More title IX garbage

For those arguing that girls have less interest in participating in sports, remind me of what the girl/boy ratio of participation is in USAS. Aren't there more girls swimmers than boys? First, I love the ideal that title IX puts forth. I have a problem with the way it is enforced by the militant NH's of the world. This swimming argument slays me as participation numbers are used only when it helps your argument. As a real world example, my daughter's team this year had approximately 60 swimmers, forty of which were females. Maybe out of fairness sake, they should have cut 20 females (I mean there are 20 more females that are using school resources and plus women's suits cost a lot more than males). Patrick, are you suggesting a task force (with my tax money) to look at ways to "encourage" women to play sports (ironically, my three daughters gravitated to sports while I've had to "encourage"...well force, my son to participate). With apologies to all the women's badminton players out there, I would probably only attend a badminton game (male or female) if it was in my own backyard and catered Dave's barbeque was provided.:) I am not sure what the end goal is as the numbers never will be equal, and in title IX proponents' twisted minds, fair...I mean there is a whole page of women's college basketball on every sports page in the country, despite the (probable) fact that nobody reads it (except in Connecticut, Tennessee, and of course, among the enlightened persons trolling on this forum).:worms::bolt:

(@smontaro): If you look at youth sports (the ones where girls have as much an opportunity to play as boys) I think the numbers are at least equal in most sports. It's pretty disingenuous to include football in your statistics. Unless you want to include something that is pretty much exclusively a girls' activity, like dance or cheer when deciding if girls are as interested in sport as boys. Some of you aren't taking into account the fact that, after college (except for the somewhat limited WBNA) there aren't many opportunities for women to play sports professionally. Or to earn big money doing it. One of the reasons you see more women start focusing more time on school or careers in college than men is because there aren't the opportunities available in sports as a career for women. I would argue that one of the main reasons there are more girls than boys in swimming (and likely in many youth sports that are equally available to girls and boys nowadays) is a result of Title IX. As opportunities opened up, girls were interested. I have to say that it is irksome to listen to people who have never really faced any substantial race or gender based discrimination rant about policies that were instrumental in (literally) leveling the playing field for women in sports. Especially when you aren't willing to concede that the behemoth that is football has anything to do with men's college sports being in jeopardy. I know you love your football, but at least admit that it has caused the upheaval that you are seeing in college sports today.

Perhaps, though, they are more deserving than the men taking up 80 football scholarships, many of whom sit on the bench or might not even graduate. Amen to that.

...Patrick, are you suggesting a task force (with my tax money) to look at ways to "encourage" women to play sports ...Absolutely not. What I was suggesting was that, if this National Women's Law Center really cared about female participation in sports, they'd first try to understand why participation isn't where they think or want it to be and then they, with their money, would fund programs to increase participation. I recognize they are lawyers, so suing is what they do, but I don't think that suing is going to increase participation; to me, it's an ineffective use of resources and makes me wonder what their real goal is.

Chris, I don't want to get off topic, but I am curious why you don't like UConn Coach Geno Ariemma?

Perhaps title IX should be extended into the Armed Forces, too. Equal numbers of men and women in all the branches. If not enough women are interested, spend tax dollars to find ways to make combat seem more intriguing to women. If this fails to up distaff recruitment sufficiently, cull the ranks of male soldiers until the numbers balance out. If it's good enough for college sports, it should be good enough, as well, for the real-life competitive squabbles against rivals that sports merely simulate.

(@smontaro): If you look at youth sports (the ones where girls have as much an opportunity to play as boys) I think the numbers are at least equal in most sports. It's pretty disingenuous to include football in your statistics. Unless you want to include something that is pretty much exclusively a girls' activity, like dance or cheer when deciding if girls are as interested in sport as boys. I think it's perfectly reasonable to include football and cheer, and dance and gymnastics and hockey (see below) and any other sport. My impression is that even today more boys than girls participate in sports at an early age. It doesn't really matter what the sport is. I think in general, even after decades of Title IX that more boys approach high school having previously played sports and think they will play sports in high school. I don't know at what level Title IX becomes a mandate. I would guess by high school. My youngest son started playing hockey at around age 9-10. (We were late arrivers to the Chicago area where it's widely played. Many kids start playing at 5 or 6 just as you see for other organized age group sports.) By that age most teams only had one or two girls still playing. This is still completely no-check, next to no contact hockey. The girls who did play could be as competitive as the boys. As the kids move up through the age groups fewer and fewer girls continue to play hockey. (Boys drop out as well, but not at nearly the rate as girls.) Some are siphoned off to girls teams (of which there are far fewer than boys teams). Some go play other sports. Some, I imagine, stop playing organized sports.

Some of you aren't taking into account the fact that, after college (except for the somewhat limited WBNA) there aren't many opportunities for women to play sports professionally. Or to earn big money doing it. One of the reasons you see more women start focusing more time on school or careers in college than men is because there aren't the opportunities available in sports as a career for women. I also live in the real world and unfortunately the NBA draws 13-20K per night while the WNBA averages 8K with a much cheaper ticket price. Perhaps we should regulate the professional sports industry to require a women's counterpart to every men's sport so that we can all have the same professional opportunities. I do not feel particularly sorry for people having to focus on an education due to the lack of professional opportunities; as a only slightly above average college swimmer, I had to do the same thing. I am not a big football fan, but despite statistics that float around, college football must be extremely profitable at some schools. At my alma mater (BYU), they recently threw the entire athletic program (men and women's) under the bus, so that the football team could go independent and score the big television bucks.

D-1 should use the D-3 model.... no athletic scholarships.

Since, as previously noted in this thread, the law is written in general terms, there appear to be too many "opportunities" for perspectives about what the intent of the law is. Attempting to (over)quantify things can easily fail as well. I happen to be reading the book "The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America" right now. The author's basic premise is that for nearly the past century laws were written more and more (actually, I think "statutes and regulations" is a better phrase - IANAL) so as to be "self-executing," in an attempt to remove the need for any interpretation from judges, bureaucrats and law enforcement personnel. Before that, it is my understanding that many/most laws were written more generally, stating principles to be enforced, and required the people enforcing the laws to interpret them in the context where they were being applied. With "self-executing" laws you wind up with (for example) mandatory minimum sentencing laws which don't allow judges to any discretion at sentencing and which could send people to jail for life for a series of minor offenses. Bringing it back to the subject at hand, how hard do you think it would be to write a fully proscribed Title IX law which would work equally well for school district superintendents in Sandpoint, ID, San Diego, CA and New York, NY, and would properly anticipate the needs of the overall population 30, 40 or 50 years into the future? Skip