Extracurriculars

• I’ve spent some fascinating hours researching the status of women’s sports around the world, and it certainly puts into a more realistic perspective the recent skirmishes over Title IX that I’ve been blogging about here and elsewhere. Since no other country has a law mandating sports offerings as Title IX does in the United States, activists, athletes and organizations pushing for greater athletic opportunities for females have to work in very different ways, and with varying objectives.

It’s been just a decade or two, in fact, since the International Olympic Committee, FIFA, FIBA and even the United Nations began addressing global disparities in sports for women and getting themselves organized to play significant roles in this process.

Meanwhile, the rah-rah over competitive cheerleading on the Fruited Plain continues . . .

• Women’s sportswriter Mechelle Voepel thinks on balance the Quinnipiac decision was a good one, but offers the closest thing to a voice of reason on that side of the ledger.

• Cheerleading advocates will keep fighting for inclusion although immediate prospects for the growth of their sport at the college level have been dented.

• Richard Epstein isn’t happy with the Quinnipiac ruling, and fulminates at Forbes:

“A totalitarian peace will rule the land.”

That’s a bit much, I think.

• At ESPN.com, Gregg Easterbrook nails exactly where I come down on this, and with a better sense of humor, likening Title IX to a Monty Python sketch. Easterbrook really spikes an ace here:

“Take a gander at that 95-page judicial ruling. There are excruciating details on whether the university sought enough guidance from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights before making a volleyball decision. Civil rights are serious, important national issues — whether a college offers volleyball or cheer is not a civil rights issue!

“There is no ‘civil right’ to be on a volleyball team! If you hope to continue to play women’s volleyball in college, it’s up to you to transfer to a college that offers the sport rather than run to the courthouse demanding special favoritism.”

About that Monty Python sketch: Is it the one about a dead parrot? Gotta read the full Monty to find out, folks.

• A point-counterpoint debate is underway at FanHouse, with Clay Travis professing that cheerleading is a sport, and David Whitley arguing to the contrary. That headline, however, will not please the activists one bit.

• Allison Kasic at the conservative Independent Women’s Forum gives some props to yours truly and this non-doctrinaire liberal does appreciate it.

In all of my musings here, it’s never been about taking sides or choosing one raging argument over the other.

The Quinnipiac case angered me because both the school and the activists showed their backsides in rather unbecoming ways. I gave the Title IX diehards the worst of it because they have taken it upon themselves to determine what’s best for women in sports, and will engage in no small amount of legal expense and self-aggrandizing publicity to get their way. Flag football is another sport the activists are trying to nip in the bud, so don’t be surprised to see that as battleground fare in the near future.

I was never enamored with cheerleading, especially as a young tomboy who despised all forms of girly-girly behavior. They were the snotty, popular girls in school, with their bouncy long hair and cute boyfriends, but I felt superior thinking they were merely decorative. They were on the sidelines; I was in the game.

Then I got over my own snottiness and realized it didn’t matter what I thought; girls have been flocking to cheerleading in even greater numbers since various competitions began cropping up over the last couple of decades. My now-adult female cousin cheered for her high school teams, and these girls took their routines and their tournaments as seriously as the athletes they were rooting on.

If girls and young women are expressing greater interest in these physical, competitive activities than supposed “real” sports, then these interests should be accommodated, not demeaned. Just like one of the tests for Title IX compliance.

The snotty girls are no longer the ones with the pom-poms, but those who have appointed themselves the arbiters of what girls should be doing. They remind me of the snotty, haughty playground schoolgirls who used to tell me to stop playing sports with the boys if I wanted to hang with them. It made my decision to bid adieu to that kind of cliquishness easy. Now the tables are turned with a new kind of groupthink, and it’s just as wrong to impose.

Totalitarian? Maybe. Bossy? Certainly.

A recent coaching acquaintance, who’s experienced in the thankless task of gender equity mediating, offers this perspective about the continuing battles between some men and women in college sports:

“It’s not about who’s right, it’s about what’s right.”

