> You are exaggerating with that first claim. It is in no way common for high school male athletes to be competitive against world class female athletes.
I urge anyone curious about this topic to go and look how the US female soccer team performs globally, it truly speaks about how the US has a bad soccer team simply because all the talent is funneled elsewhere
I'm not sure I agree with that. US women do well at the international level in a fair number of sports. But it's probably true that women in the US are more likely to seriously play soccer growing up, including at the collegiate level, than women in other countries are.
And, of course, the US Women's national basketball team is utterly dominant. Though given the relative popularity of basketball in the US compared to other major countries, that's not exactly a fair comparison.
> There's plenty of women with the physique and skills to fill roles in the NFL, for example.
Please provide three examples. I played college football at a tiny division 2 school and have never met a woman (I live in the gym these days) for which this is close to true.
Even if you're referring to a low/no contact position like kicker/punter you're still under threat of a 220 lb linebacker destroying you [1].
> Most boys play sports to stand out. Mostly with girls. Sometimes against other boys. Sometimes in the hope of getting a scholarship.
I completely disagree. This is a very pessimistic depiction of young male athletes. I believe the primary reason for high schoolers playing sports is still interest in the game itself, not ancillary benefits. When I started coaching high school the team was 1-7 and a joke to the school. There were still thirty boys that came out to practice everyday because they loved the game.
> In addition, most high school coaches suck by simple Darwinian mechanics. The good ones get pulled up to much bigger schools REALLY quickly. The poor ones get left behind.
I also disagree with this. Coaching promotion is highly dependent on whom you know and whom you're friends with. There many excellent high school coaches that never get pulled up simply because they do not have the connections. There are also many good college coaches that leave college ball because they would rather be head coach of a great high school program than the third defensive back specialist of a college team.
>by the very nature of things you have an advantage of strength, agility, speed and desire over your female peers.
By the very nature of things LeBron James has an advantage of strength, agility, and speed over me. (no clue why you included desire in your comment)
Basically every elite athlete is born with a genetic predisposition to be better at their sport than the average person. It takes a lot of determination and training to reach that full potential, but let's not pretend that people are born on equal footing.
> In highly competitive physical sports there be would no woman at all in the olympics for example.
In (edit: some) highly competitive physical sports there would be no person below median height at all in the olympics for example.
We can slice and dice all sorts of extremely visible inborn characteristics that will over time hopefully have just as much cultural relevance as sex or gender, as the cultural relevance of sex and gender decreases [0]. As that happens, we’re going to have to reevaluate what we culturally look for in sports. At the amateur level, hopefully this isn’t too hard, but I have no idea whether it will make professional sports more or less accessible.
[0] While height is mostly out of your control, it’s still unclear which of the kids in tryout team will end up tall enough to compete. That’s where sex and gender are more of a clear split, because you know most of the kids on the girls team won’t end up on a men’s team, so the split remains stable as they grow up.
> First, women playing football have a common enemy: the evil men who tell them they can't, the patriarchy! A common enemy is great for team dynamics.
^^^ Really? This is a rather immature statement.
Also I don't really see how your point relates to my argument that women have a natural penchant for teamwork.
I guess playing because you're passionate about the sport isn't sufficient 'incentive?'
Women's football has pressures and hardships that men's football doesn't have. For one, teams are not affiliated with any school so we have to buy our own equipment, rent the field, pay for traveling across the country. I spent about 1K every year playing football (and have spent a few more Ks paying for three sports injury surgeries).
We all have full-time jobs, and many have families and children. Most of my free time from January to July is taken up by weightlifting, practicing, watching film, and traveling for games. So a typical practice day for me looks like 8-4:30 programming job, 5pm get home, 5:30 leave for practice, 9pm get home, eat dinner, go to bed, repeat.
No fame. No social status++. If anything, you're making an argument that female football players have a more "pure" reason behind playing football. (Though I would never make that claim, so as to insult our male counterparts that are just as passionate about the game.)
> If anything, you're making an argument that female football players have a more "pure" reason behind playing football. (Though I would never make that claim, so as to insult our male counterparts that are just as passionate about the game
This is -exactly- what I'm saying. Exactly. But I would add that for males struggling for social status is a very old and pure pursuit in and of itself.
> I mean, you're likely in top 6-7% of football players just by being on your high school's team.
Not being from the US, I thought you were talking about soccer for a second, and your number did not make any sense at all. But that only confirms your point, in a way: if everyone does something, being part of the top would be much more difficult.
> IMO athletes should be weighted & tested and then put in devisions as is done in boxing. A heavyweight will never fight a light flyweight.
That's certainly an option, but if that's it, then that's the end of women's and girls' leagues. I don't particularly enjoy watching sports, and I can't name more than a couple athletes of any league, but it seems to me like a lot of people will be very disappointed by that.
> The lack of testosterone in my blood resulted in my muscle mass reducing to the point that I cannot do regular push-ups anymore. Granted, I could have trained if I wanted to retain this muscle mass but didn't.
This takes time, is more what I was getting at. I didn't write it all that well in my original comment so I guess it's going to get ripped to shreds. ;- )
Apologies if my 0-minute edit was too slow (I always find minor issues in my comments after submission; the HN comment box is not optimized for readability), but I immediately added "or as judged by others via fair tryouts". But even without the tryouts qualifier, I feel that was _heavily implied_ by my emphasis on skill-level/competitiveness over all else. Tryouts very frequently are open to anyone who shows up, and many house/intramural programs don't have tryouts at all and are just lottery-assigned.
