The media's coverage of sport has primarily focused on male athletes and male sports (Bruce, 2008; Wensing & Bruce, 2003). The purpose of this study is to determine if there was a significant difference between newspaper articles published discussing a violent act in men's and women's Division I sports.

Two incidents in DI women's sports and two from DI men's sports were selected from the 2009-2010 season. These included Brandon Spikes's eye-gouge, Elizabeth Lambert's hair-pulling, Brittney Griner's punch, and Brent Metcalf's push. Two coders ran a content analysis on newspapers for four months after each incident of in-game violence. Five one-way ANOVAs were run to determine if any differences were detected. Significant differences were found between the genders for gender marking, and between Brittney Griner and Elizabeth Lambert for gender typecasting, and establishing heterosexuality. No significant differences were found between any of the athletes for infantilizing and non-sports related characteristics.