I'm perfectly comfortable with male on female violence in sports
but then I don't think see every event as a metaphor for some social problem
Someday society will agree with me I think
Settle down, Chris Brown.
Just kidding, just kidding.
Really though, if you're an average 160 pound male who lifts weights recreationally to stay in shape, you have more muscle mass and strength than a woman who is trained to fight just by nature of how testosterone works. Would you want to go box Manny Pacquiao? I don't even think women want to compete against men in sports. A men's NBA team would make a WNBA team look like they were playing a high school JV squad. NFL football players could shove the biggest strongest woman out there to the ground with two fingers.
So this is cool and all. But I cant help but wonder if we are prematurely making this a big deal. I mean, weve had retired players come out before, and unless this guy gets another job (which is sort of doubtful, hes not good) thats all this is, a retired player coming out.
I mean, I guess a wall is broken as its a guy still actively looking for an NBA roster, but Im sure lots of gay dudes would want to play in the NBA, its good money. If he doesnt actually get on a team next year, is this any different than those past, retired atheletes?
That's the point. They don't come out unless they aren't in the sport anymore.
And yeah, someone not getting on a team is quite a bit different then someone not even wanting to be on a team.
Well I can go ask my gay brother if hed like to go play in the NBA next year and make a few hundred grand, 99.9999% sure he will say yes. Until Collins is actually ON a team next year, I dont think this is the big leap we are praising. Hell to be honest, the cynic in me sort of sees an aging player who is fading in his career coming out to try and add some years on that might not have been there. But everything about Collins seems to suggest he is a stand up dude and thats not whats happening here.
I mean, yeah its a nice step even if he doesnt make a team, but I think the giant leap is if there is an active, gay player in a locker room, out on the court getting cheered or boo'd or whatever. Its nice collins is TRYING to break the wall down, but I dont think he succeeds unless he plays next year. Hopefully you guys are right and he finds a spot. I think an active gay player is a lot better at breaking the mold than a former player who is gay and wants to play more but isnt.
I'm perfectly comfortable with male on female violence in sports
but then I don't think see every event as a metaphor for some social problem
Someday society will agree with me I think
Settle down, Chris Brown.
Just kidding, just kidding.
Really though, if you're an average 160 pound male who lifts weights recreationally to stay in shape, you have more muscle mass and strength than a woman who is trained to fight just by nature of how testosterone works. Would you want to go box Manny Pacquiao? I don't even think women want to compete against men in sports. A men's NBA team would make a WNBA team look like they were playing a high school JV squad. NFL football players could shove the biggest strongest woman out there to the ground with two fingers.
Not everything has to be mixed gender.
In case you didn't read Pony's post, to TLDR: Professional Athletes are statistical outliers, we don't need to care about the average.
If a woman has the ability to play on the level of the NBA or NFL, then she has the ability. It doesn't matter what the average for her gender is. Those women may be rarer than men, but the point of equality is to give anyone who has the ability a chance, no matter what the "average" of their background says they should or shouldn't be good at.
Jephery on
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
What I'm saying is the most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team, except as maybe a kicker or punter on an NFL team, and that's not an insult to women, it's just the fact that physically our two genders are different.
RE: Collins, the reason he waited to come out until after the season is that he didn't want to create a story that would be a distraction during the season. It's a totally respectable move. If he wants to play next season, he'll be picked up, possibly mid-season if a team loses a big man and needs a body. That was the case before and after the story came out.
What I'm saying is the most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team, except as maybe a kicker or punter on an NFL team, and that's not an insult to women, it's just the fact that physically our two genders are different.
"The most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team."
Can you actually prove that statement? Out of 3 billion women, not even one could make onto one of those teams if she tried and was allowed to?
I bet people use to say that the smartest woman in the world couldn't make it through college.
Jephery on
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I'm perfectly comfortable with male on female violence in sports
but then I don't think see every event as a metaphor for some social problem
Someday society will agree with me I think
Settle down, Chris Brown.
Just kidding, just kidding.
Really though, if you're an average 160 pound male who lifts weights recreationally to stay in shape, you have more muscle mass and strength than a woman who is trained to fight just by nature of how testosterone works. Would you want to go box Manny Pacquiao? I don't even think women want to compete against men in sports. A men's NBA team would make a WNBA team look like they were playing a high school JV squad. NFL football players could shove the biggest strongest woman out there to the ground with two fingers.
Not everything has to be mixed gender.
In case you didn't read Pony's post, to TLDR: Professional Athletes are statistical outliers, we don't need to care about the average.
If a woman has the ability to play on the level of the NBA or NFL, then she has the ability. It doesn't matter what the average for her gender is. Those women may be rarer than men, but the point of equality is to give anyone who has the ability a chance, no matter what the "average" of their background says they should or shouldn't be good at.
I thought the problem at hand (as so much as this line of discussion was brought up in regards to transgendered individuals competing in MMA) was not so much women trying to compete with men, but the reverse in the case of transgendered individuals. If a woman wants to go line up against Navarro Bowman and can do so without using anything the NFL would consider a restricted substance, more power to her. However, that doesn't mean the opposite should be allowed in the case of a transgendered person wanting to compete in a women's league. Having Adrian Peterson or an equivalent body playing tailback in the Lingerie League because they identify as female would be a huge risk to all the other players safety.
What I'm saying is the most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team, except as maybe a kicker or punter on an NFL team, and that's not an insult to women, it's just the fact that physically our two genders are different.
I'm perfectly comfortable with male on female violence in sports
but then I don't think see every event as a metaphor for some social problem
Someday society will agree with me I think
Settle down, Chris Brown.
Just kidding, just kidding.
Really though, if you're an average 160 pound male who lifts weights recreationally to stay in shape, you have more muscle mass and strength than a woman who is trained to fight just by nature of how testosterone works. Would you want to go box Manny Pacquiao? I don't even think women want to compete against men in sports. A men's NBA team would make a WNBA team look like they were playing a high school JV squad. NFL football players could shove the biggest strongest woman out there to the ground with two fingers.
Not everything has to be mixed gender.
