After Atalanta

This one was not as bad as last week's. Actually, I agreed with Deford this week. We have that kind of chewing gum relationship, it seems. Stretches thin at times but never quite breaks. This week's piece on Morning Edition was about cuts to athletic departments--focusing on non-college sports. Deford argues that cuts to sports are just as damaging as to other extracurriculars such as art and music, especially given the increasingly sedentary lives of many American children. And then he says that the sport that makes the most sense to cut is football. (I love (sarcasm) that Frank Deford can get away with that suggestion while when I or other people who identify as feminists do so get raked over the coals in (im)personal attacks, but anyway...) Why? Because it's expensive and its dangerous and only boys play it. Yep. Though let's recall that there have been earlier attempts to eradicate football. When the game was in its infancy, certain moral types wanted the game to go...

So Joe Biden got up in front of some Girl Scouts and US Women's National Hockey team members yesterday--in addition to the usual crowd of reporters and assorted others--and announced that the Obama administration would be rescinding the 2005 "clarification" of prong three compliance. The clarification which came from George W. Bush's administration, stated that schools could exhibit compliance with prong three of the three-prong test that ensures the provision of equitable opportunities for athletic participation, by sending out email surveys to gauge female students' interest in sports not currently offered at the institution. Non responses would be interpreted as lack of interest. The clarification came to be known as the Title IX loophole because administering a survey over email to undergraduates--come on. Not to mention that it is unlikely that a student who was truly interested in playing a sport would attend a school where said sport did not exist. (There w...

I usually do not care all that much about the exploitation of athletes. Sounds harsh, I know. But I operate from the basic premise that many athletes are exploited, that the level of consciousness of such exploitation is variable, and that those who are aware have done their own cost-benefit analysis. Of course there are plenty of discussions just waiting in those three statements--but they aren't happening now. In light of NCAA president Myles Brand's recent statements about commercialism and the exploitation of athletes and a radio commercial I heard not too long, I thought I would at least comment briefly on commercialism and intercollegiate sport. Note that it's not an area I am particularly well-versed in beyond the basics. That said, Myles Brand has some concerns over the current economic hardships. At the recent NCAA annual meeting (at which he was absent because of cancer treatments) his state of the organization address (delivered by proxy) touched on the troubling...

...I just cringe. Which is what I did last week when I saw some football team members standing in front of the grocery store with cans in their hands "begging" for money in their varsity jackets with the leather sleeves. I am not sure how widespread this practice of "canning" is but it brought back my own memories of standing there wondering how much eye contact is really appropriate when you're unabashedly asking for money. Or whether when someone asks your win-loss record (I was on the tennis team knowledge of our win-loss record was rare unlike football which many more people follow--but not in a Friday Night Lights kind of way--it was New England after all) if you should maybe pad it a little less they feel you are unworthy of a donation. Anyway I did not give money to canners because well it's football. I am not anti-football. I actually enjoy it once in a while. I was one of the few people in the band who actually paid attention to the games when we pl...