Gimme the ball
Speaking of Marketplace, there was just a piece on with Diana Nyad. I love it when they bring her in. She talks about sports and the business of sports, and to me, a sports fan, she always seems pretty spot on.
I didn't realize that she's a former athlete, and what an athlete was she.For ten years (from 1969 to 1979), Diana was the greatest long- distance swimmer in the world. In 1979, she stroked the longest swim in history, making the 102.5 mile journey from the island of Bimini to Florida.
And here I am stressing over a 1.3 mile swim from Alcatraz to the marina...
Anyhow, today, she and Tess Vigeland were talking about Title IX (Wiki). It's 35th anniversary is coming up this weekend, and they were sort of reviewing how well it's gone so far. Diana mentioned that there was no such thing when she was an athlete, and because of that, there was no scholarship money for women like herself that wanted to pursue their sport. Title IX was passed to sort of even the playing field, so to speak. Schools that received federal money were required to devote equal resources to women's sports as they did to men's sports.
A few weeks ago, I was at Academy, buying some bike shorts, and a girl in line in front of me was buying a lacrosse stick. I told her that I was on the very first lacrosse team in the state of Texas. The year we formed, we didn't have anyone to play with, so we would go over to Rice and play with some of the girls that were on a club team there. I still have the tee shirt that says "Undefeated, untied, unchallenged." My best friend put together a team at the high school next door the next year, so we actually had competition in year two. That was 17 years ago. Now, there are several dozen girls lacrosse teams in the city. My high school's girls lacrosse team, I am very proud to say, at 18-1, are the 2007 State Champions.
I don't know whether or not Title IX had any real impact on me in terms of funding that went my way that wouldn't have otherwise. I went to private schools, and my participation in sports at the collegiate level was always in club sports and P.E. But I think that I grew up in a culture that said it was ok for girls to run around and get sweaty and enjoy themselves in the meantime. Over my lifetime, I've been on volleyball, basketball, lacrosse, water polo, softball and rugby teams. I've also spent a good amount of my time swimming. I currently run, bike, swim, box, do yoga and work out with a trainer. My heart rate monitor tells me I spend about an average of six hours a week doing some sort of athletic activity. I enjoy athletic competition, and there's not really a stigma on me for that. At least, no stigma that's associated with my being female. (Some people think that some of the training I do is crazy.) I really like the training and participating in the two events I've done so far this year, and I expect I'll be doing this sort of thing for the rest of my life.
And I'll probably spend a lot of money at places like Title 9, Athleta, Lucy, and other, similar specialty stores that cater to athletic women. The quality and quantity of athletic wear available to women has grown substantially in the 20 or so years that I've been buying jog bras. I think that Title IX plays directly into that.
Predictably, there's been a lot of grousing over the whole thing. We're sacrificing mens' sports for women who don't even want to play. *sniff* We had to shut down the wrestling program so we could add a gymnastics program. etc. etc. etc.
Nyad conceded that there are discrepancies. And I thought that her suggestion was one that has merit: Nyad: There're two key issues. One is what you're bringing up now, proportionality. There are more females going to college today than men - nationwide, it's about 57 percent to 43 percent. So if your population is 57 percent female, and you're forced by Title IX to allocate 57 percent of your sports budget to women - but women don't show up. They're not as interested as boys, still, to play. Now, the Title IX advocates would say "Well, they'll get interested. Give them the opportunity and they'll show up. Build the field and they shall come."
But so far, it is proving out that there are a number of schools that can't fill their rosters. You know, even though they've made the women's teams and the recruiting and the coaching and the travel funds available. So honestly, even as a feminist and a big Title IX proponent, I can say that proportionality hasn't been exactly a just cause in a lot of schools.
And I said there're two issues? The other one's football.
Vigeland: Yeah, football. You know, this is the sport that really makes the equation hard to figure out. Because it's so far beyond any other sport, you know - you've got enormous layouts of money, you've got huge numbers of athletes involved. And there's just no comparison anywhere else.
Nyad: Yeah. Well, there are groups like the Women's Sports Foundation, you know, which is Billie Jean King's foundation for women's advocacy in sports . . .
Vigeland: . . . and full disclosure, we should mention you're on the board there.
Nyad: Yes, yes. And there're many other groups, too, like the Women's Sports Foundation, who will say that when a men's wrestling team is dropped, men's tennis team, gymnastics team, it has nothing to do with Title IX - it has to do with football. The resources that have to go into football, even though they bring in so much revenue . . . but then when the revenue comes in, it has to go . . .
Vigeland: It goes right back out.
Nyad: It goes right back into football. So it has been suggested by legislatures and all kinds of other advocacy people on both sides of this issue - since way back, since Title IX first came into being in the early 70s - that football just be taken out of the Title IX equation. And so if football just makes its own revenue, pays its own way, and then the rest of the pie is divided up equally by the genders . . . men's and women's basketball and fencing, and wrestling, and tennis and gymnastics and swimming and all of it. If we got football out of there, let them take care of themselves, I think then we would probably have the most fair situation I can personally think of.
I like it, and not just because a) I'm from Texas where football is religion, and b) I am a football fan. I think that football really is a different animal than all other sports, in terms of the way that sport requires so many resources and in the way that it brings in money. The size of the team often means that there's no way to do any other male sport if true proportionality were to be made.
