PC in sports

There have been some recent sports stories that deal with political correctness that I have found the reaction to running the gamut of sad to laughable.

Air Force head coach Fisher DeBerry recently got into some controversy when he said that one of the reasons his team is struggling is the lack of team speed which he attributed to the lack of minorities. He pointed out "Afro-American kids can run very, very well". Really? What gave it away? The fact that all the top sprinters in the world are black, whether or not they are from this country? The fact that I can't remember a white NFL cornerback not named Jason Sehorn in my lifetime? The fact that the wide receiver and running back positions in the NFL and major college football are hugely black, even though only 13 percent of the population is? For whatever reason, blacks simply run better, and due to their stringent requirements, military academies have a much smaller pool of players to recruit, so team speed is a problem. What is completely stupid about this story was most commentators seemed to think what he said was discriminatory against blacks. Exactly how? He blamed his recruiting for the lack of minorities. He never said blacks weren't smart enough to get into the academy so that argument is bogus. So, it looks to me like the people who should be offended are white football players who have just been told they are slow. Of course, too many sportswriters aren't smart enough to see that. Plus, offended white players isn't much of a story.

On a related line of thought, during the World Series, Joe Morgan lamented the fact that the Astros didn't have a black player on their roster. That was news to me since I was sure I saw a black guy (Ezequiel Astacio) give up a homerun. Apparently, he's a Latino, even though he looks black. Apparently, even if you look black, you aren't unless you come from the US. As a whole, blacks only make up 9 percent of Major League rosters. My response is: so what? How many blacks in baseball are enough for Joe? Should I be concerned that blacks are slightly underrepresented (as a percentage of population) in baseball when they are vastly over-represented in the NFL and NBA? I'll worry about this when Joe shows some concern about the lack of whites in the other two sports.

Race wasn't the only story. A big story was WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes coming out of the closet and admitting that she's a lesbian. A lesbian in the WNBA? What's next, lesbians on the LPGA tour? The idea that there are a lot of lesbians in professional women's sports has been around for years, so a professional women's basketball players coming out is not that surprising. Yet, many commentators said that this shouldn't be taken as proof of that assumption. They're right. I always assumed that the WNBA probably had a higher percentage of lesbians than the population, but I never thought it would be half. Yet, look at this quote from Swoopes. "But the talk about the WNBA being full of lesbians is not true. I mean, there are as many straight women in the league as there are gay." Looks like I was wrong. Actually, I don't care whether or not there are a bunch of lesbians in the WNBA. It can have all straight women or all homosexual women. I just don't find it that entertaining, and I'm not alone. Indoor football can make it on it's own, but the WNBA stays in business only because it's subsidized heavily by the NBA. That's where the laughable comes in. Some sportswriters were saying that the "lesbians in women sports" stigma may be going down, because a "big star" had come out. "Big star" in the WNBA? Isn't that like being the best damn accordion player in polka?

Another gender bending story comes out of English golf. The British Open golf championship is now open to all players, regardless of gender. Which I'm fine with except that the Women's British Open can only have female players. Sounds like discrimination to me. Male golfer Jean Van De Velde thinks the same thing and is saying he is going to send in an application for the Women's Open. He's being ridiculed, but I think he has a point. I thought the same thing when women were playing PGA events here. If a female player enters a PGA event, a male player is out. Unlike a female player who can't get into the PGA event, he doesn't have an option to play the LPGA event that week, and the LPGA has higher payouts than the minor league golf tours. I just think if you have a women's tour that doesn't allow men, then the men's tour shouldn't allow women. Actually, I've made the point in the past, women professional sports are illegal in this country due to job discrimination laws. Men's leagues don't prohibit female players (the Pacers gave Ann Meyer a tryout back in 1979), but women sports do. And before you point out that the laws don't apply in cases of competitive sports, you're wrong. Remember Casey Martin (recently announced retirement from golf) who sued to gain the use of a golf cart on the PGA? If the Americans With Disability Act applies to professional golf, then workplace discrimination laws should also. To be honest, I disagreed with the Martin decision, and I don't think the LPGA should be forced to allow men (not that it would happen regardless of the law) in their events, but I also think Van De Velde has a point.