In case you didn't read Pony's post, to TLDR: Professional Athletes are statistical outliers, we don't need to care about the average.
If a woman has the ability to be to play on the level of the NBA or NFL, then she has the ability. It doesn't matter what the average for her gender is. Those women may be rarer than men, but the point of equality is to give anyone who has the ability a chance, no matter what the "average" of their background says they should or shouldn't be good at.
I agree with most of Pony's post, but there are places that generalities do matter.
Things like body fat percentages, where the hormonal balance entirely breaks down and brings up major issues like osteoporosis when women get into single-digit body fat.
Yeah, you can have - for lack of a better term - freaks of nature. But the men in the NBA? The NFL? They are pretty much universally freaks of nature themselves. When the pool starts four or five standard deviations from the 'average' man, you're looking at five or six standard deviations from the 'average' woman to make the minimum cut.
Now, I'm not going to deny that strength isn't everything in every sport. Pretty much every sport has positions where skill and technique are as or more important than raw speed or strength. I'm a firm believer that anything men can do women can do. I think that part of why women's sports lag behind men is as much societal - a smaller pool or less encouragement as it is physical.
But to deny that there are physical differences between men and women seems...wrong. I think recognizing women's sports as being independently valuable and skilled is good. It's a disservice to constantly try to compare women's sports to men's because they are two different things. The women in the WNBA are every bit as incredible athletes as the men in the NBA, and they don't need to be playing and beating men to show that.
I'm kind of glad there are enough differences in some sports (say, softball vs. baseball) that it doesn't inevitably come down to the 'boys are better than girls' pissing match. Good athletes are good athletes regardless of sex, and constantly measuring women against the standard of men is...I don't know if it's sexist, but it just doesn't seem right.
What I'm saying is the most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team, except as maybe a kicker or punter on an NFL team, and that's not an insult to women, it's just the fact that physically our two genders are different.
"The most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team."
Can you actually prove that statement? Out of 3 billion women, not even one could make onto one of those teams if she tried and was allowed to?
I bet people use to say that the smartest woman in the world couldn't make it through college.
Well, Mark Cuban says he's open to giving Brittany Griner a tryout.
So we can test this theory, as for basketball, she's basically it.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
What I'm saying is the most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team, except as maybe a kicker or punter on an NFL team, and that's not an insult to women, it's just the fact that physically our two genders are different.
"The most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team."
Can you actually prove that statement? Out of 3 billion women, not even one could make into onto one of those teams if she tried and was allowed to?
I bet people use to say that the smartest woman in the world couldn't make it through college.
Yes. I could. Because no naturally (IE, not using something the NFL would consider a prohibited substance) fit woman could bulk up to the size needed to play a non-speed position, and no woman would be realistically fast enough to play a speed position. I ran a shave over 50 seconds in the 400 in highschool, and had the good (mis)fortune of competing against Xavier Carter and Devin Hester at two different points in time. Hester is a bit of a speedster even by NFL standards, but he still blew me away when we ran against each other, to the point where I would say at my peak I would be bottom tier NFL speed for a CB or Tailback/Wide receiver. And yet, I was only two and a half seconds off the Womens 400 meter world record in high school.
I'm sorry, but no. Not in the NFL. Like I said earlier. MMA (though that has social issues) is a possibility. Baseball I think women could do well competing in against men. Possibly Hockey, since it's every bit as much a precision sport as a physical one. But the NFL? Not in a hundred years without doping.
Collins, the reason he waited to come out until after the season is that he didn't want to create a story that would be a distraction during the season. It's a totally respectable move. If he wants to play next season, he'll be picked up, possibly mid-season if a team loses a big man and needs a body. That was the case before and after the story came out.
I want to clearify my statement. I dont remotely think Collins did this selfishly, and he deserves total mad props for it. Even if he doesnt play a game or make a team, he makes it a ton easier for the next guy. Before I learned anything about the story or him, my knee-jerk reaction was cynical, but everything about his appears to be fantastic, so I have no doubt he did it for the right reasons, timing and everything.
My only point is, even though what has happened is awesome and does help pave the way for the first active gay athlete in main stream USA sports, he isnt there quite yet. Based on all the posts here, he will be which is great. I think a guy actually being in the locker room, being on our TVs being a regular part of the NBA just like everyone else and just happening to be openly gay will be a huge deal. Right now, he isnt that yet, so hopefully he will be.
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cptruggedI think it has something to do with free will.Registered Userregular
edited May 2013
I think ya'll kind of missed the point. Pony wasn't saying that there were absolutely no differences physically between men and women. But that the measuring sticks of experience and weight class settle those differences already as best they can. Even between other men. I mean come on, its not like lightweight fighting men are genetically the same as some giant heavy weight either.
The final point however, was that none of that really matters as long as socially men in physical conflict with women is still the ongoing issue in society.
What I'm saying is the most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team, except as maybe a kicker or punter on an NFL team, and that's not an insult to women, it's just the fact that physically our two genders are different.
"The most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team."
Can you actually prove that statement? Out of 3 billion women, not even one could make into onto one of those teams if she tried and was allowed to?
I bet people use to say that the smartest woman in the world couldn't make it through college.
Yes. I could. Because no naturally (IE, not using something the NFL would consider a prohibited substance) fit woman could bulk up to the size needed to play a non-speed position, and no woman would be realistically fast enough to play a speed position. I ran a shave over 50 seconds in the 400 in highschool, and had the good (mis)fortune of competing against Xavier Carter and Devin Hester at two different points in time. Hester is a bit of a speedster even by NFL standards, but he still blew me away when we ran against each other, to the point where I would say at my peak I would be bottom tier NFL speed for a CB or Tailback/Wide receiver. And yet, I was only two and a half seconds off the Womens 400 meter world record in high school.
I'm sorry, but no. Not in the NFL. Like I said earlier. MMA (though that has social issues) is a possibility. Baseball I think women could do well competing in against men. Possibly Hockey, since it's every bit as much a precision sport as a physical one. But the NFL? Not in a hundred years without doping.
Quarterback.
