Dumb sports ideas

Here's a couple of dumb ideas involving school athletics that I just gotta comment on.

First is the proposed booing ban in Washington state. Yeah, you read that right. They want to ban booing at high school games. Their explanation is that they want to cut down on boorish behavior, but we all know that Washington is one of those so-called "blue states" and that they frown on such things as competitiveness because there will be winners, which means that there will be losers, who will be hurt and traumatized for life and will have to spend thousands of dollars for therapy for the rest of their life and so forth and so on and blahblahblah. Well, of course we just can't have that.

What a dumb idea. What a stupid idea, actually. Booing is part of the game. If you're the home team, booing can motivate you to do better. After all, the best way to make the boobirds shut up is to turn things around. Even a good effort will often be enough to stop the booing. If you're the visiting team, then booing will motivate you to win as well, if for no other reason than to stick it to the home fans. For the visiting team, when you make the home team go silent, then it's a beautiful thing. You don't want the crowd to be silent because they've been banned from booing. Booing sends a message, and whether you're the home team or the visitors, you take that message and respond to it. I hope this idea is fought stubbornly and ferociously. In a real sense, this is a form of restriction of free speech. So I say to these bozos: BOOOO!!!!

Next up is another idea thunked up by those who have no idea what they are doing. In this instance, I refer to the NCAA's Committee on Women's Athletics, which is proposing to ban the practice of women's basketball teams practicing with men (usually not the men's team, but a group of volunteers), because they feel that the usage of such men sends the message to the female bench players that they aren't good enough to practice with the starters. The coaches of these teams aren't complaining about this practice, nor are the players involved. The only ones seeing discrimination is this committee. No one asked them to step in - nope, just like in Washington state, a group of "our betters" simply decided that they need to tell us what to do.

The women basketball players benefit from practicing with men, because men give them a different challenge than does practicing with other women. Plus, who says that the starters aren't ALSO practicing with the bench, AND that the bench isn't likewise practicing with men? No one is being robbed of anything - rather, this is to the benefit of all. While trying not to sound sexist, women's basketball is boring when compared to men's b-ball. Men's b-ball is fast and furious and exciting to watch, with the bullet passes and dazzling dunks and all. By comparison, even the women's pro leagues look like high school basketball by comparison.

You ask me, women's basketball needs all the help it can get. So rather than banning the use of male volunteers, the NCAA should be ruling the useage of men practicing with women in ALL colleges and universities. If the NCAA (and whoever else came up with this clueless ban idea) really wants to help women's athletics, maybe they should ask the women themselves what they want instead of deciding for them. What this NCAA ban idea - along with the Washington state idea - actually represents is a form of social engineering by people who think they know what's better for us. I say we tell them to take their bans and shove it! Keep your social experiments out of our arenas!