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.