Whoa! WTF!!!! I left for the weekend and came back to this? Shouldn't we just have a Thomas Flannigan Board?
Would that be the Mexican team whose training and improvement is being subsidized by the American taxpayer? I mean, either they're not very good, which is why Foudy (who can't play) was able to score against them (that would mean they're not a threat to the continued development of the USWNT, and the training they're receiving in the US must not be all that great), or they really are that good, in which case Foudy can play. Which is it, Mr. Flannigan?
I did because it hasn't been announced. Oliver saying it on his Web site is not an announcement, particularly since he has changed that note at least twice (once from all Telemundo to the MSNBC announcement and now back to the all Telemundo since the US didn't qualify). And if you think something's going to be rammed down your throat, you're right. All Phelps, all the time when swimming is going on.
I have explained this many times. A conspiracy is an agreement in secret between two or more people for an illegal purpose. I know of no violation of laws involving the people we are talking about. You confuse a conspiracy with an agenda, or a mindset. Every newspaper has an agenda. the Chicago Tribune has endorsed every Republican candidate for President for 150 years. That is an agenda. It is not a conspiracy. Same thing with the Olympic TV moguls. They have turned the Olympics into a shrill feminist informercial with a sports accent. There is no conspiracy. There is an agenda that panders to certain consituencies.
Yea, that's how flame-bait works. Despite the warnings I'm going to respond. You should talk. About all you ever post in this forum is based on your crazy theories of a conspiracy. (common usage of the word conspiracy, not the technical, legal definition) According to you, everything in the world that happens that you don't like is part of some "radical feminist" conspiracy. You even go so far as to imply that the IOC is in on this conspiracy. The IOC, for crying out loud! You can't be serious. The IOC is the prototypical corrupt, profit-driven sports organization. It has taken me a long time to stop laughing at the idea that this neanderthal organization has been infiltraded by feminists who now control the sports they select for the Olympics. Get real - the bean-counters at the IOC select the sports they think will get them the most money, by whatever means possible. If they thought that adding underwater basket-weaving to the Olympics would be profitable, they'd do. Even more ridiculous than the idea that the IOC is in on a feminist conspiracy is the theory that network TV is part of the conspiracy, too. The networks are motivated by one thing: ratings The reason the networks don't show any sports during the Olympics is simple: the ratings mosts sports get pale in comparison to the rating that a good Olympic soap opera gets. The networks stopped showing sports during the Olympics decades ago. They are afraid to broadcast Olympic events during the day (even when they could broadcast live) because they fear the competition of soap operas. The networks love things like figure skating and, my personal favorite , gymnastics (AKA: little girls doing handstands) because the actual performances are short so there are lots of breaks during which they can tell the story of little Denise's trials and tribulations in balancing the demands of training with her parents' desire that she have a normal childhood. If network Olympic coverage were a movie, it could only be described as a total chick flick. The reason is ratings. It has nothing to do with feminism, any more than soap operas or things like the Rikki Lake Show do. The networks target a largely female audience. Why? Because women make up more than half the population and have a huge say in what families watch on TV. The network tactic is to show a soap opera with just enough sports in it that they don't loose any male audience which might actually want to see some sports. The networks don't want to show soccer (men's soccer, women's soccer, it doesn't matter) quite simply because the action is too continuous and doesn't have breaks for what they really want to show, which is commercials, inturruped by 'up close and personal', story of the athlete's life, tear-jerker stuff that the networks are convinced is what will keep women watching. The USWNT won the Olympics in 1996 and none of the games were shown (yea, they showed a few minutes of the final, on tape delay and, in typical fassion, claimed it was live when it wasn't). They followed that with an interview in which they could get the player's names right. As bad as it was, it was better than anyone should expect from the networks. It's network TV. Whadayaexpect? Soccer is not a soap opera. It's 45 minutes without inturruption and the networks hate that. They're convinced that the attention span of the average TV viewer is measured is seconds, not tens of minutes. That's why they'll do things like change camera angles so often during volleyball that you can't even figure out who wins the point half the time. (you do get some great half-second shots from the nostril-cam, though) Networks play to the lowest common denominator, whatever they think that is. Nothing any of us can do is going to change that. Just my opinions.
I agree with some of what XYZ says. You are one of the few people who admits the obvious; that women are less interested in sports than men and if you want the female audience put human interest stuff on, NOT sports. But I think the Olympics lost the male audience a long time ago and they aren't going to get it back. Where we differ is the motivation behind the moguls' decision. It may make sense to turn daytime weekday Olympic programming into a soap opera because that is the only real TV audience you have that time of the week. What about the weekend and prime time? Theoretically there are men about during those hours. Ther is an agenda behind some of this and the agenda is not just ratings. If it was the human interest stuff would not be so hostile to men, because that drives them away. Look at non-sports TV: ER, Sex and the City and so on. Very anti white Christian male, peppered with dumb daddy ads. That isn't just about ratings either. It has an agenda.
Dude, if you want to pick on Luka, you're going to have to answer to my wife. Frankly, the white Christian male is doing pretty well in that show. When they have their "A hero returns ..." promos, they're never talking about Chuny or Malik, are they? I'd ask how in the world you think ER has an anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-male agenda, but I'm not going to have to time to answer your trolls this week. Sorry -- but it's been fun. So from one fellow oppressed white Christian male to another ... fight the power!
