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35 Years Of Title IX, And We're Still Bickering Over It
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So a professional level--a business that can generate income. The conundrum with title ix is that it requires equal opportunity but a number of schools are running essentially pro teams with their brand. Of course there is more interest among men: they are not there to go to school they are brought in specifically to play sports. All this goes away if you acknowlege the fiction that is "college" football. Let the teams run as stand alone businesses with contractual arrangements to use the college brand. The problem here is that the fans want to believe the fiction and the sport might not survive without it. Also you'd end up with some serious issues about player compensation and all sorts of anti-trust shit. So in the end you need to maintain the fiction and accept the strange results (like no college athletics for actual college students).
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Can I just ask.. why? Rugby teams - playing a physically more demanding game - typically have a squad size of 30 or so, for a team size of 15. What's happening to these American Football players that requires them having 3 backup players? Can football players only play in one position?
American football is all about experts in every position. For instance, one of the highest paid positions on an NFL team is the left tackle (most qbs are right handed so the left tackle protects the qb blind side when he's throwing the ball downfield). Right tackles don't make nearly as much.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
The biggest time women's sports would be tennis, golf, figure skating, and gymnastics. Although colleges do have tennis, golf, and gymnastics teams, they aren't premier college sports the way football and basketball are.
Age restrictions in football and basketball essentially force the best high schoolers in those sports to go to college. Almost all the best young football and basketball players in the country will play their sport in college. This generates public interest and revenue, raises the level of competition, and creates superstars before they turn pro. Vince Young was a star before he ever played a minute in the NFL. Greg Oden is a star who has yet to play a minute in the NBA.
There's no such restrictions on entering the pro ranks in the more popular women's sports. In two of them - figure skating and gymnastics - female athletes often peak before they even reach college age. If a Venus Williams were to spend ages 18-22 playing at UCLA instead of Wimbledon she'd be wasting her time. So the interest generated by popular women's sports is focused strictly on the pros and/or Olympics, not on college programs.
During the last decade there were a lot of basketball players who skipped college and went straight to the pros. During that time interest in men's basketball declined. Both the NBA and NFL prohibit players coming in straight out of high school - they essentially drive players - and all the media, fans and money that go with them - to the college game. People do want to see the best players in the age group, and they get that in men's sports a lot more than women's sports.
If women's sports were able to get big name high schoolers they'd get more interest and money. Venus Williams was in the NY Times when she was 10 - she would have sold seats in college. Mary Lou Retton was on a Wheaties box at 16 - she would have brought TV ratings. However, those sports drive athletes away from college.
As for rugby vs football - what's more demanding is debatable. Football requires less stamina, but has much larger players. The lack of stamina produces constant stoppages and substitutions (50 player rosters at work), mean that everyone's hitting at full speed on every play. You get more mass + more speed = a lot more force than rugby. As Vince Lombardi said: "Dancing is a contact sport. Football is a collision sport."
Having played both, I'd definitely have to say that football is the more physically demanding sport. There's more running in rugby, but everything done in football is done at full pace. Getting behind a ruck or maul is more about getting into the correct body position and giving a decent push. Blocking (run blocking close to the line, rather than open field) is about fighting for body position like in a wrestling match as well as pushing as hard as you can. There's also the specialization. In rugby, even at a fairly high level, most players can change position within their group (forwards or backs) and still know their responsibilities in general and for specific plays. My high school football playbook (yes, you need a book) was far, far more complicated than what I needed to know for my provincial rugby team. Lastly, the injury rate of rugby is roughly 1/7 that of football or hockey, which requires somewhat specialized backups.
I'm not sure of the details, but I think a change to Title IX that could work would be to exclude some of the scholarships of money making sports from the equation. For Div I football/basketball/hockey programs that generate revenue, say 25-40% of the positions aren't considered for Title IX purposes. The funding argument would be out the window because the excluded scholarships pay for themselves and I doubt the total number of them would go down.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
This would possibly solve the problem of financial gender imbalances, but there's still the problem of making sure that schools' male/female athletics participation ratios approximately equal to their total student enrollment.
Regardless of money, schools that have football teams must either cut other men's teams or add women's teams to balance out the student-athlete population.
Artificially imposing balance upon colleges and universities is definitely superficial; it necessarily assumes about 20 years of gender discrimination leading to biases in female vs. male participation in sports. If we're serious about eliminating gender discrimination then we definitely need to start a lot earlier.
