As a female sports fan who enjoys sports and curses at the television way more than my husband does, I really enjoyed this book. I live about an hour and a half from ESPN, and this book made me want to eventually try and get a job there once we buy a second car. It was so inspirational to me and showed how women could be sports experts too. ( )

I had high hopes for this book and ended up mildly disappointed. The stories were interesting and there was a decent range of people working in sports in different capacities, but there wasn't really any depth to any of the discussions. It was just a series of 'I worked really hard, and was eventually successful!' stories.

I found this book disappointingly repetitive. I was hoping for a narrative...or conversation...about and between the women featured. It's definitely not something to read cover to cover.

As a freelance female sports writer, I found the topic of the book incredibly interesting. However, it lacks a deeper perspective of women's role in sports. Betsy Ross tells in the stories of her and other women who have found their way in the testosterone saturated world of sports. Ross, a journalist, not only presents the profiles of other female journalists but of female athletes, coaches and team managers. While every women has a unique story, the profiles become formulaic. They all follow the pattern of
- how she got into sports
- her resume
- how her gender hindered her
- advice for the younger generation.

Also, everyone cheers about Title IX, the legislation that has helped provide equal opportunities for both genders in sports. Everyone that Ross talks to has no problem with Title IX until the very end of the book where negative issues are given a page. While Ross's book is inspirational to any young women who wants to enter sports, it glosses over more important issues. ( )

More of a series of interviews and profiles of women involved in the sporting industry in various capacities than a unified thesis, but I found myself breezing through it nonetheless. Part of the reason for that is that this is a subject of great interest to me. Though I never played a ‘boys’ sport, I’ve always enjoyed sports, was a tomboy, and am still ‘one of the guys’ in the sense that I tend to connect with men on a friendship level more than women. The other reason for my enjoyment was the variety of women Ross profiles. I went into it expecting mostly women working on the broadcast end of things, but she profiles women coaching, working in the managing end of teams, in advertising, sports medicine, etc. What was very sad for me was realizing how relatively long ago some of the gender barriers in these fields were broken only to see very few if any others reach the same level.

My biggest complaint, however, would be the cursory way in which Title IX is dealt with. Title IX requires equal access to educational opportunities, programs, and activities regardless of sex. This opened the door for organized female sports at all levels. It has become an increasingly complicated issue in recent years because the legislation provides no standard for judging what ‘equal’ means. Some universities implement it by having equal numbers of female and male athletic scholarships; some maintain a number in proportion to the student body demographics - you run into problems with both of these methods because a sport like football that is all male has 85 scholarships and there is no comparably large female sport. Therefore, many athletic departments use Title IX as a reason for cutting programs. It’s an issue I find interesting and am not sure what the best way to handle it is. It would have been nice to see this dealt with on a level above superficiality. ( )