Belles of the Ball.

This was featured in NewMan magazine, May 2011.

I love sports, and I love women even more. I love watching sports involving women (in particular, beach volleyball tops my chart). And I love seeing women who are not directly involved in the sport but who appear on screen during half-time (NFL cheerleaders. YAY!).

But what I CANNOT stand � and accept � is the over-use (or should it be misuse) of women in sports channels as window dressing.

Don�t get me wrong. I�m all for gender equality, and women deserve the same right as men to host sports programmes. But what I do not agree is the over the top usage of women in �sexing-up� these programmes especially via satellite TV. I�m against hard selling and I�m totally against the old school thinking of �men will watch this because we have this female presenter in it�. Come on. You don�t need the female factor to pull men to watch The Monday Night Verdict. We aren�t Neanderthals, comprende?

If I really want to gawk at hot women, I would have switched channels to America�s Next Top Model (ANTM) or head over to YouTube to watch at any rap artist�s music video (I would, however, avoid the local sanitised MTV channels like a plague because I can�t be bothered to watch slow-mo snippets covering up bits in the jiggly scenes).

Speaking of jiggly bits, when we tune to watch, say, football or basketball, please, please make sure that only the balls are the ones doing the bouncing. Anything other than that is bloody distracting I tell you! (unless it�s the NFL cheerleaders)

I tune in to ESPN to watch the game, to listen to debates and the analysis of results, and of course, the banter between pundits. I do NOT tune in to watch some awkward female presenter trying to �justify� the score forecast, or attempt to explain if the goal was offside or not when they�re obviously reading from a tele-prompter! Or even worse, faking that they are actually excited about �how fast the pit crew changed tyres and handled the fuel nozzle!� Sports fans can spot bullshit, and if we can spot that Cristiano Ronaldo so obviously dived in an attempt to get a penalty, we can certainly spot when someone, or some girl to be more specific, is reading verbatim from a huge-arse placard behind the camera.

I know there are lots of genuine sports loving women out there. Get them to host instead. Who cares how they look; at least they know what they�re talking about. Not some �celebrity chick� saying stuff like, �as a young girl, I used to watch the game with my father on TV� to show that they�re in tune with the sport. We appreciate participation and opinion from the fairer sex in sports. Just not fake sports fans used as cheap tricks to woo viewers. It�s so 90s (ESPN, are you listening?). Now, what channel is ANTM on again?