John,
It's time for my AH rant, I guess.
1. Long time no see. I have a son and a daughter but that's not the issue. First of all, I know the difference between serious, I-live-for-my-sport athletes and kids who are enjoying the fresh air, health benefits, healthy competition and social aspects of sports. The second group comprises my kids. What I despise is the People's Republic of Amerika aspect to all this.
For example, because U of Arizona has a men's football team and basketball team, which end up with a total of, say, 125 players and 75 scholarships for men (and brings in beaucoup bucks from the alumni), they have to find a way to bring into balance at least 125 women athletes and 75 scholarships. But wait, the problem is worse. Because Arizona also has X male players in soccer, lacrosse, wrestling, gymnastics, swimming, it has to find a total of 3-400 women athletes. But the problem is there aren't really that many serious women athletes at Arizona, and not really that much interest in the various women's sports they do have. So they have to find a way to balance the numbers. Easiest way, since football and basketball are staying, is to eliminate all the "minor" men's sports (minor in that they don't fill stadiums) AND create a whole slew of minor women's sports. Many schools have found that it's best to create women's soccer and women's crew (but not have either for the men) and try to find enough players for them. They literally have to go around and try to entice girls to take up these sports. It's absolutely silly. A women's crew team can, quite easily, produce 5-7 boats of 9 rowers each, about 65 players going backwards to victory, and crew goes year around, so it's almost like 3 sports. Not because there's a lot of interest in rowing, but the numbers just work great.
What the Politburo members (this all happened around the time of Jimmy Carter, I think, Senator Frank Church, the dismantling of the "nasty" CIA, etc.--the entire castration of Amerika) decided was that if the student population of a school was 50% women, then the school would have to have 50% of athletic resources (non-scholarship players and scholarship players, budgets, coaches) devoted to women, whether or not women were all that interested in doing college level sports. They did not require the same budgeting for drama, dance classes, jazzercise, ballet, student government, etc., some of which may be 95% for women; if they had then either a lot of men would be going to college on ballet and modern dance scholarships or it would be illegal to offer them. And nobody seemed to wonder about whether things like football and basketball, which not only thrive but subsidize all other sports, should be given some sort of special status. If women's soccer can fill a 50,000 seat stadium 7 times a year and bring in $10 million in alumni contributions a year, then it gets a free ride.
2. Here's another pet peeve of mine: affirmative action. I have a friend whose last name is Menendez, but the interesting thing is he's not really hispanic. His birth father was from Puerto Rico but his mother (Irish) died in childbirth and he was then adopted out as a few days old infant and raised by adoptive parents (named Davis). He kept his "hispanic name" but grew up in an Anglo home as an Anglo. He married a "Norwegian-American" woman and they have 3 kids, all blond haired and blue eyed, all as Anglo as the day is long. But guess what? Even though by blood the kids are only 25% "hispanic" and by culture they are zero percent "minority," whatever that means, because the kids are named Menendez, they get the benefits of affirmative action. I don't resent my friends' kids getting these things but I resent the idiotic system that sets it up.
Now, if my friends' ancestry had been reversed (Irish father and Puerto Rican mother, named "O'Hara") then no affirmative action benefits, one assumes, unless the kids wrote essays about their latina grandmother who died in childbirth, etc.
3. Anybody want to venture a guess as to when/whether we get a UN resolution and when we take Baghdad?
Kb |