Not that it would happen in a hundred years, hell - the NFL barely let black guys play QB until the past decade. There are some big girls that could probably fill out a lineman spot too.
And I have to second enlightenedbum that I don't think the NFL men get there without doping either. I'd add NBA big-men to the list too. You think I'm going to believe that doping was that common in BASEBALL but wasn't that widespread in the other pro sports? Bull-fucking-shit.
Look how big those guys are compared to ten or twenty years ago, and how much they bulk up in a year or two of going pro. That is NOT just better lifting and training.
Women have some damn good and quick ball-handling guards too. I actually think one of them would do better in the NBA than Griner. I actually don't think Griner is as good a shot as some of the quick little guards.
What I'm saying is the most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team, except as maybe a kicker or punter on an NFL team, and that's not an insult to women, it's just the fact that physically our two genders are different.
"The most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team."
Can you actually prove that statement? Out of 3 billion women, not even one could make into onto one of those teams if she tried and was allowed to?
I bet people use to say that the smartest woman in the world couldn't make it through college.
Yes. I could. Because no naturally (IE, not using something the NFL would consider a prohibited substance) fit woman could bulk up to the size needed to play a non-speed position, and no woman would be realistically fast enough to play a speed position. I ran a shave over 50 seconds in the 400 in highschool, and had the good (mis)fortune of competing against Xavier Carter and Devin Hester at two different points in time. Hester is a bit of a speedster even by NFL standards, but he still blew me away when we ran against each other, to the point where I would say at my peak I would be bottom tier NFL speed for a CB or Tailback/Wide receiver. And yet, I was only two and a half seconds off the Womens 400 meter world record in high school.
I'm sorry, but no. Not in the NFL. Like I said earlier. MMA (though that has social issues) is a possibility. Baseball I think women could do well competing in against men. Possibly Hockey, since it's every bit as much a precision sport as a physical one. But the NFL? Not in a hundred years without doping.
Unless you take every woman on Earth, trained them to their peak physical abilities, and tried them out for the NBA and NFL, you can't prove it. I simply posit the existence of such a woman and that woman should be given the chance.
Jephery on
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"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I think ya'll kind of missed the point. Pony wasn't saying that there were absolutely no differences physically between men and women. But that the measuring sticks of experience and weight class settle those differences already as best they can. Even between other men. I mean come on, its not like lightweight fighting men are genetically the same as some giant heavy weight either.
The final point however, was that none of that really matters as long as socially men in physical conflict with women is still the ongoing issue in society.
I think you don't realize how much arm strength it takes to play Quarterback in the NFL. Even the guys who aren't fast runners are still top tier athletes who can throw a football with velocity and distance that a woman simply can't get strong enough to do without injecting test. Not to mention there have only ever been a handful of NFL QBs under 6 feet tall who have had great success, because offensive and defensive linemen are so big you have to be able to see over them and throw without getting your passes swatted down. Last time I checked, my wife is taller than average for a woman at 5'7", and no matter how good an arm she had, she'd never fit the bill.
And no, no woman could ever play offensive or defensive lineman in the NFL. The smallest of those guys is 260 pounds, and if they're that, they're lean muscle who can squat insane amounts and have explosive strength that again, a woman could never achieve. It has nothing to do with sexism, and everything to do with the makeup of the human body.
I tend to think you can't get as big and fast as NFL players without doping if you're a man.
That's a joke. Here's a picture of Herschel Walker, a former NFL player turned MMA fighter who decided as a teenager to stop being overweight and started training using 1500 pushups and 2500+ situps a day along with sprints. That's primarily how he's worked out since then. He's like 50 years old now. Genetics are a huge thing, and guys who are NFL caliber athletes possess some of the best ones. It's insanely disrespectful to all athletes to act like all of them dope because some of them do.
Demarcus Ware, my favorite NFL player is one of the best role models in the NFL imo, and he finds new ways to work out every offseason to improve his game. Whether it's adding pilates and yoga to his weight lifting or whatever, it's just called hard work. You can achieve a hell of a lot if you have good genes and the work ethic it takes to become a professional athlete.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
You can't seriously be trying to say that no woman ever could compete in a sport that currently fields Darren Sproles?
Of course I can. Darren Sproles plays the one position in the NFL where height basically doesn't matter, but in case you didn't know, he's 190 pounds of muscle. Find me a woman that runs a 4.3 40 and has legs the size of tree trunks to play running back and sure, we can put her in the NFL.
I think people don't realize how big athletes are. The smallest guy on the Dallas Cowboys starting roster is Mo Claiborne, and at about 180 pounds, he looks like this:
You going to find me a woman who is muscular enough to want to get tackled by that guy, even though he's only about 60% as heavy as the biggest guys she'd be facing?
For anybody who is not familiar, this is what Darren Sproles at 5'6" looks like:
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
edited May 2013
You don't think there's a single small, fast, muscular woman out there in the world? Not a one? What about tall muscular women who can jump really high and catch a ball? I'm pretty sure female linebackers are unlikely (albeit I'm not willing to rule out the possibility), but I'm sure there are a few ladies out there that could make fantastic, or at least passable, running backs and wide receivers. Especially in the context of Sproles where his main job is to take kick-off returns.
Edit: You seem to be equating football entirely with tackling. No one on a football team wants to get tackled, and the equipment they were is specifically made to reduce the chance of injury (plus the tackling guys are trained to tackle people in a way that is less likely to injure). But the point of football is to move the ball down the field and score, and I bet women could do that just fine.
I'm not sure there is any great social victory in trying to deliberately overcome the social construct which tells men to not hit women.
It's less about getting over "men shouldn't hit women" then it is "people shouldn't hit people" and having the costs for doing it be equal.
It is, by definition, sexist and why a lot of spousal abuse cases where the husband is the abused never get reported or taken seriously. Remember that woman on the reality tv show who beat the shit out of her husband repeatedly? Granted she was charged for it but if it hadn't been filmed nothing ever would have happened about it.
Actually, chivalry and notions thereof have little if anything to do with why men who are abused don't report it, however sexist chivalry may be. You're confusing a broader notion of patriarchal sexism with a specific thing, which is machismo, not chivalry.