Yet this wisdom goes largely unheeded, as evidenced by some of the disturbing developments this week on the women’s sports front. Into the second decade of the 21st century, there are still so many raging debates about “what’s right” means:

• For the first time that most experts can remember, the courts have been asked to determine what’s a sport to be counted for Title IX purposes. Federal district judge Stefan Underhill ruled that cheerleading does not apply because it is “not developed enough.” Quinnipiac University will instead add women’s rugby, which is offered by even fewer schools than cheerleading. The women’s volleyball team that had been dropped may end up going away anyway in a maddening dispute that doesn’t have any winners. The school was reckless in trying to subvert Title IX enforcement in other ways, defiance that was guaranteed to bring out the worst in everybody.

Title IX activists are — ahem — cheering loudly, thrilled that a traditionally feminine activity that doesn’t fit their ideal of women’s athletic competition isn’t getting sanctioned. Former Women’s Sports Foundation President Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an Olympic swimming champion and now the organization’s legal adviser, demonstrated all the characteristics of a poor winner:

“I would hate to see viable sports that lead to Olympic possibilities, international opportunities, thwarted in favour of a sport that doesn’t lead to any of those.”

I thought the purpose of Title IX was to enable females to participate, regardless of their skill levels and athletic ambitions. I’m not sure I consider cheerleading a sport either, but this question never would have arisen had a women’s team not been dropped. Women’s activists have not lost a major Title IX case for the better part of two decades now, and they tend to get very indignant when anyone challenges their orthodoxy. The dismayed Quinnipiac cheerleading coach discovered how sharp those elbows can be:

“I think what offends cheerleaders more than anything is other women degrading them and knocking what they do.”

• If that case wasn’t dispiriting enough, USA Today reported this week on a blockbuster conflict at Lock Haven University in which a female athletic director has filed a defamation suit against defenders of the men’s wrestling team at the same time the black men’s basketball coach is suing the school for racial and gender discrimination. The gripe against AD Sharon Taylor is that she’s keeping men’s sports down; a former underling says she one displayed a picture of — ahem again — a lighted male athletic supporter in her office:

“To me, a jockstrap on fire represents the downfall of men’s athletics. It says what she really believes: ‘I want men’s athletics to go away.”

It’s impossible to make this stuff up.

• But the ugliest thing I read all week was some reaction to the retirement of USA Softball standout and swimsuit looker Jennie Finch, who’s long been in the crosshairs of gender-and-sexuality sports feminists.

Says lesbian sports activist Pat Griffin:

“Women athletes have always needed to prove their femininity and heterosexuality. They have always needed to compensate for their athleticism by highlighting their ‘normality,’ that would be their girly-girlness and their interest in men. The acceptance of women athletes has always depended on their ability to project conventional femininity and heterosexuality: She can strike out big league baseball players, but, by gosh, the ribbons in her hair are so darn cute, her make-up is impeccable, and not a hair out of place.”

This for one of the most decorated players in the history of the game, who’s won NCAA championships and Olympic gold. But wait, there’s more:

“Though it will be a real loss for the game as all those men who tuned in and came out for games to see Finch and her ‘toothpaste commercial’ smile will now abandon the game as it loses its sexiest star. Oh wait . . . sex appeal doesn’t sell women’s sports . . . never mind. Maybe the loss of Finch will make the game a little less heterosexual?”

If you just close your eyes, you can let this drift you back to the 1970s. I hope Griffin wasn’t watching the USA-Canada match Thursday in the World Cup of Softball in which Finch clobbered a two-run homer. It’s not just Finch who should rouse her ire; the rest of the American lineup looks to be a Murderer’s Row of the tools of the patriarchy.