That said, even a band-aid approach is better than nothing.
Why do we want balance? Because there's no good reason that women should naturally want to participate in athletics less than men.
Please note: by "balance" I'm not asserting that every athletics department must adhere to a 50/50 split; rather, each school needs to get their student-athlete gender demographics close to their total student demographics. Schools with 15% more male student should expect to have about 15% more male athletes. Furthermore, I acknowledge that there's likely to be a variation in enrollment from year to year, so it's okay if Title IX is measured in 5-year increments, and it's okay if the numbers aren't perfect.
I'm no socialist, but the current system does give a lot of people a college degree who wouldn't normally have access to that opportunity. Of the 85 scholarships for a football team, maybe 1 will make the NFL. The other 84 get a free education (82 of which are communication degrees, but at least it's something) which a good portion of them might not have been able to pay/qualify for otherwise. The university often makes money off the deal. I agree there are downsides, but on the balance I think the bulk of athletes, universitites, and consequently other students, benefit.
If you ever need to talk to someone, feel free to message me. Yes, that includes you.
I think I see what you're saying, but I don't think it's the way to go.
Regardless of any resentment or other negatives that came around as a result of Title IX's passage in the 70s, actual female student-athletes gained access to college athletics that was otherwise denied them due to sexism.
I'd rather that at least some historically disadvantaged women be helped now and have that result in sexist male backlash than let women athletes be consigned to second-class status.
This bugs me too*: in many ways it's a matter of perspective. You're right, people on both sides need to learn how to better work with each other. It's a compromise, and that means you suck it up and act like an adult.
Title IX simply means you have to be fair, and that's how it should be presented. If schools are going to cut (rather than add) men's sports to make room for women's, that's the school's choice, and needs to be framed as such. Use it as an excuse to rally alum support for the threatened sports, foster community in your athletics department by having, say, the baseball team come out and publicly support the school funding a brand-new softball team---that sort of thing.
Plus, and I am probably completely wrong about this, but doesn't Title IX require gender nondiscrimination across all federally-funded education? E.g. elementary and middle schools? I know there's a tremendous issue of scale involved, but it would be great to see some Title IX-based action at the elementary/middle/high school levels.
*The attitudes bug me, not your point. Your point I find valid.
It would be way too abusable if it didn't work that way, though. They could just set up a team with hundreds of slots, and never have to worry about Title IX again. They wouldn't even need to fund most of the players, since they would never have the chance to be in a game due to the team's size.
Except lower body strength isn't sexually dimorphic, unless you count the few percentage points that women are stronger on average. Neither is reaction time. This is from way back in the thread, but it bugged me and I think it's illustrative. Katholic perceived a difference and automatically assumed it was based in biology rather than something cultural. We know he's wrong because the things he's talking about are relatively well understood and easy to measure, but we have no such luxury with the brain. Knowing how easily it is to be wrong about this sort of thing, as shown by not only comments like Katholic's but essentially every stereotype about things scientifically understood, why is it that people are so eager to believe when it comes to stuff that we don't know jack about? Okay, so that's easy, confirmation bias and all. The point is that we should try to stop.
As if pointing out various obvious biases has ever stopped people from completely ignoring them. Talk about "human nature". I am always amazed by the assertion that (my frame of reference is soccer) the women aren't as quick or strong as the men so it isn't as interesting to watch. This is complete bullshit. Why we like men's sports is cultural. But this is way OT.
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Oh wait, its not really funny at all.
Last I heard there aren't actually any gender bathroom laws.
In theory, you could use whichever bathroom you want.
Woo Cat strikes again by demonizing peoples viewpoints instead of actually debating them! Its pretty easy to feel like youve won a debate when you dont actually...ya know, debate.
If you don't think there's an argument there, you're not looking very hard. But we're used to you being hard of thinking, so its really no surprise *shrug*
Desegregation leveled a playing field by removing a distortion.
Title IX creates a "Level" playing field by creating a distortion.
Desegregation was at the detriment of white people in the south who were most likely majority racist or they would have overturned the law by themselves.
Title IX comes at the detriment of people totally out of the line of fire, specifically guys or girls in sports which are heavily based in one gender and are not cash cows which provide an overall profit.
