Quote of the Day

And the day came when the risk to remain

tight in a bud was more painful

than the risk it took to blossom.

Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira

Nin y Culmell, a.k.a. Anaïs Nin

Quote of the Day

It's not what you've got, it's what

you use that makes a difference.

Hilary Hinton "Zig" Ziglar

Quote of the Day

So much of left-wing thought is a kind

of playing with fire by people who

don't even know that fire is hot.

Eric Arthur Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell

Correction & Apology

I recently compared a site to a checkout stand gossip mag.

I sincerely apologize to Braden Keith and SwimSwam for calling them the National Enquirer of swimming.

I caught a lot of flack for that one - mostly from the folks at the Enquirer.

If you hunt a little (and click on the link), you'll find they're something else entirely.

Thanks to the Speed Endurance Swimming Blog for setting the record straight.

I'm a Ryan Lochte fan, so it pains me to post this:

Despite this, the media/hype machine had already been programmed before London to turn Lochte into a mainstream star and as a result we have had Ryan Lochte appearances coming out of our ears. Post-Olympics, Ryan Lochte is undoubtedly a star... but more a star of TMZ.

Back to the main point:

Turns out, SwimSwam's actually the TMZ of swimming...

Quote of the Day

If all the world's a stage, I want

to operate the trap door.

Paul Beatty

Quote of the Day

If you are not criticized, you

may not be doing much.

Donald Henry Rumsfeld

Quote of the Day

Parenting is a constant struggle between making

your kid's life better and ruining your own.

Willie Jess Robertson

Quote of the Day

My definition of a redundancy is

an airbag in a politician's car.

Larry Martin Hagman

Quote of the Day

The world is full of willing people;  some

willing to work, the rest willing to let them.

Robert Lee Frost

Quote of the Day

Age is mind over matter.  If you

don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige

Quote of the Day

The trouble with free elections is that you never

know how they are going to turn out.

Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov

Quote of the Day (thanks, JL)

It is the time you have devoted to your

rose that makes your rose so important.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Race to Sixteen

Will the Big XII (currently with ten schools) or the Big 10 (currently with twelve schools) get there first?

It looks like the Big 10 is widening their lead...but at what cost to the student-athletes that don't play foosball or thump-thump?

Two schools that may be headed for the Big 10 (taking them to fourteen?) dumped multiple sports along the way.  They've become sad examples of overspending and Title IX policies gone wrong.

In total, these two schools dumped over a dozen sports in just the past five (5) years.  Even though they still maintain indoor long course facilities, Maryland dropped both men's and women's swimming, while Rutgers kept only the women's squad.

Read more here and here.

Two largely underachieving, financially irresponsible athletic programs are parlaying their geographic proximity to major metropolitan areas into membership in the Big Ten. They've done very little on the field of competition to deserve it. But that's not what drives conference affiliation these days.

Rutgers:

Whatever the final exit fee is, it's still an expensive proposition for an athletic program swimming in red ink. Of course, Rutgers has been that red-ink pool for so long its fingers are pruned.

It cut six sports programs in 2007, and then proceeded to run up even more debt in the years that followed. The Newark Star-Ledger reported that Rutgers athletics spent $26.8 million more than it earned in 2010-11 – a staggering display of financial recklessness that was in part foisted on the general student population via additional fees and tuition.

...and Maryland:

Maryland is facing a $50 million exit fee from the Atlantic Coast Conference, just months after dropping seven athletic programs in July in an attempt to get itself out of multimillion-dollar debt. The students who worked year-round to compete in those programs – and who tend to graduate at a high rate – were expendable in order for the Terrapins to keep up with the Joneses in revenue sports. If the Under Armour booster cares more about 57 combinations of football uniforms than having a swim team, it's expendable.

On the surface, it might look like the decisions by schools to jump from conference to conference happen at the drop of a hat.

Don't believe it.

If you've never believed in conspiracy theories, but might want to start, this could be the one for you.

What, you don't think athletic directors and school presidents ever play golf?  Or have off-the-record chit-chats at annual meetings?

Give me a danged break...

Quote of the Day

Progress is a nice word.  But change is its

motivator and change has its enemies.

Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy

Quote of the Day

In journalism, there has always been a tension

between getting it first and getting it right.

Ellen Goodman

Quote of the Day

Critics search for ages for the wrong

word, which, to give them credit,

they eventually find.

Peter Alexander Baron von Ustinow,

a.k.a. Sir Peter Ustinov

What's missing from this story?

Big Bill Diaz was honored in Miami recently.  Read more here.

In 1973, with the advent of the landmark Title IX legislation, the UM became the first college in the United Sates [sic] to offer a swimming scholarship to a woman under the leadership of Coach Diaz. Two years later, the Hurricane women’s swimming and diving team won the first of back-to-back (1975-76) AIAW National Championships. Several members of those teams were on hand at the reunion to honor their former coach.

Anyone get it yet?  They left out one very important fact, didn't they?

Bingo!!

The men's and women's programs Coach Diaz built into national powers aren't quite the same anymore.

Miami dumped men's swimming years ago because of - you guessed it - Title IX...