To put it bluntly and unambiguously: Men don't look down on other men for being weak/victims because of chivalry, they do it because of that ugly flipside to the equation. Machismo, male ego, trans-chivalry if you will.
And while that is off-topic, I am going to pull a magic act and make it topical.
Because, you see, that dark flipside to the male ego that casts a man who is abused by a woman as weak and worthless is exactly the same aspect of the male ego which rejects gay men in professional sports while at the same time giving a nod and a pass to lesbian athletes.
You don't think there's a single small, fast, muscular woman out there in the world? Not a one? What about tall muscular women who can jump really high and catch a ball? I'm pretty sure female linebackers are unlikely (albeit I'm not willing to rule out the possibility), but I'm sure there are a few ladies out there that could make fantastic, or at least passable, running backs and wide receivers. Especially in the context of Sproles where his main job is to take kick-off returns.
Edit: You seem to be equating football entirely with tackling. No one on a football team wants to get tackled, and the equipment they were is specifically made to reduce the chance of injury (plus the tackling guys are trained to tackle people in a way that is less likely to injure). But the point of football is to move the ball down the field and score, and I bet women could do that just fine.
You can't play running back in the NFL without being 200 pounds. If you're very rare like Sproles you can do it at 190 because you're only 5'6" and have those insanely strong legs. Typically a running back is going to be 220 plus. There simply aren't women alive who can be that weight without being fat or injecting testosterone for years, which would make them ineligible to play in the NFL.
Wide receiver is a more interesting discussion, but even there look at NFL wide receivers. There are a few guys like Desean Jackson who goes about 170 pounds, and people always joke that he'll get broken in half if he goes over the middle. He's a notoriously non physical player who basically only plays in the NFL because he has insane speed. If you were to find a woman who could play wideout in the NFL it'd have to be a woman who is at least 170 pounds of raw lean muscle mass, or larger. Without a man's level of testosterone it's just not possible for women to get that big. And that's talking about basically the smallest guy in the NFL who is only there because of his speed.
Even in terms of fighting it's not as simple as weight classes, because a 150 pound man and a 150 pound woman have very different body compositions. We don't let guys inject extra test and then compete against guys who aren't doing it, so why would we want to have women competing against men, when it's basically the same thing. The guy gets all the free test that comes with being born a man and has a naturally huge advantage.
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y2jake215certified Flat Birther theoristthe Last Good Boy onlineRegistered Userregular
I tend to think you can't get as big and fast as NFL players without doping if you're a man.
That's a joke. Here's a picture of Herschel Walker, a former NFL player turned MMA fighter who decided as a teenager to stop being overweight and started training using 1500 pushups and 2500+ situps a day along with sprints. That's primarily how he's worked out since then. He's like 50 years old now. Genetics are a huge thing, and guys who are NFL caliber athletes possess some of the best ones. It's insanely disrespectful to all athletes to act like all of them dope because some of them do.
Demarcus Ware, my favorite NFL player is one of the best role models in the NFL imo, and he finds new ways to work out every offseason to improve his game. Whether it's adding pilates and yoga to his weight lifting or whatever, it's just called hard work. You can achieve a hell of a lot if you have good genes and the work ethic it takes to become a professional athlete.
Herschel Walker played in the 80s.
Just for reference:
From 1920 to 1984, there were never more than eight players in any season who weighed 300 pounds or more. There were 570 players who weighed 300 or more listed on 2006 NFL training camp rosters, nearly 20 percent of all players.
There's more to this overwhelming increase in body mass, muscle and speed than just "these guys are working harder now"
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
You don't think there's a single small, fast, muscular woman out there in the world? Not a one? What about tall muscular women who can jump really high and catch a ball? I'm pretty sure female linebackers are unlikely (albeit I'm not willing to rule out the possibility), but I'm sure there are a few ladies out there that could make fantastic, or at least passable, running backs and wide receivers. Especially in the context of Sproles where his main job is to take kick-off returns.
Edit: You seem to be equating football entirely with tackling. No one on a football team wants to get tackled, and the equipment they were is specifically made to reduce the chance of injury (plus the tackling guys are trained to tackle people in a way that is less likely to injure). But the point of football is to move the ball down the field and score, and I bet women could do that just fine.
You can be big and tough, or small and fast. And there isn't a woman in the world fast enough to compete in the NFL. If there was, she's be setting world record times left and right.
I tend to think you can't get as big and fast as NFL players without doping if you're a man.
That's a joke. Here's a picture of Herschel Walker, a former NFL player turned MMA fighter who decided as a teenager to stop being overweight and started training using 1500 pushups and 2500+ situps a day along with sprints. That's primarily how he's worked out since then. He's like 50 years old now. Genetics are a huge thing, and guys who are NFL caliber athletes possess some of the best ones. It's insanely disrespectful to all athletes to act like all of them dope because some of them do.
Demarcus Ware, my favorite NFL player is one of the best role models in the NFL imo, and he finds new ways to work out every offseason to improve his game. Whether it's adding pilates and yoga to his weight lifting or whatever, it's just called hard work. You can achieve a hell of a lot if you have good genes and the work ethic it takes to become a professional athlete.
Herschel Walker played in the 80s.
Just for reference:
From 1920 to 1984, there were never more than eight players in any season who weighed 300 pounds or more. There were 570 players who weighed 300 or more listed on 2006 NFL training camp rosters, nearly 20 percent of all players.
There's more to this overwhelming increase in body mass, muscle and speed than just "these guys are working harder now"
And those huge guys run just as fast as the people playing the positions did 30 years ago. Probably faster.
Coincidentally, there's a concussion epidemic.
enlightenedbum on
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
I tend to think you can't get as big and fast as NFL players without doping if you're a man.
That's a joke. Here's a picture of Herschel Walker, a former NFL player turned MMA fighter who decided as a teenager to stop being overweight and started training using 1500 pushups and 2500+ situps a day along with sprints. That's primarily how he's worked out since then. He's like 50 years old now. Genetics are a huge thing, and guys who are NFL caliber athletes possess some of the best ones. It's insanely disrespectful to all athletes to act like all of them dope because some of them do.