I'm the biggest fan of Title IX, but I'm ok with tweaking it a little to reflect the way football works in most schools.
I think I'm going to go running now.
I didn't realize that she's a former athlete, and what an athlete was she.For ten years (from 1969 to 1979), Diana was the greatest long- distance swimmer in the world. In 1979, she stroked the longest swim in history, making the 102.5 mile journey from the island of Bimini to Florida.
And here I am stressing over a 1.3 mile swim from Alcatraz to the marina...
Anyhow, today, she and Tess Vigeland were talking about Title IX (Wiki). It's 35th anniversary is coming up this weekend, and they were sort of reviewing how well it's gone so far. Diana mentioned that there was no such thing when she was an athlete, and because of that, there was no scholarship money for women like herself that wanted to pursue their sport. Title IX was passed to sort of even the playing field, so to speak. Schools that received federal money were required to devote equal resources to women's sports as they did to men's sports.
A few weeks ago, I was at Academy, buying some bike shorts, and a girl in line in front of me was buying a lacrosse stick. I told her that I was on the very first lacrosse team in the state of Texas. The year we formed, we didn't have anyone to play with, so we would go over to Rice and play with some of the girls that were on a club team there. I still have the tee shirt that says "Undefeated, untied, unchallenged." My best friend put together a team at the high school next door the next year, so we actually had competition in year two. That was 17 years ago. Now, there are several dozen girls lacrosse teams in the city. My high school's girls lacrosse team, I am very proud to say, at 18-1, are the 2007 State Champions.
I don't know whether or not Title IX had any real impact on me in terms of funding that went my way that wouldn't have otherwise. I went to private schools, and my participation in sports at the collegiate level was always in club sports and P.E. But I think that I grew up in a culture that said it was ok for girls to run around and get sweaty and enjoy themselves in the meantime. Over my lifetime, I've been on volleyball, basketball, lacrosse, water polo, softball and rugby teams. I've also spent a good amount of my time swimming. I currently run, bike, swim, box, do yoga and work out with a trainer. My heart rate monitor tells me I spend about an average of six hours a week doing some sort of athletic activity. I enjoy athletic competition, and there's not really a stigma on me for that. At least, no stigma that's associated with my being female. (Some people think that some of the training I do is crazy.) I really like the training and participating in the two events I've done so far this year, and I expect I'll be doing this sort of thing for the rest of my life.
And I'll probably spend a lot of money at places like Title 9, Athleta, Lucy, and other, similar specialty stores that cater to athletic women. The quality and quantity of athletic wear available to women has grown substantially in the 20 or so years that I've been buying jog bras. I think that Title IX plays directly into that.
Predictably, there's been a lot of grousing over the whole thing. We're sacrificing mens' sports for women who don't even want to play. *sniff* We had to shut down the wrestling program so we could add a gymnastics program. etc. etc. etc.
Nyad conceded that there are discrepancies. And I thought that her suggestion was one that has merit: Nyad: There're two key issues. One is what you're bringing up now, proportionality. There are more females going to college today than men - nationwide, it's about 57 percent to 43 percent. So if your population is 57 percent female, and you're forced by Title IX to allocate 57 percent of your sports budget to women - but women don't show up. They're not as interested as boys, still, to play. Now, the Title IX advocates would say "Well, they'll get interested. Give them the opportunity and they'll show up. Build the field and they shall come."
But so far, it is proving out that there are a number of schools that can't fill their rosters. You know, even though they've made the women's teams and the recruiting and the coaching and the travel funds available. So honestly, even as a feminist and a big Title IX proponent, I can say that proportionality hasn't been exactly a just cause in a lot of schools.
And I said there're two issues? The other one's football.
Vigeland: Yeah, football. You know, this is the sport that really makes the equation hard to figure out. Because it's so far beyond any other sport, you know - you've got enormous layouts of money, you've got huge numbers of athletes involved. And there's just no comparison anywhere else.
Nyad: Yeah. Well, there are groups like the Women's Sports Foundation, you know, which is Billie Jean King's foundation for women's advocacy in sports . . .
Vigeland: . . . and full disclosure, we should mention you're on the board there.
Nyad: Yes, yes. And there're many other groups, too, like the Women's Sports Foundation, who will say that when a men's wrestling team is dropped, men's tennis team, gymnastics team, it has nothing to do with Title IX - it has to do with football. The resources that have to go into football, even though they bring in so much revenue . . . but then when the revenue comes in, it has to go . . .
Vigeland: It goes right back out.
Nyad: It goes right back into football. So it has been suggested by legislatures and all kinds of other advocacy people on both sides of this issue - since way back, since Title IX first came into being in the early 70s - that football just be taken out of the Title IX equation. And so if football just makes its own revenue, pays its own way, and then the rest of the pie is divided up equally by the genders . . . men's and women's basketball and fencing, and wrestling, and tennis and gymnastics and swimming and all of it. If we got football out of there, let them take care of themselves, I think then we would probably have the most fair situation I can personally think of.
I like it, and not just because a) I'm from Texas where football is religion, and b) I am a football fan. I think that football really is a different animal than all other sports, in terms of the way that sport requires so many resources and in the way that it brings in money. The size of the team often means that there's no way to do any other male sport if true proportionality were to be made.
I'm the biggest fan of Title IX, but I'm ok with tweaking it a little to reflect the way football works in most schools.
I think I'm going to go running now.