SportsCenter is The Real Housewives for Dudes
I said what I said!
Here is the most common conversation in our household:
BART: Ugh. Who is screaming!
ME: LEAVE ME ALONE! I’m watching my stories!
BART: Why do you like watching those shrieking hags???
ME: LEAVE THEM ALONE THESE WOMEN ARE MY FRIENDS!
BART: Oh and why did you reload the dishwasher after I loaded it?
ME: (sighs loudly) Because it was wrong, incorrect, and poorly conceived. Space was wasted. It hurt ever fiber of my moral judgment so I fixed it.
BART: People who watch the Real Housewives don’t have moral judgement!
ME: OH HAHHAHAHAHA
ALSO ME:
I do have moral judgement, thank you. I know the behavior I see on TV is wrong and incorrect like a dishwasher loaded by my husband. I am a writer. A studier of flawed humanity. A crafter of worlds and scenes and situations where throwing a highball glass on a cement floor is my preferred form of punctuation. We’re not going to get into why I love Bravo shows. We covered that here.
But we are going to delve into something I’ve been pondering for a long time:
Why are the “shrieking hags” on Bravo any different from the shrieking trolls on SportsCenter?
Answer: Oh, they’re notI It was a trick question!
Bravo fans and sports fans are literally the same. Watching grown ass men foam at the mouth over a tight end’s torn ACL is the same as watching grown ass women yell at each other because someone invited a woman who once called another woman a “rotting corpse” to a mother’s day luncheon. (“Penetrating the tight end’s defense,” on the other hand mean very different things depending on which channel you’re watching.)
Sports are sports. Can’t we all just get along?
One evening I was relaxing downstairs with the glorious queens from the Miami Housewives. When these goddesses scream at each other they often weave in Spanish insults and really it’s quite beautiful. Poetic, one might say. Suddenly I heard shrieking and it wasn’t matching the scene on TV. When did Alexia’s voice get so deep? That’s when I realized the screaming wasn’t coming from my beloved Housewives. It was coming from inside the house!
There were men screaming in my house! Angry, aggro men. Holy shit, I thought. Bart finally got around to inviting the fun dads over for a night of Magic: The Gathering and deep dish pizza and awkward eye contact. But why were the fun dads yelling at each other? Did someone proclaim Detroit-style pizza to be far superior to Chicago’s?
Never one to miss a dust up, I paused the TV and went to insert my nosy ass into the ruckus. Besides, I’d have to take videos for the fun moms. To my surprise there was only one dude physically in our home. My dude. The other four were in a TV studio. Men in suits getting all amped up, ties flapping, saliva dropping, eyes bugging while Bart was just chilling on the couch.
“What is going on?” I asked Bart. “These dudes are louder than Adriana and Marysol in a sprinter van!”
My husband looked surprised. He had a little mason jar filled with wine in one hand and a hunk of iberico cheese in the other.
“What? Who’s screaming?”
“Those dudes on TV,” I screamed. When in Rome…
"It’s SportCenter. They’re not screaming. They’re debating the 2024 NFL draft prospects. It’s a big deal.”
Oooh, debating. Is that what we call it when men yell at each other? So Sutton and Garcelle were debating with Kyle about her missing wedding ring. Nneka was just debating with Wendy about her mother’s alleged shrine. Meredith was just debating with Angie K. about crashing her Palm Springs trip and expecting a welcome gift. Got it, got it.
The dudes on TV weren’t even listening to each other, which I feel like is an important skill during a debate. It was just who can shout the loudest! And about what? An upset in Buffalo? Overrated Cowboys? Some NBA player’s Flagrant 2? Was that a fart joke? Was any of this important enough to warrant the amount of bulging temple veins I saw on our TV! Get these dudes some botox!
“Well, can’t they just talk about sports like normal guys?”
Bart laughed. “This is how guys talk about sports!”
Apparently it was. Even when they agree! Every episode of a sports talk show is full of yelling, red-faced, flailing men. (Ugh. Pray for the sad PA who has to wipe down the teleprompter after every “debate.”) Beating their chest or peeing on things isn’t socially acceptable these days so perhaps mouthing off about some 19-year-old college kid’s percent of completed passes is how they mark their territory and exhibit superiority?