> Most parents know it's pointless to enroll your kid in a sport that he lacks the ability to be competitive in
By volume, house and intramural teams (when they exist) necessarily make up the bulk of teams at each of their respective levels: a college may have 2 varsity soccer teams but 40 intramural teams. Are you discounting the value of sports for non-elite players? Should their parents have told them to give it up long ago because they weren't going to the show? Statistically 0% of people play pro sports, so it really doesn't seem like they are the ones we should be worrying about when it comes to these discussions. People talk about the value of sports for building work ethic, team skills, etc, and that is by far the major reason people care about youth sports policies in general. And truly 0% of women play in top leagues like the NFL or NBA already, so your concern of "deny[ing] a lot of women the opportunity to participate at all" at that level is already reality; how could any different system possibly be worse for them?
> So college football for example will be open to anyone interested?
College/pro football is full of stories of famous walk-ons who showed up unannounced and proved they were good enough. I suppose they should've known better as well, for not fitting into the "obvious, logical and natural" progression of having been a recruited Texas high school star since on average they weren't going to be good enough. Similar are the basketball players who transition to tight end and star despite _having never played football before_. Skill/competitiveness is the only thing that matters in the end.
> How about someone who is paraplegic? Can he make the team too?
Can he pass the tryout? Would you have told Shaquem Griffin that you're cutting him because on paper a linebacker missing a hand couldn't possibly be good enough? Jason Pierre-Paul didn't seem to have a problem finding a spot for his Super Bowl ring despite his missing fingers. Again, skill/competitiveness is the only thing that matters.
> Who pays for the expense of all this dead weight on the teams?
When I said as many teams as necessary, I was trying to point out that if you went from 2 sex-divided varsity teams to one combined varsity team there would definitely be less opportunity for everyone because there would be fewer inter-mural teams overall. But just like English pro soccer can have EPL, EFL, etc, colleges could figure out a similar multi-tiered system (some teams/sports already have "second teams", JV in high school, A/B/C travel leagues, and similar). Same number of teams should cost the same, no? And outside of the varsity college sports (which are hugely distorted financially for lots of reasons), players are the ones paying anyway.
> Implementing "sport for all" will most likely result in "sport for none".
Charitably this is defeatist, but uncharitably it feels like blowing everything up is better than diversity. Some men would definitely not make a team they previously would've as they get displaced by more skilled/competitive women, especially in early teen years when girls get taller and stronger sooner than most boys. I'd happily wager that such mixed competition would result in the development of even more equal competition because playing at higher levels is the best way to improve yourself (like when a kid gets to play up an age-level and skyrockets ahead of their age-group peers). I fail to see how this could be bad in any way: it will continue to elevate elite athletes through the ranks while also providing the same opportunity for the non-elites to play their apparently-unfulfilling games, just with slightly different team make-ups. But with the major improvement that we wouldn't be signaling to half of the population that they are de-facto second-class athletes.
> Maybe it's that football attracts a certain type of male.
Um, DUH. Most boys play sports to stand out. Mostly with girls. Sometimes against other boys. Sometimes in the hope of getting a scholarship.
Game it out. What's the point of being a team player on a mediocre team? Better to be the guy who makes the big play that people remember.
In addition, most high school coaches suck by simple Darwinian mechanics. The good ones get pulled up to much bigger schools REALLY quickly. The poor ones get left behind.
> Similar to how the women's USA national soccer team got crushed by a state level 15 year old boys team.
Not this nonsense again. It was a low-level training match for the USWNT where they were trying out different tactics (playing players out of position, etc.) before a real match against Russia.
> but it sure is tedious to hear folks with no interest in sports who suddenly have an opinion on who can compete
Clearly they do have an interest in sports - on the topic of fairness for female athletes at the very least - if they have formed an opinion on this topic.
>how the sporting department despite those figures manages to be a net budgetry drain on almost every school which has one
And so are music departments.
Which I think is part of the point here. I firmly believe that playing right tackle can teach you just as much as playing the oboe, yet intellectuals tend to look down on former and praise the latter. Organized sports are not only a hobby and social gathering, but they can also serve as part of a greater learning and education experience. There is a reason why a few of the Ivy League schools rank near the top of all universities when it comes to the number of varsity athletes.
>that college-level sports is hugely abusive and exploitative to the players which actually play it.
You need to be specific here. Big revenue college sports (basically only Div I basketball and Div I-A football) are definitely exploitative, but most college athletes participate in sports that generate little revenue and it would be hard to argue they are being exploited.
If you make something tilted against group X, group X will not look very good in the distribution of performance.
If those people in group X participate at a lower rate as a result, group X will look even worse in the distribution of performance. You'll be selecting the best from a much smaller population.
I do think there's some merit in the argument that many athletic events have been developed to showcase and compare male athletic capability. (Of course, a few are the opposite!)
Being picked last for every team ever wasn't great for that. It was humiliating, time after time. But worse was then being bullied in the compulsory showers every time for supposedly wanting to have anal sex with everyone, I guess because I was into music and science, not sport. Although, outside school, I was in weekly soccer, basketball and sailing competitions, and did a lot of kayaking, windsurfing, table tennis, roller skating, swimming, bike riding, tennis, handball etc etc. I can hardly believe how sporty I was compared to now, yet still was considered super-unsporty!
Ah this is another dismissive comment I guess. Maybe people like me are over-represented here! (And who this "HN crowd" I read about? Everyone but you?) I reacted to your language, I think - you presented yourself as just pointing out a fact, when you got dismissive comments from a tough crowd without your level of knowledge and understanding.
They're not though.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sports/comments/3ceeih/the_us_mens_...
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