Former Vanderbilt basketball standout Chantelle Anderson — who’s a terrific example of what it’s like to be strong, athletic and unapologetic about her looks (she prefers a traditional feminine appearance) – had an eloquent, respectful response to all this:

“You are not helping women’s sports, or female athletes, by yelling ’sexism’ or ‘homophobia’ every time someone highlights how hot and feminine a particular athlete is. Don’t you see . . . you’re making the problem worse for all those girls that aren’t gay and really want to play sports. Girls that desperately need the lessons, guidance, and benefits of playing sports, yet don’t want to feel they have to dress and act like boys, or forfeit all dreams of ever having a boyfriend, to get them. You can choose to make this a never-ending campaign defending the right for gay girls to be who they are, but in doing so, you’re hurting other girls that just want to play.”

You can imagine the flak she’s catching for this; read some of the comments. Sheesh.

And so it goes, more than halfway through 2010. . .

• Trying to stay hydrated and cool — especially under the collar — is near impossible (really trying to save on the air conditioning bill). So when a Seattle sports blogger and radio talk show producer Liz Mathews began spouting the deeply flawed research from USC sociology professor Michael Messner about the underrepresentation of women in sports media, I felt my temperature rising before I responded.

Actually, we had a fairly good and civil conversation on Twitter — the gist of my counterpoint is right here — that I hope continues beyond this sequence today. I had never heard of Liz before but saw her comments on a retweet and love how this social media tool makes it easy to discover people with similar interests and with whom you can engage directly, sight unseen. She’s sharp, well-informed and passionate about sports. I just wanted to offer something else to think about, and indeed, one of her followers has done the same:

“I guess I just see things as biz opportunities. There’s obviously a market for sports targeted to women. Do it b4 big $ catches on!”

Precisely! What I’m addressing on my new sports site goes to the heart of some of these matters — especially the business and future of women’s sports — and I consider the time spent today on Twitter a quite useful piece of slice research as well as a chance to sharpen my arguments. For what I have in mind, I’m going to have to defend myself more vigorously than Messner could ever imagine.

Given the fawning and largely uncritical attention he’s gotten for his survey, he’s likely never had to be on the lookout for pitchforks.

• A growing array of pitchforks, knives, axes, shivs and other sharply lacerating tools are truly out for Detroit Free Press columnist Mitch Albom, who recently won the Red Smith Award, the highest honor given by the Associated Press Sports Editors. First it was an elegant takedown from the legendary Dave Kindred, pointing to Albom’s retraction after writing about events at the 2005 Final Four that did not happen:

“Note to journalism students: This is known as fiction. It can get you expelled.”

Now the bombastic Jason Whitlock has chimed in on The Big Lead, lambasting Albom, the APSE and the newspaper industry in his usual carpet-bombing fashion:

“Excuse the arrogance, but the idiots running APSE should’ve invited me, Bill Simmons, Adrian Wojnarowski, Will Leitch, Dan Wetzel, Mike Florio, Dan LeBatard and TJ Simers to pontificate about the stupidity of newspapers. (I didn’t check with any of these people about writing this. They’re just a few of the many people in the business with the balls to do things differently. They might disagree with everything I’ve written here.)

“Instead, the sycophants invited their bottom chick to make love one last time.”

Whoa there! I love audacity with the written word, but I wonder when — or if — Whitlock ever realizes when he goes over the line. He may just have done that here.

• As I mentioned earlier this week posting here may not be as frequent as I work on a project that is the culmination of many years of thought, planning and distillation of ideas. I’ve spent many hours offline in the last few weeks to begin preparations, with a targeted launch date of later in the summer or early in the fall.

The creative possibilities are immense, but daunting, even with my familiarity with the subject matter. I cannot imagine what today’s young people must be feeling as they undertake the vast amount of information and data available to them in their educational endeavors, as well as the easy distractions that sideline their learning.

