by Chris Bodenner
… when it comes to soccer, that is:
“We can say that men writhe on the ground looking like they’re injured more than women, almost twice as often,” said Dr. Daryl Rosenbaum, the lead author of the [Wake Forest] study, which was published in the July issue of the journal Research in Sports Medicine. “And when players are apparently injured, the percentage when it was authentic by our criteria was twice as high with women. You could trust more that they were injured.”
Erin Gloria Ryan offers a few theories about the gender disparity:
One is that women's soccer doesn't have the history that men's soccer has, and thus women have had less time to understand and exploit the rules of the game. There may not be many habitual divers outside of Brazil now, but give the ladies time. Human history has taught us that women, when given the opportunity, can act just as shitty as men.
She concludes:
The end result of less diving is that watching women play soccer at the highest level is less encumbered by obvious cheating histrionics and more of a pure experience. Sans dramatics, fans can focus on the sport in its pure form.
On that note, the US women’s national team will face Japan on Sunday for the World Cup final, its first visit since 1999 – and many remember how that ended:
The Dish 