FSU Glams Up Hoops Stars, Sparks Uproar

Female basketball stars' three-pointers, hook shots, muscles, and agility don't score with Florida State University officials. They've also got to look good in the slinky gowns they had to don for the team's website. Now women are crying foul. Each member of the team, some provocatively clutching basketballs, wears a shiny, low-cut dress lounging in a limo. Some look distinctly unhappy.

A press release insists the message is: "Women athletes are powerful and beautiful"—assuming they're gussied up like princesses, notes Tracy Clark Fiori in Salon. She suspects something darker than simply using sex to sell. The "straight-gals-going-to-the-prom" photos smack of homophobia in college sports. Case in point? A college coach's three mandates for her basketball team, revealed in the film Training Rules: "No drinking, no drugs, no lesbians."
(More battle of the sexes stories.)