I’m old enough to remember why we have women’s sports programs in colleges – because of the inherently unfair practice of giving men scholarships to play a game. Frankly, the better solution would have been to end athletic scholarships at all – the NFL can just start a minor league if it needs a player farm. But schools make money on men’s sports so they had to offer the same scholarships to women. That’s the short version – the long version involves yelling, cussing and lots of legislation just to enact a fair access policy.
Do women’s sports make the same money as men’s? Excepting figure skating, no. But this isn’t about the subsequent professional programs (and the fact that they exist means women’s sports have some money making potential anyway) but about why the college system exists and why women’s sports are being systematically destroyed.
As long as a university doesn’t offer incentives for players there’s no fairness issue. It’s offering incentives to one gender and not the other that caused the problem. And yes, sports programs do make money for universities – but that’s not why universities get Federal funding. They get funding to provide education – and equal access to that education. Which is why universities should have always provided scholarships to female athletes the same as male – they were spending tax payer dollars and so have to play by tax payer rules.
Basically, the universities wanted to keep their cash cows and the collegiate sports system but didn’t want to give funding to female sports. Much cussing, fussing and legislation later, Federal law required universities to provide sports scholarship opportunities to women as well.
So fast forward thirty some odd years and young women can get college scholarships and even go on to earn professional prize money in a huge variety of sports. Unless they have to compete against men directly – then they get shut out of their own sports.
Most men’s sports are open to women – it’s just that few of us girls have the physical ability to compete on the men’s level (excepting show jumping and other sports that depend primarily on skill and not physical strength and endurance). Most women’s sports are closed to men, simply because men show up with a MASSIVE physical advantage. Billie Jean King managed to beat Bobby Riggs but it proved to be the exception, not the rule. And she had a fifteen year age advantage on him… The truth is, women can’t fairly compete with men in most sports (but no one watches the guys in figure skating and gymnastics!)
When I was a kid, I got into real fights with guys and actually won a couple. I CHEATED. I had long fingernails and was nuts enough to go all out for their faces – after being pummeled and convinced I would die otherwise. Mostly, in fights with guys, I just got hurt. Unlike most girls, I grew up knowing how much stronger boys were (and that you beat them verbally, never physically. It wasn’t a nice time in my life, okay?)
The short version – women need their own sports leagues in order to be able to play with a fair chance at winning. The only way a women’s team is going to beat an NFL team involves an ambush and heavy things lobbed from high places. Or making pot luck dinners a sport (you bring that double chocolate cake, Betty’s got those divine crock pot spare ribs and Dianna has Grandma Gerty’s potato salad – let’s see those guys beat that!).
Period. There are no fair ways to compete against men in most sports. None. If a man is allowed to compete in women’s sports, the fact is he will probably win. He comes already amped up on testosterone. Nothing will change that. Even hormone injections don’t alter the facts that muscles built with a lifetime of male levels of testosterone are denser, stronger and have greater endurance than those built under the influence of estrogen.
Mind you, the big babies can’t handle having a cold and would never survive child birth – but let’s not kid ourselves. Men and women are just different. It’s why we DATE them – who wants to date a guy that acts just like a girl or can’t open the pickle jar? We already talk like girls and don’t need the help. Men were created for pickle jars and top shelves, right?
Women don’t need to be men in order to have the right to fair and equal treatment. As long as we’re helping pay for it (like tax dollars going to universities) we should have a fair shot at doing the same thing. And the only fair way to have women compete is to allow them to compete only against other women. At the professional level, it’s up to us to get backsides in the seats so we can get paid as professional athletes – but in a tax payer funded university if a guy has a chance to get a particular type of scholarship then the same type has to be fairly offered to women.
And that’s why doing away with college scholarships would have been simpler, but here we are.
Now universities across the country have decided to include men in women’s sports under the guise of inclusion. But inclusion that directly results in women being excluded from even the chance of winning in their own sports is NOT inclusive, let alone fair. A subgroup of men who don’t wish to compete in men’s sports should be allowed to compete in their own programs (here we go again – seriously, why are we funding these scholarships?) but not in the women’s.
So what do we do? The simple solution is the best – end incentive programs in college sports. No scholarships, special dorms or anything else beyond equipment that incentivizes players to play for one university over another. If the university’s other programs aren’t sufficient incentive, then the kid can go to some other school. But no full ride scholarships – or ANY financial incentives.
Stop screaming – just because it’s the best solution doesn’t mean anyone is going to like it or that it’s even politically feasible. The problem is in how we structure our financing of education – and those pesky constitutional amendments that say we have to play fair.
There’s a Plan B – and it’s probably going to make heads explode, too. But if the Federal government isn’t providing funding then universities aren’t obligated legally to provide for all comers. This is a bummer for most women’s sports as many universities would probably drop the programs but that is also true for a ton of less popular men’s sports. Nothing prevents players from forming their own leagues and continuing on from there. And that’s difficult but not impossible – corporations sponsor anything that will get their name in a favorable light.
Universities can then concentrate on money making sports like football without having to support barrel racing as well, let alone a completely separate parallel program for the gals. But that’s not very enticing for universities that enjoy lots and lots of Federal tax dollars. I mean, who’s going to pay for that chair in Ancient Greek Economics or Aquarium Science?
Federal funding may have been well intentioned, but the result has been an ever more bloated educational system that teaches less and spends more while failing utterly to guide young people into successful, productive careers. You know – what we think we’re paying them for in the first place?
College attendance is at an all time high. The amount of money brought in by college football alone is insane. Tuition is beyond ridiculous – so why do universities need Federal funding again? If they are legitimately offering a road to a bright future, what kid wouldn’t work for that? There’s nothing magical about the campus experience or being done in four years – and with distance learning a real thing now, there’s no good reason a kid can’t work his or her way through school so that they end up out of college with a degree that can get them a job and without crippling levels of debt.
Sure, it’s harder in some respects and no one is arguing that the change will be easy. But either universities are going to have to create yet another set of sports programs for men who don’t want to compete with men or they are going to get sued into nonexistence for destroying women’s sports.
It took time to force universities into offering women the same privileges as men – and a boat load of lawsuits. Just because something is popular in the moment doesn’t mean it can’t get you sued to heck and gone when the law is already crystal clear on the issue. Every female athlete that loses to a male has the makings of a lovely lawsuit – and the deepest pockets belong to the university.
Seriously, do they even hire attorneys who passed the bar for their legal teams anymore? What idiot signed off on “sure, let the guys wrestle the girls – no one will care about her having a few broken bones…”
The thing that fascinates me – not in a good way – is the modern assumption that whatever is going on right now is the way things will always be. That today’s political fad will last. And that violating someone else’s rights in the name of whatever hipster politic you have going on isn’t going to have nasty repercussions down the road.
My advice young ladies is to stand up for yourselves – and major in Poli Sci with an eye towards law school. There’s going to be a couple decades of juicy litigation just from the last couple years of nonsense. Becoming a litigation attorney is looking like a promising career choice.
University administrator, not so much…