Thee are two very interesting articles in today's Wall Street Journal, the March Madness section. One tells us how Gonzaga University was saved by a successful men's basketball team. It caused an increase in apllications, enrollement, and alumni giving. None of this is ever given any importance by the Title IX crowd. The other article, Narrowing the Gender Gap, the author tells us that female basketball players have "superior passing skills" (??????) He also says that the average Division I women's basketball team loses $500,000 per year but spends more than twice as much than the men's team. What a way to run a business.
Tom, Why do you feel compelled to post in the WUSA forum at all? If you want to discuss Title IX, why not post in Other Sports or College Soccer or even your own private forum? I mean your presence hear is becoming akin to someone going door to door in a neighborhood, entering peoples houses, and accosting the owners about how bad their decorating style is. You're neither preaching to the choir, nor converting the great unwashed masses. You need to find a new church. If you don't think you're doing missionary work here in the Women's forums, you need to really consider what you're doing by continuing to post here.
Colleges aren't a "business". If education were a "business" we'd have universal free education through the college level, but schools would not offer any non-academic diversions whatsoever, and corporate interests would run the science and business schools.
If you're looking for universities to be run as businesses, enjoy sending your daughter to Gonazaga University Presented by Dr. Pepper.
I don't have our copy of the Journal so I'd like to see this stat. The latest gender equity report from the NCAA says that the average men's team spends $1.3M while the average women's team spends $824K. Just the facts.
Education is a business, the largest industry in the United States. Try telling the alumni of colleges that have gone bankrupt that you don't need to run colleges like a business. I don't post in other sports because that is for sports other than soccer. Furthermore, it is a very hostile forum. On Big Soccer, these topics usually get moved from place to place until no one can find them. The moderator here seems to be tolerant enough to let people discuss matters that interest them. That cetainly beats what is going on in other forums, such as the Africa forum, where you get a few posts a week. I did not interject Title IX into this thread, but it is obviously one that interests a lot of people. I keep saying this, but the entitlement attitude of Title IX, that you can run a women's basketball program and lose $500,000 a year, year after year, and no one dare touch it, is one of the reasons the WUSA went under. Some of the thinking carried over to blaming Nike for the fall of the house of WUSA.
I'll jump in on this one, I suppose. Most college athletics programs (men and women) don't make money and spend more than they make. In some cases, some football programs spend more than what they make. So no, I don't think a program needs to make money just to survive. That said, the NCAA is a big business when it comes to men's college football and basketball. Quite simply, the NCAA doesn't surive without these two sports. These two sports pay the bills for the NCAA with the revenue generated from the TV deals. Title IX is what it is. I think it has it's merits and it's shortcomings. It is what it is.That's all I'll say. The only thing I'll add and agree with TF is regarding the mindset that the people running women's PRO sports have in relation to college sports/TitleIX. In college, women's sports program's are paid for. They can lose money every year, but will always be funded. Now the same can be said for many men's college programs as well. This of course, totally changes in the world of pro sports, where leagues and teams are run as business and have to make money. Unlike the NCAA, the TV revenue generated by the NBA and NFL does not get channeled to women's pro sports leagues. So in that regard, I definitely agree with TF in that the "mindset" (or whatever word you want to use) gets carried over from college to the pros in regards to running women's sports leagues. Basically, it's that women's college sports don't make money; they are paid for. When it comes time to run a women's pro league, the people running these leagues forget about this fact, or they seem to.
I don't disagree with you. I was trying to point out the fallacy that womens sports are less viable at the college level than men's because women's sports lose money. men's sports lose money to, so it's the biggest straw man out there. College sports are part of a larger structure. To try and separate them from that entity is impossible. Title IX is one small part of a major cluster in higher education economics right now.
Agree with what you say about the viability of women's college sports and sports being part of a larger structure in college, but I don't think people should forget about what men's college BBall and college football represent. These two are cash cows and revenune generators for the NCAA. In that way, they are totally different from other college sports. IMO, when it comes to Title IX and delegation of sports programs on a college campus, these two programs should be excluded from Title IX because they are the ones that are truly run like businesses. They make money. And the money they make pays the bills for everyone else. People forget this. And while I would never giving college atheltes more than a scholarship, people often forget that there have been (and are still) plenty of debates about whether the NCAA should pay men's BBall and football players because they make so much money from these two programs.
Will oil, thongs, dollar bills, and silicone be prominently involved? I'm putting my money on the Swedish team. (Anything to break up the tedium of a TF thread.)
In the politics forum, you have some very hostile people discussing things like the Middle East, gun control, religion and so on. I don't want to waste my time with that kind of environment. I like to talk about sports because I get enough tedium in my job. Here, you have had some good discussion with people like Beau, Andy and many others interested in women's soccer who tend to be pretty polite even though they don't agree with me. I thank those people. But I will accede to XYZ's demand, not going to the Politics Forum but just leaving the WUSA forum. I strongly advise people to read the Journal article today. It starts out with some of the usual gender stuff but it ends with a very detailed description of how the University of Tennessee has marketed women's sports and had some success. Some of these ideas can be taken right out of the box and used in WUSA II or whatever the reincarnation will be called. If you don't have it handy PM me and I can make a couple of photocopies and send them along. I want women's soccer to succeed as much as anyone else.