Newsweek has published a lengthy exploration of what it labels a creativity crisis in America, and fears that parents and educators aren’t fostering good habits early on for children to adopt, good habits and practices that tend to continue well into adult life:

“It’s too early to determine conclusively why U.S. creativity scores are declining. One likely culprit is the number of hours kids now spend in front of the TV and playing videogames rather than engaging in creative activities. Another is the lack of creativity development in our schools. In effect, it’s left to the luck of the draw who becomes creative: there’s no concerted effort to nurture the creativity of all children.”

There’s a lot to sift through here, and frankly, almost too much to absorb. But here’s another finding that rings true in my own experience:

“Having studied the childhoods of highly creative people for decades, Claremont Graduate University’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and University of Northern Iowa’s Gary G. Gute found highly creative adults tended to grow up in families embodying opposites. Parents encouraged uniqueness, yet provided stability. They were highly responsive to kids’ needs, yet challenged kids to develop skills. This resulted in a sort of adaptability: in times of anxiousness, clear rules could reduce chaos—yet when kids were bored, they could seek change, too. In the space between anxiety and boredom was where creativity flourished.

“It’s also true that highly creative adults frequently grew up with hardship. Hardship by itself doesn’t lead to creativity, but it does force kids to become more flexible—and flexibility helps with creativity.”

I never got pushed in any particular academic or avocational pursuit, and I consider myself fortunate. I’ve never felt bored all that often, and I credit the space I was given to try any number of interests to discover what appealed to me the most.

I don’t want to sound like a grouch entering full-bore middle age, but I don’t see a lot in the popular culture today that would foster the creative activity outlined in this magazine piece. As permissive a period of time as I thought my childhood years were — the 60s and 70s — we have a present culture drowning in “reality” TV, extremely frank musical lyrics and excessively crude displays of juvenile behavior, sexual and otherwise, that do nothing to spark creative minds. There’s little left to the imagination.

Young people today have even fewer incentives than my TV-drenched generation to think beyond their own immediate worlds and light out for possibilities beyond what they have thrust upon them every day. The on-demand sensations are so intense, but it’s not fair to blame the Web. That’s a temptation for people in all age groups to grapple with, including me.

•  I thought I’d had my fill of misleading claims about the alleged “invisibility” of women’s sports on TV, but some related items on that topic since I first responded late last week have prompted another post by me at Extracurriculars.

• All of this has further inspired and fired me up to continue work on a forthcoming women’s sports site that I plan to launch by the early fall. I may not be posting here as frequently as a result, but I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

• I also want to kick back and relax a little before that and actually take a real vacation:

• The stirring 116th minute goal by Andrés Iniesta that produced Spain’s first World Cup championship also produced one of the more poignant storylines of the tournament. Iniesta then pulled off his jersey to reveal a message, as many goal-scorers do. This one said: “Dani Jarque, siempre con nosotros.”

It was a salute to Iniesta’s friend, former Spanish youth star Dani Jarque, who tragically died of a heart attack last fall at the age of 26. Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports writes about how Iniesta’s tribute also demonstrated the character of a humble star who reflects the best qualities of his nation:

“Spain is a beautiful country. Spain plays a beautiful game.

“And this is why it’s so easy to miss the Andres Iniestas – and Dani Jarques – that make it hum. To not realize the immense economic difficulties its people are suffering through. To forget about the construction workers and family tavern owners and working class people who made it so great for so long.

“Spain is about guts too, about tough guys living blue-collar dreams and trying to take their buddies along with them in any way they can. Even the ones who’ve passed away, even if it’s just a name scribbled on a T-shirt.

“For all the dashing glory and all the postcard towns and all the Mediterranean sunsets, it’s a country and a people that believe in hard work and an honest chance.”

• Johan Cruyff is an honorary Spaniard for the indelible imprint he left on Barcelona, Iniesta’s club team, and how the Dutch style of “Total Football” he embodied in the 1970s has been grafted into the Spanish game. So it was not surprising to read Cruyff’s scathing review of Holland’s negative fouling tactics that resulted in a total of 13 yellow cards for both teams, including an ejection for Dutch defender John Heitenga:

“And regrettably, sadly, they played very dirty. So much so that they should have been down to nine immediately, then they made two [such] ugly and hard tackles that even I felt the damage.

