KING insults Hedges, public with bun joke

Boys will be boys.

In the big-money world of big-time sports, that can be a nauseating thing.

Case in point, this week's television-news treatment of Barbara Hedges, the University of Washington athletic director.

The backdrop: Hedges was a candidate for female Sports Star of the Year in an annual contest conducted by the Seattle P-I. . I scoffed a bit at seeing her name on the ballot. Must be a slow year for women's sports when an AD is one of the shining lights.

Then I looked more closely at her accomplishments: Nationally ranked athletic programs. Nationally ranked, essentially clean (knock on wood) athletic programs. An $85 million campus sports-facility building spree that would make space-hungry Microsoft envious. All but one of UW's 24 athletic programs appearing in postseason play during her tenure.

And deft hires, including the swiping of football coach Rick Neuheisel from Colorado.

Lots of people criticized that move. Nobody had more fun with millionaire Rick than I, especially after Neuheisel arrived in town tripping over the NCAA recruitment-rules manual. I didn't like the way Hedges brushed off Neuheisel's bungled start as a casual oversight. Still don't.

But Neuheisel's resurrection of Husky football - and, more important, in-state recruiting - has shown that Hedges knew more than most of us about what was best for Montlake.

No one can argue with Hedges' gutsy call on Neuheisel, nor her overall dedication, drive, and success. As it turns out, she wasn't named Seattle's female Sports Star of the Year. She should have been.

Which made it all the more disgusting to realize that Hedges, accomplishments aside, will never be more to some of the male-dominated local sports establishment than a chick with nice hair.

Consider Thursday's evening-news broadcast on KING-TV, which dispatched reporter Gaard Swanson to the P-I confab. Swanson appeared live at the awards dinner while sports anchor Paul Silvi flipped jokes from, ahem, Digital Studio A. Swanson, leading in to a commercial, at one point grabbed a dinner roll off the table, biting into it and noting that the awards must be close if rolls were being served.

After the break, KING returned to Swanson, who briefly interviewed Hedges, gushing over her accomplishments and heartily congratulating her on her nomination.

Cut back to the studio. Cue Silvi:

"Hey Gaard," Silvi said with a smirk, referring to Swanson's dinner-roll comment. "You weren't just nibbling on Barbara's bun there, were ya?"

Swanson, guffawing and practically drooling: "No, but I'd sure like to!"

Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk.

Clunk, went remotes on floors across Seattle. You could almost hear people checking the listings. Yup, this was the news, not a bad outtake from "Almost Live."

The silence on the normally glib KING set was palpable. You have to think Jean Enersen wanted to crawl into her lapel mike and die.

What exactly does Hedges have to do to be taken seriously? Even as she was being honored, she was made the butt of a joke.

Something tells me the same smarminess would not have been applied to Mike Holmgren.

That says all too much about who we are, and what we think. Sure, the infantile Silvi/Swanson banter was asinine on its face. But think about it: It's probably indicative of a larger, dumb-jock battle that women such as Hedges, tiptoeing across the testosterone-loaded minefield of high-profile sports, face every day.

Coming from two drunks in a bar, a buns joke would have been offensive, but expected. Coming from "journalists," it was flat-out embarrassing.

Dave Lougee, KING-TV's executive news director, said he had not received a single viewer complaint, but then reviewed the tape at The Times' request. "It was entirely inappropriate," Lougee said. "We will deal with the matter internally."

The problem, however, is external: The world already thinks most sports broadcasters are overgrown dorks who've never achieved intellectual separation from a junior-high school locker room.

The Home Team owes Barbara Hedges a big, fat apology.