|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
The trouble with gender equity
Have you been following the doings at the Little League Softball World Series this week? Have you caught the big flap about the five boys playing for the Arizona team in what otherwise is an all-female tournament? Everybody's outraged about this: the officials, the parents, the other players. I'm mostly laughing. In the great rush for gender equity in sports, to put out those catchy WNBA commercials that say, "They're better than you," there have been some notable casualties along the way. To keep the big moneymaker sport of football rolling by handing out the legal limit of scholarships, colleges around the country have gutted their minor sports for men in order to adhere to Title IX restrictions. Want to wrestle? Want to swim? Want to run cross country? Want to play baseball? The number of grants in aids for all of these sports has declined dramatically for males while colleges at the same time have pumped up, indeed, added similar sports and opportunities for women. It's all been great for the women -- there probably is no easier way to go to college on a scholarship in the year 2000 than to play field hockey -- but it has not been great for the men. I don't say these five boys should be playing in the Softball World Series. Indeed, they look pretty silly. I simply find it amusing that the same voices for equality, the feminists who would fight to their last breath to get five girls into the Little League Baseball World Series in Williamsport, have such a different tone here. Maybe these boys wouldn't be playing softball if there were more sports open to them at the college level.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
