Many fans posting here believe that the WUSA helped narrow the gap between the USWNT and the rest of the world. There is some truth to this. If this is true, it follows that Title IX, as applied after 1993, helped the rest of the world catch up to us and created competition that we never had before. We won the WWC in 1991, 2 years before the Cantu initiatives applied a quota to sports in U.S. universities. We won the WWC again in 1999, and almost all the key players entered universities before the fall of 1993. Title IX had nothing to do with developing the players that brought 2 Women’s World Cups. Title IX had a lot to do with helping competitors develop national teams. Universities struggling to meet the quota eliminated hundreds of men’s teams and added women’s teams as fast as they could. They looked abroad and gave hundreds of scholarships to foreign women instead of American men. I read an article in the Chicago Sun-Times which claimed a local university had soccer players from 5 different countries playing in the Women’s World Cup. As a fan of the USWNT, I question the wisdom of using tax dollars to develop programs that can beat the USWNT. Look at Canada. Many of the players in the Canadian player pool attended, or are attending, NCAA programs on full scholarship. If you had talked about Canada as a threat to the USWNT in 1993 people would have laughed. Now look at it. Canada tied us 0-0 in regular time in the WCQ, while the U-19 time tied ours 0-0 in regular time in Edmonton. Canada is nearly as good, or as good, as the USWNT, and could not have done this without the largesse of Title IX. They are the true Daughters of Title IX. Title IX is a radioactive political issue and closely tied with the publicity surrounding the USWNT. But please consider the possibility that it is hurting rather than helping the USWNT.
ya know the real problem, it's those damn hockey players from canada invading our college hockey programs and reducing the talent of american hockey players therefore making us lose to those damn lumberjacks in the salt lake city winter olympics? bastards. they are all moose loving, maple leaf waving bastards.
Canada's system for developing hockey players is perhaps the best in the world, especially the Junior A system. Back in 1962, I think there was 1 American in the entire NHL. By 1995, it has shot up to around 23 per cent, and has started declining. The reason? The NCAA. There were two top hockey programs, Boston College and Minnesota, which would not give scholarships to foreigners. These two schools almost singlehandedly built the nucleus of a national team. Other schools, such as Cornell and Boston university, had almost entirely Canadian rosters. Canada was not dumb enough to create competition for a sport they it dominated. We had to use our own bootstraps to do that.
The best thing for the development of the women's game internationally was that the US was not in the final--or at least for the development of the women's game in Sweden and Germany. From everything I read, those folks paid attention--big time. By the way, I've got a similar question to the one already asked about the German team...how many Swedes played soccer in US schools under that insidious Title IX? Damn Foudy and her feminist legions. They will be the death of all US soccer pretty soon, having already successfully knocked off men's wrestling and gymnastics (makes me wonder, however, how our men were able to do so spectacularly in the recently completed gymnastic worlds).
So Title IX is only responsible for the women *not* winning the final this year, but not for winning the finals in previous years? According to your post, title IX has helped other teams develop their players. Fine. That might be true. But you can't at the same time argue that it didn't develop the US team in the past. How can Title IX only develop female players from other countries?
Zero. None. Nada. Thomas Flannigan is a: Red herring. It used to be fun debating this. But now, it's:
There are different ways of developing national sports teams. In hockey three nations won Olympic Gold using radically different systems. Canada won with Junior A, the U.S. with the NCAA and the USSR with state-sponsored clubs. Junior A developed almost no Americans because the system was virtually closed to them unless they emigrated. Few top Canadians came out of the NCAA. This goes to show your there are different systems than can achieve results. Sweden and Germany developed world-class women’s soccer teams in a short period by piggybacking on superb men’s programs developed by two of the top soccer countries in the world. They did not need an NCAA and succeeded without eliminating thousands of opportunities for men. Canada is different. The hockey system is superb but not as good for other sports. Many Canadians envy the NCAA because there really in nothing like it in Canada. After the Cantu initiatives, women’s soccer scholarships exploded in the U.S. while men’s scholarships and non-scholarship opportunities were trashed. Many Canadian women were given full rides at U.S. colleges and it helped develop a team almost equal to the U.S. in a very short time. Title IX helped create a formidable competitor north of the border where none existed before. Again, Title IX is not the only negative factor leading to the disaster at the WWC. It is one of the factors because it helped some of our competitors close the gap.
Might I kindly suggest ending the posting of false, malicious, or misleading information on the internet in the hopes of eliciting responses (i.e., "trolling")? May I remind you of the old Usenet warning which popped up on every session? "Before you post something to the Net, ask yourself whether it is really necessary to publish it to millions of people all over the world." I think I speak for many people on this board who say, "Enough." You are no longer worth my time.