Demarcus Ware, my favorite NFL player is one of the best role models in the NFL imo, and he finds new ways to work out every offseason to improve his game. Whether it's adding pilates and yoga to his weight lifting or whatever, it's just called hard work. You can achieve a hell of a lot if you have good genes and the work ethic it takes to become a professional athlete.
Herschel Walker played in the 80s.
Just for reference:
From 1920 to 1984, there were never more than eight players in any season who weighed 300 pounds or more. There were 570 players who weighed 300 or more listed on 2006 NFL training camp rosters, nearly 20 percent of all players.
There's more to this overwhelming increase in body mass, muscle and speed than just "these guys are working harder now"
Nearly 20% of all NFL players are over 300 pounds now, eh? And how much of an NFL roster is made up of offensive and defensive linemen? About 20 or 25%. And it's not uncommon knowledge that the athletes are getting bigger. Linemen eat more than they ever did. Most of these guys are not 300 pounds of lean mass. They're huge dudes who get pretty fat during their careers because that's the way the NFL has evolved.
Also, since 1984, training methods have gotten much better too. There's a reason NFL teams today have professional strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists, and everything else working full time for them. As the NFL got bigger and bigger, teams had to find new ways to try to keep a competitive edge. As time goes on, athletes always improve. That's true of every sport. And it's not always because they're taking steroids. To think otherwise is laughable.
Here's a picture of Travis Frederick, a draft pick in this year's NFL draft. He's 6'4 312 pounds.
It's quite possible to get this big by eating a shitload of food, pushing weights around, and playing football. OMG steroids is not the answer every time somebody is big.
What I'm saying is the most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team, except as maybe a kicker or punter on an NFL team, and that's not an insult to women, it's just the fact that physically our two genders are different.
"The most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team."
Can you actually prove that statement? Out of 3 billion women, not even one could make into onto one of those teams if she tried and was allowed to?
I bet people use to say that the smartest woman in the world couldn't make it through college.
Yes. I could. Because no naturally (IE, not using something the NFL would consider a prohibited substance) fit woman could bulk up to the size needed to play a non-speed position, and no woman would be realistically fast enough to play a speed position. I ran a shave over 50 seconds in the 400 in highschool, and had the good (mis)fortune of competing against Xavier Carter and Devin Hester at two different points in time. Hester is a bit of a speedster even by NFL standards, but he still blew me away when we ran against each other, to the point where I would say at my peak I would be bottom tier NFL speed for a CB or Tailback/Wide receiver. And yet, I was only two and a half seconds off the Womens 400 meter world record in high school.
I'm sorry, but no. Not in the NFL. Like I said earlier. MMA (though that has social issues) is a possibility. Baseball I think women could do well competing in against men. Possibly Hockey, since it's every bit as much a precision sport as a physical one. But the NFL? Not in a hundred years without doping.
Unless you take every woman on Earth, trained them to their peak physical abilities, and tried them out for the NBA and NFL, you can't prove it. I simply posit the existence of such a woman and that woman should be given the chance.
Are they not? There are no rules against it afaik. There's obvious cultural factors at work too, but I don't think there's as huge a barrier as you think.
And if you are looking for an experiment showing male vs female performance in sports, look at the Olympics. That's the best of the best.
In case you didn't read Pony's post, to TLDR: Professional Athletes are statistical outliers, we don't need to care about the average.
If a woman has the ability to play on the level of the NBA or NFL, then she has the ability. It doesn't matter what the average for her gender is. Those women may be rarer than men, but the point of equality is to give anyone who has the ability a chance, no matter what the "average" of their background says they should or shouldn't be good at.
In case you didn't read Pony's post, it only applies to professional athletes who are in weight denominated sports because in weight denominated sports you control for the outlier effect that occurs between populations. You will not control for any male/female same weight strength bias but that is probably going to be small relative to the effect of selection bias. The effect of selection bias however is going to be huge.
Basically if you line up all the women in the world and all the men in the world by height and then you take the first say 10,000 people. Given that men and women have the same standard deviation in height but men have a higher average those first 10,000 are very likely to be 100% male. We can go even further to say that given a set number of people as the populations of men/women increase at the same rate the probability that those first 10,000 are 100% male approaches 1.
In profession sports like Baseball and Football and Basketball we can, roughly, assume that work ethic and dedication and skill, between men and women, would be the same. But we can't assume that raw physical height, weight, and strength would be because of the above effect. This is to say, even if we "allowed" women into these sports the probability they could compete, even if they were the best women in the world, is pretty much zero. There simply aren't enough professional athletes such that, when we select the top end of the total distribution there are women who make our cutoff points and if there are then they're going to be so few and far between it doesn't really matter.
E.G. In the 2012 London Olympics 100m race for the first round of races (at which point the people who field someone to field someone are out) 7 men finished slower than Olympic Record for women including 1 DNF's. 12 men finished slower than the World Record for women. Out of 55 men only 12 finished slower than the fastest any woman has ever run the race.
There have been at least 12 men under the age of 18 who have beaten the world record for women in the 100 meters. There have been at least one man missing an arm who have come close
Edit: Case in point quick rough math tells me that there should be roughly 50,000 to 60,000 men with height above 6'10" in the world. There should be 400-600 women above that height.
Just for reference:
From 1920 to 1984, there were never more than eight players in any season who weighed 300 pounds or more. There were 570 players who weighed 300 or more listed on 2006 NFL training camp rosters, nearly 20 percent of all players.
There's more to this overwhelming increase in body mass, muscle and speed than just "these guys are working harder now"
As the population size increases and the number of players training for athletics increases the selection pool becomes larger. Unless the number of people in the NFL increases at the same rate as the selection pool then we expect by raw statistics that the people who are selected will be bigger and faster over time.
It is very likely that we are seeing selection effects as the raw number of very large people increase and the raw number of those who would train to be an athlete and the fact that athletes are now drawn from wherever we can find them rather than just the U.S.