Quote of the Day

If there is anything the nonconformist hates

worse than a conformist, it's another

nonconformist who doesn't conform

to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.

William E. "Bill" Vaughan

Equal Opportunity, Unequal Interest?

That's the title of this morning's Inside Higher Ed piece on Title IX.  Read it here.

Article gives the most vocal Title IX advocates (Erin, Nancy, and Donna) a chance to spout their propaganda.  Fortunately, there's balance.

But a new study, based on participation data and the hypothesis that women are inherently less interested in sports than men, asserts that Title IX might be taking the wrong approach.

“A greater male predisposition for sports interest does not contradict most arguments made by Title IX proponents,” concludes the study released Wednesday evening in the online journal PLOS ONE. “Nevertheless, our results do suggest that it may be a mistake to base Title IX implementation on the assumption that males and females have, or soon will have, generally equal sports interest.”

The study's lead author, Robert Deaner, doesn't have a horse in this race.  He's pointing out the facts.  He's not suggesting what should be done about the differences in interest.

Unfortunately, the facts don't mean a danged thing to those who support the flawed quota system known as proportionality.

They continue to support the "limit or eliminate male opportunities" plan.

But those societal effects work both ways – and are part of the reason we shouldn’t be surprised by (nor draw too much from) the findings, said Erin Buzuvis, a law professor at Western New England University who runs the Title IX Blog.

“If we all agree that those kinds of things influence people’s interest, then why are we surprised, in a world where there’s still sex discrimination, that women’s participation in sport is lower than men’s?” Buzuvis said. “Women have inferior opportunities and they have to do so against the cultural grain…. It doesn’t say anything at all about what interest levels would be there absent discrimination and absent these strong cultural forces.”

Bullcorn!

Erin and her pals continue to dance around the real reason they support destruction of male opportunities:

It's still about REVENGE!!!

Quote of the Day

I ain't the same person I was

when I bit that guy's ear off.

Michael Gerard "Mike" Tyson

Quote of the Day

If you want to make enemies,
try to change something.

Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Emmert on Title IX

 

...blah...blah...blah...

 

Fantastic opportunities are out there.  Women are taking advantage of them.  Life's good.

Wouldn't it be nice to have an NCAA president just tell it like it is?

Quote of the Day

Our character...is an omen of our

destiny, and the more integrity we

have and keep, the simpler and

nobler that destiny is likely to be.

Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás

 

(a.k.a. George Santayana)

Doping

Under heavy fire from WADA, Lance Armstrong cut ties to LIVESTRONG today.  Read more here.

The Tour de France has stripped Armstrong of his seven titles and sponsors have deserted him.

Too little too late?  Do stripping titles/medals, public humiliation, and lifetime bans work to stop drug cheats?

Of course they don't!

A better way to curb doping might be to hit offenders - and their bosses - in the wallet.

Smart contractors hold their subs accountable.  It was common practice for contractors to hold back some of my money in case there were ever problems with any of my work.

If (after a couple of months) the work passed all inspections, punch lists, etc., I got the rest of my dough.

If things weren't up to snuff, I had two options:

1) I could make the corrections myself and get paid, or

2) the contractor could use my money to pay someone else to fix the screwup.

Maybe cycling sponsors and race organizers should try something similar.  Pay the athletes a fair wage while holding back a percentage until they're sure cyclists didn't gain an unfair advantage via doping.

Pro sports here in the U.S. do a poor job of controlling the doping problem.

Take major league baseball, for instance.  A doper played in the majority of a team's games before failing a drug test.

What if the San Francisco Giants had to forfeit all 113 games in which their drug cheat, Melky Cabrera, had played in 2012?

No playoffs.  No World Series.

The team would have lost millions, right?

If that type of penalty were a possibility, wouldn't teams police their own and suspend players long before MLB nabbed them?

Quote of the Day

You are meant to play the ball as it lies,

a fact that may help to touch on your

own objective approach to life.

Henry Grantland Rice

Quote of the Day

I think there's some connection between

absolute discipline and absolute freedom.

Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman

Quote of the Day

Never despair;  but if you do, work on in despair.

Edmund Burke

Quote of the Day

You've got to think lucky.  If you fall into

a mudhole, check your back pocket -

you might have caught a fish.

Darrell K Royal

Quote of the Day

The greatest manager has a knack for

making ballplayers think they are

better than they think they are.

Reginald Martinez "Reggie" Jackson

New Toy

Leon bought a speargun.  Looks like there will be less catch & release.

 

Fifty pound ling speared off Corpus Christi.

Quote of the Day

I might be in favor of national healthcare

if it required all Democrats to

get their heads examined.

Ann Hart Coulter

Quote of the Day

Associate yourself with men of good quality

if you esteem your reputation, for 'tis better

to be alone than in bad company.

George Washington

Quote of the Day

To achieve great things, two things are needed:

a plan, and not quite enough time.

Louis Bernstein, a.k.a. Leonard Bernstein

Quote of the Day

We have a strange and wonderful relationship -

he's strange and I'm wonderful.

Michael Keller "Mike" Ditka, Jr.