Title IX as applied also hurts the USWNT because it dilutes the intensity level of the NCAA. After the Quota was instituted, soccer porgrams and scholarships exploded. The number of dedicated althletes did not keep pace. A scholarship holder should be a dedicated individual who beat out tough competiton to get it. In many cases, scholarships were given to women who would show up and go through the motions for the money. With the possible exception of elite programs like UNC, the NCAA's level of play declined. Look at what happened in Wisconsin. Women's swimming is a very old sport and millions of females swim competitively all over the world. It is quite different than women's soccer which still has few participants outside the U.S. At UW Whitewater, the Quota was me at the beginning of the year but some female swimmers quit the team because it was too tough. Men were kicked off the team to keep the Quota. The men went to the women and asked for help. A deal was struck. The coach agreed to make the women's practices less difficult and all athletes returned. OK, you met the quota, but you just lowered the bar at that team and in that conference. Sure you have more female soccer players at the NCAA level, but the percentage of women who are dedicated to it has declined. Brag about the numbers, but concede that the level of competition has been watered down. And it shows.
Thomas, please post a link verifying the story about UW-Whitewater. I couldn't find anything about it via google.
http://www.amexp.org/Publications/Archives/Kersten/kersten093002.htm "So when the female swimmers quit, administrators had little choice. They told the swimming coach that an equal number of male swimmers would have to go as well. Both the male and female swimmers were devastated. To save the men, the women hammered out a compromise. They agreed to lower standards for the reluctant female swimmers to get them to stay. In other words, they undermined their own team's competitiveness so their brother athletes could continue swimming. Welcome to the brave new world of Title IX."
"... an incident that occurred a few years ago ..." One incident by a misguided administration amongst the hundreds of schools and thousands of athletes does not indict Title IX. Few, if any, tax dollars go to scholarships for women's soccer - or women's sports in general. The only countries in women's soccer that I see getting any benefit from the US college system are Canada and Mexico (the latter primarily due to dual-citizen students). Maybe Ghana, too, but most of their players in the USA are at D2 schools.
First he says that all these foriegn national team players are playing college soccer in the US, but now he says the "intensity level" is diluted. He also says that with added scholarships you get players who don't really want to be there. No, you actually get girls who have been working thier asses off to get to play in college. Maybe Tommy you should get out of your office and actually see the people who are getting these scholarships, see the people who can dream about these chances. You are a perfect example of why we need fewer lawyers in this country! You picked a cause and without really studying it you go after it whether you are right or wrong! The Funny Part: I swear I saw somewhere that Tommy has two daughters...man do I feel sorry for thier hopes and dreams if it's true!
At first I thought 'Rut Row, another blah, blah, blah, Title IX debacle" and but then this: These Title IX threads ain't so bad after all!
So NOW, Tommy argues that the number of women's schollies is so high that there are players who lack passion... all while his rant in perpetuity is that the lack of men's schollies (which has been a dubious argument by itself) is hurting the US Men. Not that I'm surprised or anything. Mind you, I've seen examples from both genders in just the last month of college soccer positions basically wasted due to lack of caring. Couldn't have anything to do with the scholarship being the goal rather than the soccer position, now, could it? You know, indicating a problem with the overall process?
Tax dollars subsidize state universities, which are a huge component of the NCAA. I recently read a letter from a Ball State alumni complaining about the Quota mandating Ball State to start another women's sports team where all of the scholaship winners came from out of state. He asked why citizens of Indiana should be paying taxes for this. Sports are a pyramid, with pros and national teams at the top and NCAA programs just under that. A system which offered no scholarships for women's soccer would severely damage the USWNT. Lack of opportunity would doom the development of talented women who wanted to progress. Take it to the other extreme. Would it be good for the USWNT if every woman who wanted to play college soccer was given a scholarship? Of course not. There would be no challenge to the serious athletes. It would be La-La Land. It would help the Quota and help more women complete college without loans. But it would be terribly unfair and doom the USWNT to mediocrity. All I am saying is that Title IX has distorted the market and pushed women's soccer close to the latter extreme. Men's soccer is suffering from the other extreme because schools like the University of Texas and University of Florida can't add Divison I soccer in spite of unprecedented student demand.
It's basically up to the administration what sports they feel are important to fund with scholarships. Men's soccer can't and won't be added at those schools (and other big football schools) until football relinquishes some of the enormous amount of scholarships they have. I don't see that happening anytime soon.
The Quota is the reason schools can't add men's soccer. Football has nothing to do with it. If it did, schools couldn't add women's soccer either. I really wish people would leave my two tiny daughters out of this. Insults don't come much lower than that.
You have your head in the sand. Football has EVERYTHING to do with it, it will just never be accepted as the reason because no school with a football program will concede they give out too many scholarships. It is the elephant in the room.