This of course does not take into account that since the 1950's the average height of people in the U.S. has increased by 1 inch (from 5'8" to 5'9") in the general population which will further shift the selection process to larger and larger people
There is definitely some doping going on in the NFL.
But not everyone. And not everyone who is huge is doping.
certainly. but I think a lot more people are doping than the average person assumes
I am at a point where I don't assume a single person couldn't possibly be doing steroids, and I am no longer outraged when someone's caught. It's not like they're REALLY making an effort to ban it
e: just realized this is getting pretty off topic
y2jake215 on
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
actually the weirdest part of that interview was when he said they didn't know whether they were fraternal or identical twins
ummm how?
Sometimes fraternal twins look really really alike.
However.
Identical twins look exactly alike, particularly when they are young. It's kind of weird that he doesn't know. Life leaves its own unique mark on a person though, my aunts (identical twins) looked exactly the same as young women, but by the time I knew them (my earliest memories of them they were around 40) they looked quite different, and not just in terms of hairstyle or clothing, I mean they looked like not-twins.
what are the odds of being a 7 foot tall, gay, identical twin, who makes the NBA
it's gotta be pretty low, right
7 feet tall = 3/1000000 people. This is mostly men; a 7 foot tall woman would be like 8 standard deviations above the mean, a man is a mere 6), so we don't have to adjust.
Identical twins = 3/1000 births
Gay = Somewhere between 2-10% of the population. Let's say 5% (exit polling in the 2012 election has 5% of the electorate self-identifying as gay; granted that due to current issues gay people are potentially more likely to vote).
Given 7 feet tall and somewhere the US can find you (at this point, that's most of the planet, let's say it's the whole thing for simplicity), it's like 1/2 you'll have a cup of coffee in the NBA, at the very least
So that gives us:
~9/40,000,000,000
Given the current world population, you'd expect one, maybe two.
Knock outs the requirement that they're twins and you get
~3/40,000,000
which means there are probably quite a few gay 7 feet people with NBA talent scattered around the world.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
Fraternal vs Identical does not have to do with appearances it has to do with how the twins are formed.
Identical twins are the result of a zygote splitting into two embryos and fraternal twins are the result of two eggs being fertilized at the same time.
Posts
Settle down, Chris Brown.
Just kidding, just kidding.
Really though, if you're an average 160 pound male who lifts weights recreationally to stay in shape, you have more muscle mass and strength than a woman who is trained to fight just by nature of how testosterone works. Would you want to go box Manny Pacquiao? I don't even think women want to compete against men in sports. A men's NBA team would make a WNBA team look like they were playing a high school JV squad. NFL football players could shove the biggest strongest woman out there to the ground with two fingers.
Not everything has to be mixed gender.
Well I can go ask my gay brother if hed like to go play in the NBA next year and make a few hundred grand, 99.9999% sure he will say yes. Until Collins is actually ON a team next year, I dont think this is the big leap we are praising. Hell to be honest, the cynic in me sort of sees an aging player who is fading in his career coming out to try and add some years on that might not have been there. But everything about Collins seems to suggest he is a stand up dude and thats not whats happening here.
I mean, yeah its a nice step even if he doesnt make a team, but I think the giant leap is if there is an active, gay player in a locker room, out on the court getting cheered or boo'd or whatever. Its nice collins is TRYING to break the wall down, but I dont think he succeeds unless he plays next year. Hopefully you guys are right and he finds a spot. I think an active gay player is a lot better at breaking the mold than a former player who is gay and wants to play more but isnt.
In case you didn't read Pony's post, to TLDR: Professional Athletes are statistical outliers, we don't need to care about the average.
If a woman has the ability to play on the level of the NBA or NFL, then she has the ability. It doesn't matter what the average for her gender is. Those women may be rarer than men, but the point of equality is to give anyone who has the ability a chance, no matter what the "average" of their background says they should or shouldn't be good at.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
RE: Collins, the reason he waited to come out until after the season is that he didn't want to create a story that would be a distraction during the season. It's a totally respectable move. If he wants to play next season, he'll be picked up, possibly mid-season if a team loses a big man and needs a body. That was the case before and after the story came out.
"The most athletically gifted woman on the planet right now could not make an NFL or NBA team."
Can you actually prove that statement? Out of 3 billion women, not even one could make onto one of those teams if she tried and was allowed to?
I bet people use to say that the smartest woman in the world couldn't make it through college.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I thought the problem at hand (as so much as this line of discussion was brought up in regards to transgendered individuals competing in MMA) was not so much women trying to compete with men, but the reverse in the case of transgendered individuals. If a woman wants to go line up against Navarro Bowman and can do so without using anything the NFL would consider a restricted substance, more power to her. However, that doesn't mean the opposite should be allowed in the case of a transgendered person wanting to compete in a women's league. Having Adrian Peterson or an equivalent body playing tailback in the Lingerie League because they identify as female would be a huge risk to all the other players safety.
I agree with most of Pony's post, but there are places that generalities do matter.
Things like body fat percentages, where the hormonal balance entirely breaks down and brings up major issues like osteoporosis when women get into single-digit body fat.
Yeah, you can have - for lack of a better term - freaks of nature. But the men in the NBA? The NFL? They are pretty much universally freaks of nature themselves. When the pool starts four or five standard deviations from the 'average' man, you're looking at five or six standard deviations from the 'average' woman to make the minimum cut.
Now, I'm not going to deny that strength isn't everything in every sport. Pretty much every sport has positions where skill and technique are as or more important than raw speed or strength. I'm a firm believer that anything men can do women can do. I think that part of why women's sports lag behind men is as much societal - a smaller pool or less encouragement as it is physical.
But to deny that there are physical differences between men and women seems...wrong. I think recognizing women's sports as being independently valuable and skilled is good. It's a disservice to constantly try to compare women's sports to men's because they are two different things. The women in the WNBA are every bit as incredible athletes as the men in the NBA, and they don't need to be playing and beating men to show that.
I'm kind of glad there are enough differences in some sports (say, softball vs. baseball) that it doesn't inevitably come down to the 'boys are better than girls' pissing match. Good athletes are good athletes regardless of sex, and constantly measuring women against the standard of men is...I don't know if it's sexist, but it just doesn't seem right.
