Girls Are Wimps

It's a relatively slow news day in the sports world, especially in Chicago where the hot rumor is that the Cubs are interested in the recently released Jim Edmonds. Oh boy! Why the Cubs would want an aging outfielder who's bat and glove have been deteriorating at an alarming rate, I don't know, but whatever. I don't much care either.

Anyway, I've had to do some reading this morning to find a story I felt like posting about, and I found one over at The Postmen.

Thanks to a groundbreaking study, there's enough evidence out there that suggests girls may be weaker than boys. I'll let that shocker sink in for a second or two.

Okay, got your head wrapped around that one? I know, it took me a few minutes to come to terms with it, but apparently it's true. While Title IX has gone a long way in helping young women play athletics in school, it's also led to an alarming growth in injuries amongst the girls playing the sports. The same types of injuries boys are usually immune to.

It's gotten especially bad for girls when it comes to the most fickle of our knee's ligaments, the ACL.

Playing through pain, rushing back from injury — a warrior-girl ethos — was ingrained in Janelle, just as it is in many young women. The more she was hurt, the more routine the injuries felt. Her first A.C.L. operation, she told me, was “monumental. It felt scary. You know, it’s surgery.” Then she added: “The second one was like, O.K., I know what I need to do, let’s just do it. Let’s have the surgery and rehab and get back out there.”

By Janelle’s and her mother’s count, her club team, with 18 players, had suffered eight A.C.L. tears — eight — during her high-school years: Janelle’s two, another player’s two and four other girls with one each. A high-school teammate one class above Janelle endured chronic ankle problems and, according to a Miami Herald article, six ankle operations — three in each leg — over the course of her four years on the varsity soccer team.

It's at this point I feel that I should point out no woman I know has ever torn her ACL while cooking me dinner. Just sayin..... (I'm kidding!)

I'm not sure why this should come as a surprise to anyone, I think it's pretty obvious to anybody who's met a man and a woman, that men are just generally stronger physically. The fact that a man's body is much more adept at avoiding injury should not come as a surprise, but at the same time, if women continue to pursue athletics like this, their bodies will adapt over time as well.

Charles Darwin taught me this. He also taught me how to chug three beers at the same time. Which piece of knowledge to you think I've used more effectively in life? Still, the article is pretty interesting (and very long) so if you have an hour or two to kill at work today, I say go for it.

Belated Happy Birthday, Title IX!!!

It's hard to believe that only 35 years ago, American women sports barely existed in high schools and colleges.

Back then, there were virtually no educational institutions providing athletic opportunities for girls and women.

Which meant, if you were a chick and wanted to be an athlete, your choices were basically cheerleader or twirler.

But with these few words, all that changed:

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.

There's still lingering controversy over how men's athletic programs have been cut to conform with Title IX requirements but I won't debate that here. I only know that I got a chance to play competitive tennis in college because of Title IX.

Of course, that's still not good enough for some of you. (I can hear the grousing through the ether.)

So, look at it this way, guys: thanks to Title IX, you get a chance to see women athletes doing what they apparently believe they do best.

What follows below are just a few examples of NCAA scholarship money well spent.

And ladies? Thanks for doing all you could to guarantee female athletes are taken seriously by the sports world and men in general.

A TITLE IX TRIBUTE IN PICTURES

Amy Acuff. UCLA. High jump.

Jackie Frank. Stanford. Water Polo.

Amanda Beard. Swimming. University of Arizona.

Heather Olson. Synchronized Swimming. Stanford.

Marion Jones. Track and field. University of North Carolina.

Stacy Dragila. Pole Vault. Idaho State.

Linsday Benko. Swimming. USC.

Somewhere in the ether, you gotta know Betty Friedan is pulling out what little was left of her hair.