I think its all perspective.
Lemme expand on that:
If you're a female participant of the said sport (for example...soccer.), its a lot easier for you to name players whereas if you're someone that isn't really into sports hardcore (meaning you were never on a varsity team, never played a single sport consecutively for more than a year, etc so on and so forth.)
Its just the same if you ask like a computer tech guy to name 3 football players. It may be possible, but if he's just not that interested in it and doesn't spend his entire winter looking forward to College Football and Monday Night Football, then its most likely he'll just be like: Uhmm..??
Get my drift?
I'm a girl that plays football (and has a mean spiral not to mention and can run some wicked plays), soccer (I'm a striker and outside mid-fielder), and does dance (ballet, jazz, lyrical, tap, and some hip hop). I can name 3 football players, I CAN'T name 3 female soccer players (That's cuz I've only been playing soccer for 1 year on the JV team and know almost nothing about professional female soccer teams, but I CAN name 3 male soccer players because that's what I'm more interested about, see my point?), and I CAN name 3 ballerinas.
See my point?
It depends on point of interest.
You can't be knowledgable about something you're not interested in.
Wow, this was much longer than I had intended...but I hope this shed some light on the..situation?