World Series

Well, the World Series starts tonight, and I'm really looking forward to flipping over to check the score every 20-30 minutes while watching the Auburn vs LSU game or Penn State vs Illinois or possibly Oregon State vs UCLA. I still can't get too excited about baseball. If there's nothing else on, I'll have it on in the background, but I really don't care. I'm just sick to death of the stupidity that reporters and columnists show when writing about baseball this year. Saint Louis won a game on a ninth inning home run to pull their series with Houston to 3 games to 2. Even though Houston had the three wins, every pundit or sportswriters were now acting like Houston didn't have a chance. Do they think these guys are so fragile that one homerun is going to kill them? I realize Houston was in the same situation last year and lost the NLCS, but come on. What does that have to do with anything? Last year they went into game six with some guy I never heard of. This year they had 20 game winner Roy Oswalt who had already shut down the Cardinals in the NLCS, so why would I not give the edge to Houston in that case?

I spent some time trying to decide who I want to win the Series. I don't have anything against anyone on the White Sox. I don't have anyone on the White Sox that I really like either. I do like Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio on the Astros. So, normally, I would pull for them, but I won't. Because they have one of my least favorite players in Roger Clemens. I didn't like him when he played for the Red Sox. I was disinterested when he played for the Blue Jays. I hated him when he played for the Yankees. So, there is no way I can root for him to win another series. If he pitches well (or pitches poorly but they win), I'll have to read another set of stupid articles talking about "adding to the legend" of Clemens. This morons already did it once when they were talking about him when he pitched three relief inning s against the Braves in that 18 inning game. One wrote how he pitched the three innings on two days rest. What a load. He pitched on the sixth and the ninth so it was three days. Plus, he was shelled in his outing on the sixth and only finished five innings. Am I supposed to be impressed that he pitched eight innings in three days?

I've been hoping for years, and maybe one day it will happen, but right now, sports journalism (I use that term loosely) is so baseball centric that I have to put up with this kind of crap.

The Chicago White Sox

I've always heard about the "East Coast" bias in sports reporting. Basically, the theory is that sports team's east of the Mississippi get a lot more attention than those out west. While it's overstated (see LA Lakers in the NBA), I do think it's somewhat true. Of course the main reason is that too many sporting events on the west coast don't end early enough to make the news on the east coast. Actually, I don't think it's such a bad thing for them. Someone told me last year's Southern Cal team was basically an NFL team, but so much of that was based on them beating down Oklahoma in a bowl game. He never saw USC trail a crappy Stanford in the fourth quarter last year. People had the impression that USC was an unbeatable juggernaut because they hadn't actually seen them play.

But I digress. The reason I bring up the "East Coast Bias" is because I don't think it extends to the Mississippi River for most sports (exception is college football which is mostly centered in the South, Midwest and Great Plains). I think it's not just primarily on the coast, but way too infatuated with the Northeast. Baseball shows this clearly. Why aren't the Chicago White Sox the lovable underdog that is finally due for a World Series? You know, like the Red Sox were last year? Supposedly people were rooting for the Red Sox because they hadn't won a Series since 1918. Well, that was a year after the White Sox last won one. I never understood the whole Red Sox fascination of last year, because the idea was that people were tired of the Yankees, and the Red Sox were the antithesis of the Yankees. Bullcrap. Their payroll may not have been as high as the Yankees, but it was still a Hell of a lot more than any other team in baseball. Everything that was bad about the Yankees was present with the Red Sox. Yet, every baseball story is still about the Yankees and Red Sox. I for one hope the AL Championship is the Angels versus the White Sox. Piss on the Yankees, and piss on the Red Sox.

Academic Research

I let things fall behind a bit here. Been a little busy.

There was something in a section of the local paper that I normally wouldn't have read, but then I saw the word "stripper" and had to take a look. It's a little story about some sociology/women's studies professor writing an academic tome about the life of strippers. I like strippers as much as the next degenerate male, but I came away with a reinforced belief about the lack of fiscal responsibility in higher education. Why? This woman interviewed 37 strippers and "a few bouncers, deejays, waitresses, and club owners, as well as "clients". Let's assume a few equals three of each. That's about 52 people. She's been working on this book for eight years. That less than seven per year. She's working real hard. I wouldn't think much about it if she was working on it a side project, but she's actually had academic grants for five of those years. It doesn't say how much she got, but I find another part illuminating. It mentioned that most of the interviews took place in Lexington, but she went to other cities for "perspective". Did she drive to Louisville or maybe Atlanta? How about Chicago? Bet you can find strippers there. Nope. She went to Hawaii and San Francisco. Am I the only one who thinks she was taking vacations on someone else's dime?

Now, it didn't say what kind of grants she had, so they could have been non-government, but my feelings just the same. That's money that could be used for other, better things. So, when anyone tells me that higher ed doesn't get enough funding, my first thought is that it gets plenty of funding. Unfortunately, it spends it too much of it on stupid things.

On a side note, I wonder if I can get a free lap dance if I say I'm doing "research".