Well, Mark Cuban says he's open to giving Brittany Griner a tryout.
So we can test this theory, as for basketball, she's basically it.
Yes. I could. Because no naturally (IE, not using something the NFL would consider a prohibited substance) fit woman could bulk up to the size needed to play a non-speed position, and no woman would be realistically fast enough to play a speed position. I ran a shave over 50 seconds in the 400 in highschool, and had the good (mis)fortune of competing against Xavier Carter and Devin Hester at two different points in time. Hester is a bit of a speedster even by NFL standards, but he still blew me away when we ran against each other, to the point where I would say at my peak I would be bottom tier NFL speed for a CB or Tailback/Wide receiver. And yet, I was only two and a half seconds off the Womens 400 meter world record in high school.
I'm sorry, but no. Not in the NFL. Like I said earlier. MMA (though that has social issues) is a possibility. Baseball I think women could do well competing in against men. Possibly Hockey, since it's every bit as much a precision sport as a physical one. But the NFL? Not in a hundred years without doping.
I want to clearify my statement. I dont remotely think Collins did this selfishly, and he deserves total mad props for it. Even if he doesnt play a game or make a team, he makes it a ton easier for the next guy. Before I learned anything about the story or him, my knee-jerk reaction was cynical, but everything about his appears to be fantastic, so I have no doubt he did it for the right reasons, timing and everything.
My only point is, even though what has happened is awesome and does help pave the way for the first active gay athlete in main stream USA sports, he isnt there quite yet. Based on all the posts here, he will be which is great. I think a guy actually being in the locker room, being on our TVs being a regular part of the NBA just like everyone else and just happening to be openly gay will be a huge deal. Right now, he isnt that yet, so hopefully he will be.
The final point however, was that none of that really matters as long as socially men in physical conflict with women is still the ongoing issue in society.
edit: cleaned up that last sentence.
Quarterback.
Not that it would happen in a hundred years, hell - the NFL barely let black guys play QB until the past decade. There are some big girls that could probably fill out a lineman spot too.
And I have to second enlightenedbum that I don't think the NFL men get there without doping either. I'd add NBA big-men to the list too. You think I'm going to believe that doping was that common in BASEBALL but wasn't that widespread in the other pro sports? Bull-fucking-shit.
Look how big those guys are compared to ten or twenty years ago, and how much they bulk up in a year or two of going pro. That is NOT just better lifting and training.
Women have some damn good and quick ball-handling guards too. I actually think one of them would do better in the NBA than Griner. I actually don't think Griner is as good a shot as some of the quick little guards.
Unless you take every woman on Earth, trained them to their peak physical abilities, and tried them out for the NBA and NFL, you can't prove it. I simply posit the existence of such a woman and that woman should be given the chance.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
yes thank you for getting it
And no, no woman could ever play offensive or defensive lineman in the NFL. The smallest of those guys is 260 pounds, and if they're that, they're lean muscle who can squat insane amounts and have explosive strength that again, a woman could never achieve. It has nothing to do with sexism, and everything to do with the makeup of the human body.
That's a joke. Here's a picture of Herschel Walker, a former NFL player turned MMA fighter who decided as a teenager to stop being overweight and started training using 1500 pushups and 2500+ situps a day along with sprints. That's primarily how he's worked out since then. He's like 50 years old now. Genetics are a huge thing, and guys who are NFL caliber athletes possess some of the best ones. It's insanely disrespectful to all athletes to act like all of them dope because some of them do.
Demarcus Ware, my favorite NFL player is one of the best role models in the NFL imo, and he finds new ways to work out every offseason to improve his game. Whether it's adding pilates and yoga to his weight lifting or whatever, it's just called hard work. You can achieve a hell of a lot if you have good genes and the work ethic it takes to become a professional athlete.
I think people don't realize how big athletes are. The smallest guy on the Dallas Cowboys starting roster is Mo Claiborne, and at about 180 pounds, he looks like this:
You going to find me a woman who is muscular enough to want to get tackled by that guy, even though he's only about 60% as heavy as the biggest guys she'd be facing?
For anybody who is not familiar, this is what Darren Sproles at 5'6" looks like:
Edit: You seem to be equating football entirely with tackling. No one on a football team wants to get tackled, and the equipment they were is specifically made to reduce the chance of injury (plus the tackling guys are trained to tackle people in a way that is less likely to injure). But the point of football is to move the ball down the field and score, and I bet women could do that just fine.
CJ Spiller ran a 10.22.
Actually, chivalry and notions thereof have little if anything to do with why men who are abused don't report it, however sexist chivalry may be. You're confusing a broader notion of patriarchal sexism with a specific thing, which is machismo, not chivalry.
To put it bluntly and unambiguously: Men don't look down on other men for being weak/victims because of chivalry, they do it because of that ugly flipside to the equation. Machismo, male ego, trans-chivalry if you will.
And while that is off-topic, I am going to pull a magic act and make it topical.
Because, you see, that dark flipside to the male ego that casts a man who is abused by a woman as weak and worthless is exactly the same aspect of the male ego which rejects gay men in professional sports while at the same time giving a nod and a pass to lesbian athletes.
Ta-da~
You can't play running back in the NFL without being 200 pounds. If you're very rare like Sproles you can do it at 190 because you're only 5'6" and have those insanely strong legs. Typically a running back is going to be 220 plus. There simply aren't women alive who can be that weight without being fat or injecting testosterone for years, which would make them ineligible to play in the NFL.
Wide receiver is a more interesting discussion, but even there look at NFL wide receivers. There are a few guys like Desean Jackson who goes about 170 pounds, and people always joke that he'll get broken in half if he goes over the middle. He's a notoriously non physical player who basically only plays in the NFL because he has insane speed. If you were to find a woman who could play wideout in the NFL it'd have to be a woman who is at least 170 pounds of raw lean muscle mass, or larger. Without a man's level of testosterone it's just not possible for women to get that big. And that's talking about basically the smallest guy in the NFL who is only there because of his speed.
