More title IX garbage

To aid in this REQUIRE that all persons that receive a scholorship & then turn pro are required to pay back all funds within 5 years !!!! :2cents:

... 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 Skip - I think your clarification on laws being interpreted was the whole point of my tongue in cheek diatribe on "opportunity". The reason Title IX gets a bad rap, is the intent gets lost in the detail of the suit being brought. Someone "counts" something rather than look at the larger picture. The intent is lost in the detail of the suit.

To aid in this REQUIRE that all persons that receive a scholorship & then turn pro are required to pay back all funds within 5 years !!!! :2cents: First of all I don't see how this would help Title IX problems, secondly I don't think it's a good idea for any other reason. What's the total percentage of athletes that leave college early to turn pro? I'll bet it's less than 1%. I think something like this would do more to discourage some kids from ever attending college than it would to encourage kids to stay for four years.

To aid in this REQUIRE that all persons that receive a scholorship & then turn pro are required to pay back all funds within 5 years !!!! :2cents: I don't agree. Most of these scholarship athletes who end up turning pro are generating much more revenue for their NCAA masters than the NCAA masters are returning to them in the form of "scholarships" for an "education" that largely consists of going to football practice for countless hours each day and occasionally meeting with a tutor. If memory serves, top college athletes don't even own their own likenesses so that when football powerhouses licence their teams to College Football video games, the stars don't even get a cut of that money.

Yeah, Jim, we'll do that as soon as we figure out the biology to let the men share equally in the work of childbearing, OK? Amy, please don't get me wrong. I think what happened to you in the 80s--and to almost all women my age in the 70s and earlier--was shameful. I also think, and have said this before when this topic occasionally rears its head, that it's absurd that college teams have the number of players that dwarfs what is found on NFL teams. What I worry about, however, is what some of the other people have suggested--trying to translate equal opportunity to equal outcomes. It really does seem unfair to cut men's sports to equalize the gender ratio in participation. It also seems unfair to trump up scholarship opportunities for women with no previous interest in a sport (women's crew is a great example of this--lots of women with little previous training can learn how to row a boat and get a scholarship for doing so). You take a guy who has been training in a sport since first grade, he makes his college team, then they cut his sport entirely while women's crew coaches roam the campus looking for large girls who might be able to pull some oars and offer them a four year scholarship? Okay, this is clearly an incendiary example. How about a modest proposal: offer unisex sports that do not come under the purview of Title IX at all. Swimming, cross country, track, tennis, golf, all the "minor" sports could have separate competitions so that men and women aren't necessarily competing against one another, but have group practices open to anyone who makes the squad. If there are limited training facilities (not the case, usually, with swimming or track), then maybe try to equalize the numbers a bit, perhaps weighted a little by the numbers of people of each gender interested in doing the sport, or by coming up with gender specific time cuts. From my point of view, it is increasingly hard to argue that females are a terribly disadvantaged gender in the US circa 2010. You guys now predominate in numbers in college, graduate school, professional school, etc. There remains the wage gap, but this, too, is falling. Beware the unintended consequences of beating us lads too deeply into the dirt. Hypergamy is universal in human culture. This is the tendency for younger, less well-to-do females to seek out older, more successful males to marry. With the emergence of more and more college educated, high performing, athletic superstar Super Girls, and more and more college drop out, shlubby, overweight because they gave up on sports slacker guys, you are going to all be jockeying about for the same small handful of Alpha Male supermen. True, I am flattered by the attention. But I just can't handle you all.

But I just can't handle you all. It's ok Jimby. I'm sure others will step up to the plate and help you out. :bolt:

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. Yeah, Jim, we'll do that as soon as we figure out the biology to let the men share equally in the work of childbearing, OK? I'm not arguing that what is happening today with men's (and some women's) collegiate non-revenue sports teams is a good or fair thing. I think something needs to change. But to demonize Title IX as if it is the sole cause of the problem is ignorant. How many of you men who think Title IX is the definition of evil itself have ever investigated what athletic opportunities were available to women before that law passed? Did your mothers have the opportunity to excel in sports when they were in school? Even when I was in college in the 80's (years after Title IX) my school had separate athletic departments and the women swimmers had to sneak into the men's locker area in the early mornings in order to be able to use the speed circuit equipment that was readily available to the men. Things were far from equal. I am willing to say that something needs to change. But I refuse to simple-mindedly blame Title IX for the state of college sports today. Like Chris said, the NFL and NBA need to kick in some cash somewhere--they basically get free farm league teams in the current system. The colleges have become totally dependent on two sports to make money. The NFL and NBA and NCAA are laughing all the way to the bank. And non-revenue college sports are suffering largely because of that.

It's ok Jimby. I'm sure others will step up to the plate and help you out. :bolt: Thanks, Floyd. We Alpha Males are a small band of brothers, but we do have each other's backs as the horde on horde of ravenous young women attempt to breach our fortifications and extract our precious bodily fluids! Oh, no! Here comes another surge of them! To the oyster bunkers!

It also seems unfair to trump up scholarship opportunities for women with no previous interest in a sport (women's crew is a great example of this--lots of women with little previous training can learn how to row a boat and get a scholarship for doing so). You take a guy who has been training in a sport since first grade, he makes his college team, then they cut his sport entirely while women's crew coaches roam the campus looking for large girls who might be able to pull some oars and offer them a four year scholarship? Okay, this is clearly an incendiary example. Far from being a "great example," I'm not sure it's even accurate. Though it is invoked anecdotally quite often. Here at least, the availability of collegiate scholarships and increased opportunities for female rowers has caused the high school and club rowing teams to increase in size and become very competitive. Girls are starting to row at younger ages. And at our high school, the girls rowing team may be better than the men's team. Isn't this exactly what was supposed to happen? And will all the Alpha Men just fold up their tent and stop competing if there is not an official college team? Or will they just join club teams, as they did throughout their youth? (Or become open water swimmers and triathletes since no one likes pools anymore). I suspect there will still be Alpha Males to go around, though the increasing populace of Super Girls will no doubt effect evolution in some glacial way.

I'm not arguing that what is happening today with men's (and some women's) collegiate non-revenue sports teams is a good or fair thing. I think something needs to change. But to demonize Title IX as if it is the sole cause of the problem is ignorant. I think Title IX was a good thing, but I think there is only so much you can do with it. It can't keep the college ADs from trying to make money, nor can it dictate which sports are offered. (In fact, it makes no mention of sports at all.) It's subject to interpretation, being written as generally as it was. That's a good thing, in my opinion. How do you map its general language into specific implementation? Does it mean you offer the same number of sports for girls as for boys? Does it mean you offer enough sports for girls that there are the same number of team positions available on the teams for girls as there are for boys? Do you offer a sport for girls, say, badminton or field hockey, just to even up the number of sports available for girls and not allow the boys to participate, even though around the world those sports are probably as popular with men as with women? At some point you have to stop looking to Title IX to solve the problem of participation in sports by girls. If there are still apparent inequities they are probably caused by other factors.