“This ugly, vulgar, hard, hermetic, hardly eye-catching, hardly football style, yes it served the Dutch to unsettle Spain. If with this they got satisfaction, fine, but they ended up losing. They were playing anti-football.”

• In anticipation of Sunday’s World Cup final match between Spain and Holland, I’m quickly re-reading two books I first picked up some years ago that perfectly explain the way each nation has played the game. In trying to win the World Cup for the first time, both are having to overcome some of their history.

David Winner’s Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football, explores the “Total Football” approach of the great Dutch teams that twice finished as World Cup runners-up in the 1970s. The “talisman,” of course, was Johan Cruyff, who later coached Barcelona to European Cup glory and who said this week that it is Spain that plays the game the way he prefers. Winner sums it up thusly:

“Almost every Dutch team agrees with Johan Cruyff that ‘Football should always be played beautifully, you should play in an attacking way, it must be a spectacle.’ And everything you’ve heard about the Dutch love of spectacle and attack is true.”

• Ruud Gullit, an ESPN World Cup commentator and a Dutch Master of 1990s vintage, says forget that and just win, baby. The game has changed and so has the Dutch style:

“It’s so hard to play sexy, exceptional football all the time.

“It’s far easier to demolish a house than to build it. In the same way, a lot of teams have become difficult to beat because they’re so organised. Look how hard a technically gifted team like Spain have had to work for every result. It’s so difficult, with the speed of the game and the players’ athleticism. Football has evolved.

“The good news is that two teams who are capable of playing attacking football, Spain and Holland, have reached the final so defensive football hasn’t won – just yet.”

• This is Spain’s first World Cup final and the sense of national unity that most countries experience has been absent in the Iberian nation. Phil Ball, the author of Morbo: The Story of Spanish Football, wrote that intense regional pride and stubbornness has been a drag on national soccer ambitions:

“Cervantes would have enjoyed the antics of the national team, for they have been nothing if not Quixotic. Their story is a faithful reflection of the adventures of Quijote and Sancho Panza — noble self-delusion, well-meaning failure and hubris by the cartload — although the pride of the Spanish has always been a complicated, neurotic sort of pride, tinged as it is with that fatal dose of inferiority.”

Now Spain has united soccer purists who love its glittering, skillful offensive play, although goals have been hard to come by in the knockout stage. Says former England international Jamie Redknapp:

“We expect so much from Xavi and Andreas Iniesta that they might not have quite lived up to those high standards so far, but we saw against Germany that even if they are not hurting teams, they keep the ball so well that they just frustrate them.

“If they go 1-0 up they will take the life out of the opposition – and the game – with those little short passes, one-two’s, short corners. Even if they are not ahead, the situation doesn’t make a difference, because these two – and to an extent the rest of the Spanish side – still trust each other with the ball.”

• The World Cup still has a third place match, to be played Saturday between Germany and Uruguay. And neither of them would ever regard it as “The Empty Cup.”

• Temperatures are rising along with the collective blood pressure of many in the sports-and-media world over the LeBron James farce on ESPN. The best read I came across is from Jake Simpson of the Atlantic Culture Channel in a post titled “LeBron James and the Rise of Sports Reality TV.” Slam dunk bucket here:

“Skeptics would argue LeBron-mania is an isolated incident, an overreaction by the media and public to a transcendent sports figure making a career-altering decision. But that doesn’t explain why Dallas Braden is more famous for yelling ‘get off my fucking mound’ at Alex Rodriguez than he is for pitching a perfect game. . . . That Braden achieved perfection for a day and carved out a permanent place in baseball history is somehow less marketable than his outburst of bravado and his grandmother’s now-immortal comment: ‘Stick It, A-Rod.’ The sensational has won out over the sublime. And sports franchises are nodding happily.”

