically talented as their male counterparts.

I know, I know. Boo on me. There’s a neon pink elephant in the room that no one was gonna mention, but I went and ruined it. Well tough, I’m tired of the room smelling like the zoo, okay? Campaigns like “They’re Better Than You Think” or Nike’s “It’s a Skills Thing” campaign are certainly pro-female athletes, but don’t address what about female athletics are failing to draw audiences and therefore serve the same ends as an anti-female athletics ad. Again, there is a differene between marketing women and marketing women’s sports. Nike is right, it is a skills thing. But that works against most female sports, because if a women’s skills allowed her to play with the men, she would. They know that. We know that. Nike knows that. Even your grandma knows that and she’s half senile. So when sports fans think about any specific women’s league, most think that it is of lesser quality than the male version of that sport. And if enough people think that for long enough, your league is doomed to go the way of Olympic softball, or the WUSA.

This isn’t like baseball’s Negro Leagues in the early 20th Century, where great players were not allowed to play against the established best. When athletes like Michelle Wie or Danica Patrick compete with the top male athletes in their profession, the media gives them an (over)abundance of positive attention. It’s unfair to say they aren’t given a chance.

In 1995, Nike launched the “Let Me Play” campaign in which pre-teen girls in non-athletic surroundings look into the camera and say things like, “If you let me play, I’ll be 60 percent less likely to get breast cancer” or “if you let me play I’ll have more self-confidence.” And this is where mixed marketing messages are ruining women’s sports. Does anyone cheer for Tom Brady so that his confidence is raised? Ben Roethlisberger maybe, but not Brady. Sports fans don’t want to be doing athletes a favor. Who’s entertaining who here? Sports are about competition; who’s better, faster, stronger. Ask yourself, why would you spend your time focusing on a collection of pretty good athletes when the best ones are elsewhere?

If the answers are out there, no advertising corporation has found them yet.

And because most of the largest female sports organizations have settled on positioning themselves as me-too sideshows, advertisers have answered the me-too, with a “no thanks.” Just last week, the president of the LPGA resigned following the association’s top players petitioning for her removal after having done such a horrendous job.

Since 2007, seven events have disappeared from the tour’s schedule, and only 10 title contracts are signed for the 2010 tour. The tour has also lost the backing of major sponsors, and the status of at least three other events for next year remains unclear.

[Carolyn] Bivens, 56, drew criticism from the players because she was unwilling to negotiate with sponsors to lower their costs of putting on tournaments. As a result, many sponsors dropped out of the tour, and players thought the economy was not solely to blame.

And the poor marketing doesn’t end with individuals or sponsors. Even penny-wise decisions are slowly revealing themselves to be pound-foolish over time. Last week, WTA’s former chairman and CEO Larry Scott, stepped down in order to become the commissioner of the NCAA’s Pac-10 conference. In his place is former WTA president, Stacey Allaster. Allaster is generally considered a strong choice based on her past accomplishments. She got the WTA a 40 percent increase in prize money since 2006 partly by expanding the group’s global television imprint. Without downplaying those achievements, or her successful quest to grant equal prize money for men and women in Wimbledon and Roland Garros, these facts don’t paint the whole picture. How did she make these things happen? She increased the amount of events that the top players would have to participate in each year, an effective change that some of those top players have complained about on more than one occasion. I’ll leave it to you to judge whether it’s positive or negative to earn more sponsorship dollars by riding your stars into the ground.

What about all the other female sports? Women’s MMA has two superstars who will fight next month. And who will the winner of that fight face next? No clue, because there are no other strong contenders with much experience. What about the newly formed Women’s Professional Soccer league? Well, hopefully attaching themselves to the MLS (similar to how the WNBA hitches its wagon to the NBA), will stave off the same fate as the $100 million now-defunct WUSA. Or not. And heck, if cheerleading isn’t the most popular high school and college activity for women, it sure is killing the highest percentage of ‘em. But if it’s not considered a sport, what are all those young ladies dying for for?

If women can compete with the best, wonderful. A lot of people will root just as hard (or harder) for those women. But where are they? The Williams sisters? Sure. Who else? Danica Patrick? Maybe eventually. Annika Sorenstam? She’s retired. Rachel Alexandra? She’s a horse, doesn’t count. In the end, every popular sport showcases what fans perceive to be “the best.” And with the exception of sex appeal, none of the major female sports has offered the average fan any reason to tune in. And none of the female leagues need to be told what happens when your fan-driven livelihood ceases to have fans.