Sports letters: Women’s sports should be given their due

Title IX, with persistence from Washington State, brought “equity” in providing equal access to sports for college women athletes. You would never know it by reading The Spokesman-Review.

On Saturday, Nov. 30, the front page of the sports section was filled with the WSU men’s football loss and Gonzaga men’s basketball loss. There was a tiny headline stating that WSU women’s soccer had progressed to the Final Four. I had to thumb to Page 7 to read about their outstanding feat.

On Sunday, Dec. 4, the Gonzaga women’s basketball program fared a bit better.

They made Page 4 of the sports section.

It’s disappointing to me that the success of our women’s athletes is not treated with the same respect as the male programs. Until women are treated equally, in hiring and in sports coverage, we will continue to experience gross inequities.

A quality news organization would celebrate a Final Four debut in any sport on its front page. Start giving credit to the women who work just as hard as men.

Let’s stop this never-ending mantra.

Louise Chadez

Spokane

Leach out of line

As a former journalist and sportswriter, I took major offense to WSU coach Mike Leach’s totally offensive, unjust and rude outburst responding to John Blanchette’s postgame questions following Leach’s seventh straight Apple Cup loss to Washington. The head coach of a usually high-scoring team that somehow never scores much nor defends its major cross-state rival in WSU’s biggest annual rivalry game deserves some criticism, and any reporter asking proper postgame questions in a professional manner deserves to get proper answers.

It’s OK for Leach to publicly belittle his team and even call them names after losses throughout the season, but he can’t take any criticism for his sorry coaching performances and never seems to take personal responsibility for much of anything. He publicly took his frustration and anger at once-again losing to Washington out on a longtime professional sportswriter only doing his job, and in the process fully embarrassed himself and the university paying him millions of dollars only to again fail and be a blathering public idiot.

Leach’s time as a fraudulent goofball head coach for far too long at WSU needs to be terminated. I don’t think it would be very difficult finding plenty of people gladly willing to help him hit the road to again likely fail, criticize and disappoint a college football fan base somewhere else.

Jeff Clausen

Spokane

Leach justified in calling out Blanchette

Hello, I am a longtime subscriber to The Spokesman Review and have probably read 99 percent of John Blanchette’s columns. When he first started at The Spokesman (yes, I was a subscriber then), he wrote columns that were funny and interesting and didn’t seem biased one way or another. Something changed over the years and his columns regarding anything at Washington State are seldom positive and quite often negative. I am not looking for a cheerleader – Harry Missildine, for example – but some fair reports and opinions once in a while would be nice.

Contrast Blanchette’s reporting and columns on Gonzaga versus Washington State. I don’t think I have ever seen him write anything critical about Gonzaga. While most of the time there is not much to be critical about Gonzaga, I have never read a negative word about Gonzaga’s refusal to play Washington State in basketball, except maybe on its own terms. Also, they used to play Eastern Washington in the Coliseum in Spokane, which gave a lot of fans who can’t afford tickets to Gonzaga’s games at the McCarthy center a chance to see them for a reasonable price. Again, no criticism of that anywhere.

I would say that Mike Leach’s words about John Banchette perfectly expressed how I feel about his writing and coverage of Washington State. It really does seem that something changed somewhere over the years and I have often wondered who from Washington State offended Blanchette and when.

Fred Green

Colville