COMarc, I agree.

First, I would submit the true values of sport are not utter dominance and destruction. It is about common interest. What it takes to acheive that? The recognition that nobody on the team is inherently better than anybody else. Some may have been more talented or worked harder, but all of those involved share the spoils. Is that really such a harmful institution?

Ironically, we are in fact kidding ourselves if OUR end goal is not the "destruction"(in a non-violent sense) of capitalism, or the political system or whatever the goal may be along the way.

Creativity was mentioned, but once somebody begins to play a sport, soccer and basketball possibly being the best examples, creativity is the main source of most success. Of course there are some who take the creativity out of it, totalitarian coaches if you will, and that is a shame. But sport in itself actually lends itself towards immense creativity, especially considering the beautiful things that can be done when the only thing used is a "stupid ball".

The Left can sometimes hate sport because apathetic Americans do waste plenty of time watching their favorite teams instead of checking what their political leaders are doing. Also, American culture has hijacked certain aspects of sport. Coaches may try to turn teams into established heirarchies, players may be taught to think me first and screw anybody else that can't get me paid, and then our media often glorifies those who follow this strategy.

It is funny how wealthy parents send their kids to highly regimented camps, the coaches try to mold kids into the same robotic type of players, and then watch as those who never went through the youth system make it to the NBA time and time again. Perhaps the corporate media could do better than calling them "thugs" or the supposedly complimentary "freak of nature".

Funny how at one point blacks were too stupid, and now they are too athletic. Rarely does anybody bring up the idea that they just might work harder or be more creative(not biological traits, of course, but learned ones... and yes it can be argued sport is not the place to put ALL this work...back to the point though). One of the cornerstones of conservative ideology is debunked daily right in front of everybody, but nobody seems to notice. "It must be biological, because everybody knows they are too lazy to work hard." Not necessarily.

The Left should not be afraid of sport, but embrace it. It is the perfect community venture, where all of us play a role, and no matter the role, can be taught to share the spoils of our hard fought(non violent again) victory. Too idealistic? Then I like it.

-aspiring coach who will never get hired-

ya understand typically more men want to play sports than women, hence more oppurtunities are there, duhhh....

that's not discrimination, that's reality

I had this debate with MS Magazine more than 10 years ago. Here is MY take. Women excelling in sports may help them gain self-esteem and a certain measure of self-discipline, as most athletes must train their bodies to compete. However, the model is one that asks women to become good at things MEN do. Fine. But there is never any support for what comes innate to women, and by this I mean the arts, the intuitive dimensions, levels of creativity that are certainly given no aura of near-worship in our society. I am so tired of all the energy that gets whooped up into sports, and let's face it, apart from running, EVERY sport is about BALLS. I did a comedy about this as if the Goddesses of Olympus were rating Zeus (macho CEO of planet earth, inc.) on how well he's been doing. Demetra asks Aphrodite, "Why are they always playing with balls? Baseballs, footballs, golfballs, basetballs." I mean I know homo erectus stood up, but there's more than balls out there! It would be one thing if our race was actually showing any evidence of evolution. The models being celebrated are always about teams and some symbolic (team colors) color war, and an ENORMOUS amount of energy is wasted over the trained passion for who wins, who gets the ball, who scores. How about all that energy going to redesigning urban wastelands, directed towards new energy models that might save this planet, put in the direction of CREATIVITY rather than an arena that celebrates muscles, sweat and prowess. AS if these attitudes don't morph into foreign policy and SERIOUS concerns of this world on the brink of collapse. It's another version of the band playing on the Titanic.

just another example of women blindly conform to tall white male dominated values under the guise of choice

Siouxrose, I disagree. There are many sports that are not team oriented, or "balls"- centered. Track and field, for example.

I think sports and physical activities generally are important for health as well as for developing focus and concentration, learning how to achieve goals, testing one's limits. For young women especially, sports can help them to develop healthy attitudes about their bodies beyond the American commodification of female physicality that emphasizes sex and sexual attractiveness above all else. None of these benefits precludes women from developing and manifesting the qualities that you define as "feminine."

As I remember, Title IX sought to remedy the imbalance in college scholarships that went to young male athletes.