• Thanks to the Sports Business Daily for taking its roundup on “The Decision” out from behind its paywall. Lots of good behind-the-scenes details on how James’ publicist, the aptly named Maverick Carter, concocted this prime-time circus.

• John Ourand, the crack media writer for SBJ’s parent publication, the Sports Business Journal, is bothered by today’s column from ESPN ombudsman Don Ohlmeyer, which he calls “stupendously weak” for delving deeply into World Cup vuvuzelas but is stone silent about its James coverage.

• My Twitter follower Mark Zemek is upset, but for other reasons. Huffington Post is featuring a 39-shot photo gallery of Paraguayan model Larissa Riquelme, who has promised to run naked through the streets of Asunción to celebrate her nation’s World Cup team reaching the quarterfinals. If I had a body like that, I’d probably be bold enough to make such a pledge. 700 comments and counting, folks. It’s a bit more G-Rated than this item elsewhere on Queen Arianna’s “sports” page.

• Thank God they won’t have to be on the lookout for Diego Maradona in the rah in Buenos Aires. But I would cry for Argentina if he changes his mind.

• I’ll have plenty more on the World Cup finals tomorrow, but this piece from Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports about the “Oracle Octopus” has me very hungry. The critter correctly predicted Spain’s semifinal victory, and now some German fans want to “throw him in the frying pan.” One suggested recipe:

“Cut him up in thin slices and grill him on all sides with a dash of lemon juice, olive oil and garlic on it. Delicious!”

That does sound tasty, but it’s just too darn hot to stand over a stove tonight.

UEFA, the European soccer governing body, has commissioned a British academic to study the development of the women’s pro game there that dates back to 1971, the year before Title IX was passed. A report will be released next year to coincide with the Women’s World Cup in Germany.

A full-fledged English women’s “SuperLeague” is slated to begin next year after delays that include the recession and serious financial issues plaguing top English clubs that also field women’s teams.

Women’s soccer is a blip on the radar compared to the men’s game, especially during a World Cup year, but this is a crucial and encouraging time for the development of the game internationally. The Women’s Under-20 World Cup begins next week in Germany, and the U-17 tournament takes place in September. Both of these events have been created in just the last few years so it’s too soon to tell how they’ve ramped up growth in parts of the game where the women’s game remains woefully underdeveloped.

• The disparities between women in sports in developed countries and those elsewhere remain steep. A Kenyan woman frets that the legacy of the first World Cup in Africa won’t seep into the women’s game; but she points out her male counterparts have suffered from corruption and poor organization for years.

• A blog I have not heard of before, Mister Women’s Sports, examines some of the fuss I’ve caused in my recent Title IX post and thinks both I and my adversaries can use a little bit more perspective.

• I’ve been doing this for years, but it never gets old: I’m rediscovering the thrills that many bloggers, researchers, journalists and authors find so addictive in coming across long-lost newspaper stories, documents and other information that makes being a writer such an enriching experience.

A couple of examples: A 2000 story in the Village Voice about female athletes who dare to undress. And this one, from The New York Times in 2002, about limits placed on male sports participation because of Title IX concerns.

• At Extracurriculars I have written about “Female athletes, their bodies and distorted perceptions” that only figure to continue to heat up: Serena Williams and her body, the LPGA Tour’s mommy conundrum, media coverage of women athletes and the return of Caster Semenya to the women’s track and field fold.

For all the caterwauling about women athletes not getting a lot of press, that’s just a tiny sampling of what’s going on out there. I’m not going to pronounce a forthcoming “Golden Age” or anything, but the agony aunts who fuss that women in sports are invisible are focused on all the wrong things. As usual.

To those of you weary about reading about these topics here: Soon there will be a new home for these missives, so I do appreciate your patience. The Gonzo post above has further crystallized ideas I’ve had about these matters for close to two decades now, and shortly I will be realizing them elsewhere, and at long, long last.