Even in terms of fighting it's not as simple as weight classes, because a 150 pound man and a 150 pound woman have very different body compositions. We don't let guys inject extra test and then compete against guys who aren't doing it, so why would we want to have women competing against men, when it's basically the same thing. The guy gets all the free test that comes with being born a man and has a naturally huge advantage.
Herschel Walker played in the 80s.
Just for reference:
From 1920 to 1984, there were never more than eight players in any season who weighed 300 pounds or more. There were 570 players who weighed 300 or more listed on 2006 NFL training camp rosters, nearly 20 percent of all players.
There's more to this overwhelming increase in body mass, muscle and speed than just "these guys are working harder now"
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
You can be big and tough, or small and fast. And there isn't a woman in the world fast enough to compete in the NFL. If there was, she's be setting world record times left and right.
And those huge guys run just as fast as the people playing the positions did 30 years ago. Probably faster.
Coincidentally, there's a concussion epidemic.
Nearly 20% of all NFL players are over 300 pounds now, eh? And how much of an NFL roster is made up of offensive and defensive linemen? About 20 or 25%. And it's not uncommon knowledge that the athletes are getting bigger. Linemen eat more than they ever did. Most of these guys are not 300 pounds of lean mass. They're huge dudes who get pretty fat during their careers because that's the way the NFL has evolved.
Also, since 1984, training methods have gotten much better too. There's a reason NFL teams today have professional strength and conditioning coaches, nutritionists, and everything else working full time for them. As the NFL got bigger and bigger, teams had to find new ways to try to keep a competitive edge. As time goes on, athletes always improve. That's true of every sport. And it's not always because they're taking steroids. To think otherwise is laughable.
Here's a picture of Travis Frederick, a draft pick in this year's NFL draft. He's 6'4 312 pounds.
It's quite possible to get this big by eating a shitload of food, pushing weights around, and playing football. OMG steroids is not the answer every time somebody is big.
Are they not? There are no rules against it afaik. There's obvious cultural factors at work too, but I don't think there's as huge a barrier as you think.
And if you are looking for an experiment showing male vs female performance in sports, look at the Olympics. That's the best of the best.
In case you didn't read Pony's post, it only applies to professional athletes who are in weight denominated sports because in weight denominated sports you control for the outlier effect that occurs between populations. You will not control for any male/female same weight strength bias but that is probably going to be small relative to the effect of selection bias. The effect of selection bias however is going to be huge.
Basically if you line up all the women in the world and all the men in the world by height and then you take the first say 10,000 people. Given that men and women have the same standard deviation in height but men have a higher average those first 10,000 are very likely to be 100% male. We can go even further to say that given a set number of people as the populations of men/women increase at the same rate the probability that those first 10,000 are 100% male approaches 1.
In profession sports like Baseball and Football and Basketball we can, roughly, assume that work ethic and dedication and skill, between men and women, would be the same. But we can't assume that raw physical height, weight, and strength would be because of the above effect. This is to say, even if we "allowed" women into these sports the probability they could compete, even if they were the best women in the world, is pretty much zero. There simply aren't enough professional athletes such that, when we select the top end of the total distribution there are women who make our cutoff points and if there are then they're going to be so few and far between it doesn't really matter.
E.G. In the 2012 London Olympics 100m race for the first round of races (at which point the people who field someone to field someone are out) 7 men finished slower than Olympic Record for women including 1 DNF's. 12 men finished slower than the World Record for women. Out of 55 men only 12 finished slower than the fastest any woman has ever run the race.
There have been at least 12 men under the age of 18 who have beaten the world record for women in the 100 meters. There have been at least one man missing an arm who have come close
Edit: Case in point quick rough math tells me that there should be roughly 50,000 to 60,000 men with height above 6'10" in the world. There should be 400-600 women above that height.
Better to have separate leagues
As the population size increases and the number of players training for athletics increases the selection pool becomes larger. Unless the number of people in the NFL increases at the same rate as the selection pool then we expect by raw statistics that the people who are selected will be bigger and faster over time.
It is very likely that we are seeing selection effects as the raw number of very large people increase and the raw number of those who would train to be an athlete and the fact that athletes are now drawn from wherever we can find them rather than just the U.S.
This of course does not take into account that since the 1950's the average height of people in the U.S. has increased by 1 inch (from 5'8" to 5'9") in the general population which will further shift the selection process to larger and larger people
But not everyone. And not everyone who is huge is doping.
certainly. but I think a lot more people are doping than the average person assumes
I am at a point where I don't assume a single person couldn't possibly be doing steroids, and I am no longer outraged when someone's caught. It's not like they're REALLY making an effort to ban it
e: just realized this is getting pretty off topic
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
it's gotta be pretty low, right
maybe i'm streaming terrible dj right now if i am its here
ummm how?
Sometimes fraternal twins look really really alike.
However.
Identical twins look exactly alike, particularly when they are young. It's kind of weird that he doesn't know. Life leaves its own unique mark on a person though, my aunts (identical twins) looked exactly the same as young women, but by the time I knew them (my earliest memories of them they were around 40) they looked quite different, and not just in terms of hairstyle or clothing, I mean they looked like not-twins.
7 feet tall = 3/1000000 people. This is mostly men; a 7 foot tall woman would be like 8 standard deviations above the mean, a man is a mere 6), so we don't have to adjust.
Identical twins = 3/1000 births
Gay = Somewhere between 2-10% of the population. Let's say 5% (exit polling in the 2012 election has 5% of the electorate self-identifying as gay; granted that due to current issues gay people are potentially more likely to vote).
Given 7 feet tall and somewhere the US can find you (at this point, that's most of the planet, let's say it's the whole thing for simplicity), it's like 1/2 you'll have a cup of coffee in the NBA, at the very least
So that gives us:
~9/40,000,000,000
Given the current world population, you'd expect one, maybe two.
Knock outs the requirement that they're twins and you get
~3/40,000,000
which means there are probably quite a few gay 7 feet people with NBA talent scattered around the world.
Identical twins are the result of a zygote splitting into two embryos and fraternal twins are the result of two eggs being fertilized at the same time.