I admire all types of athletes.  Whether it is Kevin Youkilis driving a 100 mile-per-hour fastball over the Green Monster or the neighborhood kid out running at five in the morning trying to make the high school track team, sports are a worthy endeavor.

But when it comes to the popularity of spectator sports, can we just let people watch what they care about?  In 2011, do we really need affirmative action to push women's sports?

Take a gander at the ESPN SportsCenter year-end poll:

Top sports story of 2010?

* LeBron James goes to Heat
* Saints win Super Bowl
* Tiger Woods goes winless
* Jimmie Johnson wins 5th straight Sprint Cup Championship
* UConn breaks UCLA win streak

For the benefit of anybody who never watched the "one of these things is not like the other" game on Sesame Street when they were young, the UConn women's basketball team going on a winning streak is not a "top sports story of 2010".  In fact, very few people care.

Now, if you could combine the Tiger Woods story with the UConn women's basketball team story, that would be a story.  But in and of itself, there is no story here. I'm sure that Maya Moore is a fine person, but many more people care about LeBron James - by a factor of about 100,000.

SportsCenter has been devoting far too much airtime to women's basketball.  As they drone on about the winning streak, you can almost hear the country's remote controls switching to other channels in unison.  Viewers care more about men's sewing than they do about women's basketball.

They aren't the best players in the world, the game is dull, and the media shouldn't bore sports fans with a product that they clearly don't want.

I applaud women basketball players for their athleticism and dedication, just as I applaud people who run road races.  But - like 99% of the rest of country - I don't want to watch it.