After Atalanta

It's all about Twitter these days. I was listening to one of my favorite college radio station Saturday and was told I could tweet my request in. (Of course I am not on Twitter yet so I would have to be a little more traditional and email it or even--gasp--phone it in!) But the Twitter/sports connection is also a hot topic. Check out Women Talk Sports for all the takes on Twitter and women's sports. And even SI.com is taking up the topic. Professional golfers and tennis players are twittering--but not from the course or court. Though I have to wonder if that is next. Might be a way to get around that whole coaching from the stands issue. (Not that that is really such an anomaly as I saw, in person, at Roland Garros this year.) Though members of the WPS are tweeting from the sidelines of their games. I wonder which sport(s) will be next. Baseball and softball seem likely candidates. Women's pro fastpitch could definitely use some twittering action, if, as some predict, Twit...

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...

If you're sick of hearing or depressed about the economy and the myriad of effects--stop reading here. Because there has been a lot of talk about how the recession is affecting sports. I've already mentioned it here . But it seems sports and the economy are the hot topic so I thought I would run down what I have seen so far. Schools, of course, are going through budget cuts (though doesn't it seem that public schools are always in a budget crunch?) and some of the cuts are in athletics. Title IX Blog has a post about how parents are ensuring that female athletes do not receive the brunt of those cuts. USA Today has a piece about the problems non-major sports are having and includes: some concern over how the WPS will fare in this economy; news of Arena Football's suspension; and the loss of the Houston Comets. Of course not everyone is suffering. Men's professional soccer in North America is expanding. The National Lacrosse League had a soldout crowd at it's cha...

SEC talk two days in a row. What I should have added to yesterday's post about gender equity is that the SEC school tied with Tennessee for the highest mark (B+) in the recent Women's Sports Foundation study is Vanderbilt. Pretty darn good considering they don't even have an athletic department! Let me repeat that: Vanderbilt University does not have an athletic department. They eliminated it four years ago and moved control of intercollegiate athletics to their department of student life. I remember hearing about this, but that was pre-blog days for me so I hadn't thought about it since. But last week Sports Illustrated published a column on the university and the success they have seen since the change. Once seen as the most lackluster school, in terms of athletics, in the SEC, Vandy teams have had enormous success (over half of the teams made it their respective tournaments this past year). And the athletes have had success off the field too, which was one of the ma...