Even more apparent is this was exactly how Bart (and others) view my Housewives. And they’re right. I saw very little difference. Honestly, we’re more alike than you might think. After a really great episode of Bravo television, I:
jump online to see what the other middle-aged lady moms are saying about Annemarie’s obsession with Sutton’s small esophagus or why Robin doesn’t just admit she knows Juan cheats on her or seek out every meme that has to do with Receipts! Proof! Timeline! Screenshots! Everything!
read every review, recap, and hot take before bed
text my bestie and vent, theorize, and prophesize what will happen next week
spend the following day listening to six different podcasts recapping last night’s episode
And what does Bart do after every full day of football?
jumps online to see what other middle-aged dude dads are saying about the upset in Buffalo or the Buccaneer’s odds or who will replace Pete Carroll
reads every review, recap, and hot take of the day’s games before bed
texts his bestie to vent, theorize, and prophesize what will happen next week
spends the next day listening to six different sports talk shows recapping the previous day’s games
Yes, I know there’s some crossover. People who love the Real Housewives may also love basketball (and if you are one of those people, might I recommend
’s AWESOME Substack, Impersonal Foul? She literally describes it as if Bravo and ESPN had a baby and I am obsessed with it.) Also Bravo should just give the NBA their own franchise. Basketball players just sweat drama. There’s even a Housewife who was married to Scottie Pippen who is now dating Marcus Jordan— the son of her ex husband’s mortal enemy, Michael Jordan! But it’s totally fine because Scottie wouldn’t even recognize Larsa with her new face and all.
I’m a connector. I love bringing people together, especially people from two seemingly disparate groups. Can we bridge the gap between Housewives fans and sports fans even more? Yes, yes we can.
Bravo TV, listen to me! We must:
Give the Real Housewives statistics and create a fantasy league. (I know
would back this.) Sample stats include:% of hurled insults landed
seeing a fight through to completion
assists in igniting a scandal or starting a fight without anyone pointing the finger at you
hitting your target with a butter knife, a ravioli, or prosthetic leg
percent of hidden agendas intercepted and turned back around on the accuser
total friends gained from another housewife
points for every person you get to believe someone else’s husband is gay
points for every person who believes you weren’t shitfaced— just took the wrong pills on an empty stomach
points for every person who doesn’t think you rented that house just for filming
believability when spreading a ruuuuuuuuuuuuumah and nasssssteeeeenesss
assign Housewives positions (the READER, the NARRATOR, the INSTIGATOR) and let each franchise draft or trade from other franchises to complete their rosters
Give Us Merch! Bravo fans will buy it! You should see the shit we came home from BravoCon with! Housewives franchises operate like any other team with loyal fanbases so let’s get licensing!
Give each franchise a proper mascot. A stuffed blue bunny wrapped in plastic for Beverly Hills, a thug in a cocktail dress for New York, a prostitution whore for New Jersey, this woman for Potomac:
Give each franchise team colors so we can paint our faces when a new episode airs. I bleed Potomac!
Give us foam middle fingers and jerseys with our favorite catchphrases and insults blazoned upon them!
Give me a Gizelle Bryant Fat Head wall decal.
I would literally buy the shit out of this. As for the sports talk show hosts and commentators? Management has some changes for you too. From now on you must implement the following:
No more studios. Tapings must occur at Great Gatsby themed dinner parties where you’ll be micro-dosing on THC-infused foods and bonding over a game called, “Which Quarterback Would You Throw Off a Building?”
Your cohosts will be chosen for you based on criteria like possibly dating your ex (they definitely are), sending a nudie to producer, marrying someone richer and more famous than you, about to go to jail for fraud.
You must choose a nemesis. More than one would be great. You must pick a fight with your nemesis every week. (Twice a week during basketball or baseball season.) If you need ideas on what to beef about, here’s a few thought-starters:
a dog adopted from your rescue was returned to a kill shelter
someone leaked a story about you. Not all press is good press!
someone questioned your SEC filing
someone seeded disbelief in your supposed relationship by claiming your SO “lives in your phone”
someone liked a “negative” comment about you on social media
you accuse someone of running a fan account for the sole purpose of exposing your dirty secrets and trolling you and your fellow cast members
someone accuses you of lying about a medical condition
someone accuses you of being mentally unstable/sober/doing coke in their bathroom/stealing their house/a bad parent/poor
After every sports season you will reconvene for a reunion with all the other hosts and spend eleven hours recapping all the nasty things you said about each other on social media. Bring receipts!
At least three times per season you will need to get into a pair of Spanx on camera
Please ensure all arrests happen on camera
Duck lips. We need more duck lips, please. And spray tans.
Now that your worlds are colliding things might get a little confusing. Are we talking about burn books or play books? If you need an assist just shout, “Wow, can’t believe that muffed punt couldn’t get it in the slot considering all that double teaming!” Pretty much works in any scenario.
Go, team!
XO,
Shelly
Late-breaking: Bart just showed me this amazing commercial that is literally world’s colliding. If I wasn’t behind on my Bravo TV, I would be watching this all day.
Just a comment referring to last weeks post. I am 81 and I was worried about my daughter walking home alone from the restaurant we were at, which is in a safe area and it’s a short walk.
You are so very clever!!