Whoa! Whole lotta stereotyping goin' on here! My pink fluffies are at the drycleaners. I much prefer life in a strong, fit, capable body.

mastershake, given that women are 52% of the population . . . duh!

Siouxrtose--

To add to the feminine denying aspect of your commentary, most sports (with a few honorable exceptions as JP noted) are abstracted military maneuvers whose strategy is to "destroy" an opponent by outscoring them.)

Perhaps you could further develope your satirized mythological analogy and call it "The Testical Monologues". LOL

The most important potential for title IX is to grant the other half of humanity equal resorces to pursue the full flowering of their own unique strengths as men have been allowed through the majority of sports and athletics which are lavishly funded through scholarships, elaborate facilities, and gorifying publicity.

Until we value the other half of humanity our culture and development as people will be retarded. (written to the strains of Beethoven's 5th Symphony playing in the background!)

And when a women's team excels, they get the dubious distinction of being called "nappy-headed hos" by the likes of Don Imus. Gee! I really want that for me too!

Wow, there's more bs above than I've seen in a long time. Someday I'll figure out why so many on the left hate the very idea of sports. And if someone types more of this nonsense about military maneuvers, I'll fall over laughing. Somehow, when I'm concentrating on how to hit a softball, or on how to sink a jump shot, that's not exactly what I'm thinking of. Sports are great for participants. And they are even watchable TV if you skip all the commercials and other bs that goes with them and turn off the yelling American announcers most of the time.

But what really struck me about this article is how wrong all the doom-sayers were. You know the types, the ones that anytime a reform is suggested go around all gloom and doom how its going to be the end of the world. Seems like when this went into effect, I heard idiots talking about how this would destroy mens college football. Or, that the other more minor men's sports were doomed. The typical oh-my-gawd, there-can't-be-change reaction to any proposed improvement in the world.

Well, they were all wrong weren't they. Men's college football and the March Madness tournament are all bigger and stronger than they were when this change was made. Other mens sports are doing just fine. And it opened up some pretty good opportunities for women to compete. Pretty much good for everyone. A nice refutation to the doom sayers who were wrong yet again. The world didn't fall apart when black people drank from drinking fountains, and women playing basketball hasn't end the world either. Who knows, maybe we can try peace next?

Title IX for women's sports. Pretty much a win-win for everyone. Well, except for all the negative people on the left who go into hissy fits at the very mention of a competitive sport.

Ya know, maybe if more people on the left did try some team sports. And maybe learned a bit about what it takes to work together as a team, to stay together as a team through a losing streak, how to dedicate themselves to a goal and then work hard to get it, then maybe we'd be more successful in the world. That thought has crossed my mind while sitting in more than one coalition meeting listening to some leftist prima donna who's doing much more to destroy the teamwork in the coalition than advance it.

Poet: How about cut to the chase, title: "IF genitals could talk."
JP: I understand (and stated) that sports for women DO elicit feelings of self-esteem to a point. The real emphasis of MY comment is that sports as an arena is essentially a YANG expression, and our society does not champion the complimentary YIN--arts--to the same extent. If anyone wants to talk about today's films or music industry, as far as I see it, that is NOT art, it's aggression with cover. MOST is violent.
Comarc: The team aspect has a plus and minus effect. Plus, as you pointed out, is the example to the "left" on working together. Of course with sport, even if persons play different positions they share the same goal; and that's why authoritarians get better organized. They are clone lap dogs who can't think independently. On the left, we have MANY causes that require addressing. Some are focused on the economic injustices, other on the environmental calamities, some on racial inequities, etc. It's far more difficult to bring together equally impassioned elements when our basic foci differ, even if we all aim for a better society.
As for track and field, listen, I love gymnastics and was a competing gymnast in my youth. I cry when I see a great performance. (My younger daughter was a better gymnast than I ever could be... so one summer I drove her to a gymnastics camp in Texas run by Bella Karyoli. He was the ONLY coach ever to elicit a perfect 10 score from a gymnast in EVERY apparatus. Guess what I asked him, as if I didn't know the answer as demonstrated in his impeccability and standard of perfection? What sign he was. Yep. Virgo. As was his wife.) In any case, we all know the BIG sport in America is football and it IS macho, and it IS a run-up to war in how it shapes consciousness around the brute form of expression. I know there are strategies, I know the coach is important, I realize the team has to work together. The end product is still brute force and it is WORSHIPPED in this society; and that is the danger. Sports of this species (perhaps I should have differentiated) along with the Star spangled banner ("And the rockets red glare, the BOMBS bursting in air") are part of the national hypnosis that sends young men (and now some women) off the field right into the arms of the armed services. THAT I take issue with, and I do feel sports play into the necessary programming to maintain a nation of ready soldiers. For women as per body image, etc. Yoga and martial arts are my preference. Because women have been TRAINED to follow the male models in order to feel validated, their identification with sports is a "natural" outcome. It's that other expressions are NOT valued or validated and these represent untapped potentials of mankind, special aptitudes implanted in women that have been cordoned off so long, they barely exist; and are needed as a counterbalance to the intensive emphasis on things YANG in our culture.
I prefer to see my comments as complimentary to the views expressed here (in favor of mainstream sports), a different layer, not antagonistic.

"It is taking much longer to reach the point where girls and boys are both encouraged to excel in math and science classes."

It seems to me like girls and boys are more than anything being encouraged to excel as consumers.

Hey, I think it's a good thing for women and men to be involved in sports. More people in this country NEED some sort of athletic stimulation. Take a look around. I see more fat kids than I ever have in my entire life. They're all too busy on the PC, Xbox, and Blackberry eating junk food. And those fat kids become fat adults, and end up with a lot of health problems as a result.

However, I can understand many people's disillusionment with professional sports. People, especially men, are WAY too fixated on pro sports. I know guys that can tell you what the final score was in Superbowl XX yet don't know who the VP of the US is.

I mean, what else is Fantasy Sports but Dungeons and Dragons for stitch heads? Geez. You'd think some of these guys would be able to walk a flight of stairs without stopping to catch their breath the way they obsess about sports. I guess to them it's more fun watching other people play.

I don't think I've watched a baseball game since 1992 when the Pirates were in the playoffs. It is easy though for me to get sucked in when my home teams are doing well. On the other hand, ask me about the World Series. I couldn't care less, which makes me less of a man to some people.

And of course we see how much cities spend money and bend over backwards for their sports teams when they should be doing the same for other things. In my city, they built two fields for baseball and football even though the people voted it down.

Plus, pro athletes DO make absurd amounts of money and are treated as gods at times. Sports dominates local newscasts. In school, athletic kids are put on a pedestal often as the expense of the smart, sensitive ones. They'll ditch a music program over a basketball one in a heartbeat.

Then again I watch pro wrestling and smatterings of fighting sports like boxing and MMA. I've always liked physical combat for some reason. It's like a savage ballet to me, even if it isn't real.

Anyways, there's a lot to like and dislike about sports.

iwarrior: You patron of savage ballet, you... I like the way you step in and play referee among posters' points and comments. You are an enlightened soul. I checked your planets (as you asked), and would like to tell you that you were born with a formation (to the astrologer this is NOT caprice, it indicates WORK done in previous lifetimes that have earned you these alignments in the current one) and you have what is known as a grand trine. It works the way loaded bases operate in baseball (the one macho sport I really like). Twelve signs divide into 4 elements with 3 potential (triangle therein) stations possible. An individual with planets posited in all three has a certain mastery of the element in question. In your case, this occurs in the AIR element which is about speech, learning, teaching, writing, promoting and communication. Furthermore, and I make what I consider a strong case for it in one of my books published on this subject, Jupiter (faith & positive expansive trends) and Saturn (fear & negative inhibiting trends) are not only ONE of the key sets of polarized principles as set into the great pantheon, the clockworks of our solar system; but they also articulate the basic tenors of New and Old Testament. I call them "the law and order planets." I tell you friends, if we SCREENED all politicians on this basis alone, there would be a 90% reduction in graft! The formation in an individual's chart between these 2 (lest it is overweighed by other factors. Astrology being a complex mathematical chessgame with build-in geometric relationships that hold meanings, in my view the planets are encoded with the principles of Divine Law) demonstrates how well they have mastered the basic law of karma: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (This presumes a sane person's application of the adage.) Your Jupiter and Saturn fit this formation, so should you ever run for office, you've got my vote!

Thanks Siouxrose. I saved your post.