The love life of athletes They’ve been a national obsession for basically as long as we’ve had professional athletes: Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio’s relationship was big news in the ’50s, for example. Then, and for a long time afterward, our interest was generally focused on couples like this, where an established celebrity was paired with a sports icon and their combined star power made it impossible to look away.
Then came the 2006 World Cupwhich took the England team to the sleepy spa town of Baden-Baden, Germany. This was a year after the debut of TMZIn the burgeoning days of America’s toxic preoccupation with party girls like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, media companies were beginning to understand what they could do with celebrity gossip online. The 24/7 news cycle was hungry for women to admire and hate in equal measure, and found them ready-made in the wives and girlfriends of England players.
Among them were some notable tabloid figures, notably Victoria Beckham (married, of course, to David) and pop star Cheryl Tweedy (then engaged to England left-back Ashley Cole). But the group also included many women who would not otherwise be famous. And they did not hide, instead courtship holders going shopping, dancing on tables, and generally leading a media circus that lasted until his partners were kicked out of the tournament in the first round of the knockout stage.
That’s how the rest of the world was met the WAGan acronym that had been circulating in the British press for a few years at that time. Literally speaking, a WAG is simply the wife or girlfriend of an athlete. But the WAG seen in Baden-Baden settled into the public consciousness, creating an identity that indicated a particular guy of the woman, who lives a particular type of life. The WAG prototype is young, white, thin, beautiful and, if possible, blond. She’s also shallow, vapid, and obsessed with status. She lives to drink rosé wine, go to parties and spend her husband’s money.
There was an immediate reaction to the term, especially from the wives themselves: “‘Don’t call me WAG,'” Tweedy said The Standard, making sure to clarify that she didn’t need a rich husband to take care of her: she did her shopping and clubbing with her own money, thank you very much.
It didn’t matter. The jargon (and its associations) remained. In 2010, the New York Times noted that the New Jersey Nets “may be second to last in the league in scoring and middle of the road in rebounding, but they can compete with the best in WAG.” (One of their forwards, Kris Humphries, was dating Kim Kardashian at the time.) In 2015, E! premiered a reality show called WAG LAwhich would become the first in a Housewives-style franchise that eventually included Miami and atlanta also. Then in 2019, we obtained the WAGatha Christie Scandal: Football WAG Coleen Rooney’s claims that fellow WAG Rebekah Vardy had been leaking details about her to the tabloids… and had private Instagram posts to prove it. The story was juicy and fun, but it didn’t do much to dispel the notion that the WAG life was for fundamentally mean and malicious women, who had nothing better to do than spy on each other and then report it to the press.
Throughout it all, the WAGs that received the most attention were almost always famous or associated with extremely well-known players. If you can name an American WAG, it’s probably someone like Ayesha Curry or Brittany Mahomes, women whose husbands get multimillion-dollar contracts and endorsement deals.
But there are 15 players on every NBA roster. The NHL allows 23, the MLB allows 40, and the NFL maxes out at 53. And most of those players aren’t even close to being big-name players. The lowest-paid earn the league minimum, which is still a lot of money: between $700,000 and $1 million, depending on the sport. But that will only be if they can remain on the roster all year. Dropping out of the top tier doesn’t take them away from the pros, but it can cost them substantial income. Baseball players, for example, don’t have guaranteed contracts, which meant that if you were sent to the minors during the 2022 season, your salary plummeted from $700,000 to $57,200.
Which, without a doubt, are not poverty wages. But for these athletes, uncertainty about money is compounded by other types of uncertainty, primarily about where they live, potential injuries and an ever-aging body. A player’s romantic partner is subject to the same pressures: fluctuations in income, abrupt changes in living situation, and worries about the future. But she tolerates them in the service of someone else’s dream. And even if she travels fairly regularly, she spends a good part of the year alone, which is especially difficult if the couple has children.
This It’s life for most professional athletes and their wives; There are many, many more Allison Kucharczyks than Ayesha Curries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, some of the most compelling content on social media comes from women in this situation, whose husbands are living the dream, but somewhat precariously, and whose lives, as a consequence, are equal parts aspirational and relatable.