The arguments look the same, but the situation is totally different. One's destroying a law, one's creating it.
I was thinking specifically about bussing. People argued that forcing black and white kids to interact would only make tensions worse, that it would be an unneccessary expense, that teachers couldn't be expected to cope, because black students were just less academically inclined, or whatever other bullshit reason they could come up with to avoid admitting that deprivation of educational resources and the tyranny of low expectations was the reason many black students were underperforming. Despite early headaches, all of these things turned out to be bollocks in the long term, and a fine example of the law helping to push a worthy cultural change along. Its also interesting that the way specific school districts handled integration had a big impact on how successful the move was. So I'm still seeing some massive parallels here.
I admit, me too, it was my fifth draft before I could find a hole in your logic.
And simply drawing a comparison and finding parallels between a wrong argument and a seperate argument doesnt make the latter argument wrong.
In the case of segregation people were very wrong to assume there were predisposed differences in the biological make up of black students that would make them harder to teach.
In the case of men and women, the physical differences are very much there. You can argue that those differences might not cause women to be any less able at sports (but lets face it, theres a reason beyond social pressure that we dont see female NFL players...they just dont have the physical make up for it...) but you cant automatically claim the argument is wrong because it was used incorrectly in the past in a completely different situation.
All your comment did was try to somehow paint the people making the arguments here as similar to those who were against segreation in an attempt to undermine the argument without actually addressing it. Thats still not an argument...
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The physical differences? Sure. It is probably unwise to put women and men on the same teams due to their sheer muscle and bulk differences. It doesn't follow that women shouldn't be equally represented in sports just because they aren't as likely to be able to wrestle a fucking moose to the ground.
of course, I'm sure he'll reply with some comment about how a woman with her strength and weight must be some kind of defective. Real women never get over 95 pounds, the rest are just broken freaks and should be pitied. Oh, and kept away from any activity that might actually cause them to see their physicality as a gift rather than a curse. Happy chunky women are a terrible thing.
But how exactly does one woman playing football somehow make it the norm? Clearly there are going to be bigger stronger members of each sex, and the biggest strongest women could possibly play at the same level as the men...
And its not exactly hard to make a highschool football team, in fact Im pretty sure everyone makes it. Theres been female hockey goalies too, it doesnt change the fact girls on average arent going to be as big and as strong.
Honestly if you think youve proven me "wrong" by showing me one female highschool football player (who doesnt even start...) then...well then you arent even trying to debate you're just convinced you're right and theres no point in you even posting here...
And also, find me one post where ive remotely trolled. Not agreeing with ridiculous notions that men and women are physically equal, and especially not agreeing that pointing out the differences between the sexes is somehow equivilent to being against desegregation is not trolling. Remotely. All Ive ever done was point out Cats ridiculous claims and attitude.
Because um...they are ridiculous.
Are you saying that because women picked berries 5000 years ago while men went hunting means that women's sports shouldn't be funded?
Of course, I am personally against equal numbers of men's and women's sports, it prevents us from having a baseball team.
I personally find my gym department be mysoginistic indeed, and to have them run wild without title IX would be frightening indeed.
Dude. If you don't like TheCat's words, -argue against her words-.
But you keep trying to call her out. It's fucking juvenile.
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Uh. Aside from sexism, why can't there be women's baseball?
And...
Mens sports are a major money maker at the college level. Men being bigger and stronger make their sports more appealing to a wider audience. Therefore trying to force colleges to give womens sports as much funding as men is forcing colleges to make a bad financial decision. Which would probably mean higher tuition for the rest of us.
I suck at most sports, colleges shouldnt be forced to accomidate me in their athletic programs because nobody would want to watch me out their being a spaz. Theres intermural sports for a reason, its to allow people to participate in activities without burdening the college. Not to say girls suck like me, but the same logic applies- people arent nearly as interested in watching them play as they are men. Therefore its silly to force a college to support womens athletics as much as mens.
Outside of what you quoted, my entire post was arguing against her words. Did you decide to skip all that to quickly post your comment? If cat wants to call me a troll for being right then Im going to "call her out" while explaining why shes wrong...
I never argued that, and neither did anyone else. Troll.
You haven't even attempted to address the parallells. Troll.
You failed at that too, mostly because you're not actually arguing with anything I've written. Troll.
It's also not really a valid argument. A public college shouldn't be treated as a business.