Tuesday, March 20, 2007

The spin of things

This article from CSTV is a rah-rah story about women's athletics at Ohio University. It provides fairly thorough coverage of the successes of various women's sports this year and attributes much of this success to the type of coaches Ohio U brings in, including two newcomers, and the close knit community the coaches of women's sports have established.
I am all for coverage of women's sports and even more so for positive articles about successful programs, but you cannot help but see the giant elephant loping around this story. Hard to talk about the success of the Ohio U program without talking about the recent cuts the athletic department made, eliminating four sports, including women's lacrosse.
While the cuts made barely a dent in the deficit the athletic department is running, it has to be said that, as unfortunate as cutting teams is, getting a budget under control and trying to comply with Title IX probably can only help women's programs.
Given the backlash, against Title IX and against university administrators, it probably would have been a good idea to talk about how, despite these setbacks, women's sports continue to thrive, and department morale is still up.

No comments: