Should We End Title IX?

In the words of the U.S. Department of Education, “The Department of Education is committed to expanding and protecting opportunities for students to learn. Title IX of the Higher Education Act promises equal access to education for all students and it protects them against discrimination on the basis of sex.

Title IX was enacted to ensure: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”[1]

“On March 26, 2021, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division issued a memorandum to federal civil rights offices and general counsels addressing the application of Bostock[2] to Title IX, determining that Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination “on the basis of sex” includes discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.  See Letter from Pamela S. Karlan, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, to Federal Civil Rights Directors and General Counsels (Mar. 26, 2021).

On June 22, 2021, the U.S. Department of Education issued a notice of interpretation clarifying that “[c]onsistent with the Supreme Court’s ruling and analysis in Bostock, the Department [of Education] interprets Title IX’s prohibition on discrimination ‘on the basis of sex’ to encompass discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.” Enforcement of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.  With Respect to Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Light of Bostock v. Clayton County, 86 Fed. Reg. 32,637 (June 22, 2021”[3]

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for equal access to education (including sports) my question is simply if we are to reach the true goals of gender equity, why do we need a law outlining what we can and can’t do?  Why not simply say, a college or university receiving federal funds can only have one team in each sport and all interested players must be included on the roster?

That way everyone gets to play and get their participation trophy based on how well they do against everyone else, sex and gender choices become irrelevant.  Of course, there are those "Deplorables" who believe women should participate equally against their own sex, and men should participate against their own sex, but clearly, the courts and our Federal Government feel this is an outdated concept.

Let’s take the current controversy over Lia Thomas, who previously identified as a male swimmer, but now identifies as a female.  (Insert preferred pronoun here) began swimming and competing early in her life and was, at one time ranked 6^th in Texas.  After arriving at Penn State he began his transition and choice for a new identity.  If Penn State had a single swim team, competing in non-gender specific races there would be no issue.  But like all things nowadays conservatives take one side and liberals take the other. 

My Governor, Ron DeSantis, has declared “for Florida” we will only recognize the second-place winner of the Woman’s 500-meter freestyle as the National Champion, while NBC sports has celebrated this momentous (?) moment in women’s sports as a giant step forward for the rights of the transgendered.

Of course, we could separate sports and education as some would want by going back to colleges that only admitted certain races, or have courses that only were open to certain sexes, but I think we all agree that would be a giant step back.  Rather than have all these financially strapped colleges and universities who are barely able to get by with their billion-dollar endowments, why don’t we let them cut the number of athletic teams in half or more by only fielding one team where the fastest is on top and the lowest on the bottom?  That way sex and gender are no longer a concern and all get to compete equally.  After all, isn’t that what inclusion and equity are all about?

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[1] https://sites.ed.gov/titleix/

[2] Bostock was actually a case regarding Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights act where the court held in a 6-3 vote an employee could not be fired for being gay or transgendered.  DOJ has issued its opinion based on what it views as an applicable cross-linkage.

[3] https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-ix

Baseball

In an effort to remain relevant and keep its fan base, I believe Major League Baseball is losing the appeal that, at one time, made it America’s game.

The movie “A Field of Dreams” captured the essence of the sport in the lines spoken by James Earl Jones as he played Terence Mann:

“Ray, people will come Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the baselines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Ray. The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.”

Perhaps it is unavoidable, like progress.  Our society changes, attitudes change, and in pursuit of that change, time compresses, while the technology of change inundates us.

 We no longer play the game by feel, it is all about analytics, as captured in the movie Money Ball, about the Oakland Athletics and their GM Billy Bean.  At the end of the movie John Henry, the (then) new owner, of the Boston Red Sox offers Bean a job as GM with the Red Sox by pointing out the A’s came one win short of getting to the World Series when they lost to the New York Yankees, but they (the A’s) spent about $200K per win while the Yankees spent about $10M.  The hard-fiscal fact of a new approach did not escape John Henry and is probably directly responsible for the Sox breaking the curse of the Bambino in 2004.

Today, we see teams shifting players from their historical fielding positions to where analytics tell them the batter will most likely hit the ball.  As far as I can tell, so far batters have not figured out how to change to counter this move.  The solutions seem obvious to a fan but apparently are not to the players or coaches.

We are moving away from the pastoral game lionized in “A Field of Dreams” into the Xs and Os of football.  With that note, I will leave you with this video by the late George Carlin.

Pickle Ball (Fact and Fiction)

Now that I am settled into this retirement lifestyle I’ve taken up the obligatory game of PICKLE BALL, and in my search for knowledge I’ve decided to separate the fact from fiction. 

Family lore, passed down through the generations had told me the game was invented shortly after the Salem witch trials by Maniacs who were looking for something to do between the demanding Badminton and Wiffle Ball seasons.  The game, I was told, derived its name from the fact the founding fathers (their wives all having been found wanting at the witch trials) had taken the used wiffle ball away from the family pet (named Pickles) and using crude paddles fashioned from those used to discipline the children had found enjoyment in whacking Pickle’s ball back and forth.  I had carried this as truth until just recently when I found the “official site” of Pickle Ball on the world wide web of useless knowledge.

The official site[1] tells us three Congressmen from Washington State created the game in 1965 after they had completed a round of golf and arriving home found they actually had wives and children.  This is remarkable for two reasons.  First, it suggests politicians from Washington can actually accomplish something that does not involve increasing taxes, and they accomplish more at home than when being paid to attend the Congress.

The Equipment:

Think of the game as a cross between table tennis and badminton.  It is played on a badminton size court (in our case asphalt) with an extra area by the net.  For some strange reason this area is called the kitchen.  You can tell this game was invented by chauvinist men because you are supposed to stay out of the kitchen except on that rare occasion you find your pickle ball in it.

The paddles have evolved with technology and are now much bigger than those original ping-pong paddles (and more expensive).  They are about the size of a racket ball paddle and are handled similarly.

Pickle’s ball has also evolved and it is much stronger than the Wiffle ball that started this new sport that is growing into international prominence.  There are indoor and outdoor balls now and they come in a variety of attractive colors that help old people see them.

The net looks like a tennis net but is lower, reaching only two feet in the center and a little higher at the posts.

The Game:

The game is best enjoyed by four people (so you don’t have to move too much) and begins when one player yells at the other side “zero, zero, two.” He or she then smacks the ball diagonally across the net trying to get it into the rectangle past the kitchen.  The opposing player then whacks it back.

The ball must hit the ground at least twice, once on the serve and once on the return, before the players can move up to the net and try smashing it into the face of the opposing team.

Teams can only score points when they are serving and the game ends when either of these two conditions are reached.

a.  One team reaches eleven points and leads the other team by two points.

b.  One of the players passes out and an ambulance is called.

The Future:

I am told professional leagues have been formed, there is now a governing body setting all sorts of trivial rules, and it is only a matter of time until we have line judges and players yelling at them.  So everyone is really looking forward to seeing Pickle Ball on television where the drama and excitement will displace the NFL as a must watch TV event.  As far as I know no one has either played the national anthem before the match begins, or has taken a knee if it was played.  So we have that to look forward to.

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[1] https://www.pickleball.com/History-birth-of-pickleball-s/115.htm

Watching the Olympics.

I was sitting at home, watching the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics and trying to avoid all the self-righteous social and political commentary that comes with international sports these days when one of the social commentators tells us how much the Koreans like Japan as a social and economic model.

I look over at my wife and noted I would be really surprised by that since Japan had subjugated the Koreans for most of the first half of the 2oth Century.  This was not a gentle peace-loving Japan, but one that felt anyone who wasn’t Japanese was less than human.  A Japanese occupation that took young Korean girls to be “comfort workers” for the Japanese Army scattered across the western Pacific and most of Asia.  Comfort workers was a polite way to describe sex-slave.

The men were also enslaved and used as expendable resources much like the Germans did with the Jews of Europe.  Until the end of World War II it was not a good time to be a Korean if you were employed by the Japanese.

Apparently, I was right.  NBC Apologizes

Maybe the networks should consider hiring people who actually know what they are talking about, rather than just having the right social and political views who look good on camera.

It's a Simple Game

“This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.”  Bull Durham, 1988

One of the best lines from any sports movie ever written.  It would be nice if life were that simple.  Don’t get me wrong it could be, but just like the movie we all seem to be the Ebby Calvin LaLoosh character rather than Crash Davis.  We make it far more complex than it could be for a thousand different reasons.

I think a big reason we seem to make life complex is we are surrounded by experts.  They have become unavoidable.  Everywhere you turn there is some kind of expert telling you how to clean your pores, end embarrassing age spots, store stuff under the bed, pick the fantasy athletes for a sport, choose the “March Madness ^®” brackets, seal leaks in your basement, choose a political ideology, or why this President, or the last one, is a worthless pile of dung.

Maybe it’s time to abandon the experts and just deal with the life you’ve been given, make it as good as possible, and at the end of the day see how it played out.  Think about this before you leave.

“You're 5 foot nothin', 100 and nothin', and you have barely a speck of athletic ability. And you hung in there with the best college football players in the land for 2 years. And you're gonna walk outta here with a degree from the University of Notre Dame. In this life, you don't have to prove nothin' to nobody but yourself. And after what you've gone through, if you haven't done that by now, it ain't gonna never happen. Now go on back.” Rudy, 1993

YGTBSM

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I can only laugh at the breaking sports news suggesting Colin Kaepernick will stand for the National Anthem if some team will just sign him to a contract for next year.  Either his heartfelt belief that America is a vile place, and he cannot in good conscience stand for the anthem was pure BS from the start, or he is making empty promises in an attempt to make himself more marketable.  I don’t think it can run both ways.

I thought from the very beginning his decision was more his girlfriend’s than his, but what do I know?

So here is my advice to him. 

Colin, I don’t think the CFL plays the US National Anthem before games.  To paraphrase Horace Greeley… Go north young man, and let this be the last we have to deal with you.

Why do I Play Golf?

I like golf, but at the best of times it is a frustrating game.  Perhaps that is why it endures, we humans need to be frustrated to achieve.  The idea of beating up a little white ball for four hours while you socialize with your partners seems to relax a lot of people. 

I seek those rare moments when, like Will Smith in Bagger Vance, you can see the future and make it so.  To calm your mind, relax your body and let the club be an extension of your will is really what keeps me coming back to this game.  I don’t schedule time for it, so much as make room in the weekend, when it seems a good thing to do.

Take today.  I got up at some ungodly hour because that is what time I get up.  I washed our cars, mowed our lawn, did my wash and decided to go play a round at the base I work at.  I didn’t have any expectations, there was no goal, and I didn’t have a partner I was meeting up with.  I just drove to the base, walked into the pro shop, paid my fees, and went out and played 18 holes by myself.

I didn’t warm up, or stretch or do the things you are supposed to do, I just stood up, took a deep breath and hit the ball.  It felt good, but I didn’t have a clue as to where it went until looking out at about 225 yards I saw it sitting in the middle of the fairway.  That is kind of how the rest of the round went.  I three putted three times, one putted twice and two putted the rest.  I shot the best round I have ever shot.  It was a nice day.

Life During the NFL Lockout

Apparently Women's Football will fill in while the NFL is in Lock out!  Kind of like "League of their Own" when the men went off to fight WW2.