Equal Pay for Unequal Work

This is the first year that the women’s champion will get the same payout as the men’s champion at Wimbledon. After her win yesterday, Venus Williams paid tribute to the first famous sporting lesbian Billie Jean King for fighting for this for years.

But has Venus really earned her money? She will get the same £700,000 for playing 15 out of a possible 21 sets of tennis. The men play a possible 35 sets, of which today’s finalist, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal played 16 and 20 before meeting each other in today’s final. Thus Venus has been paid £46,667 per set, or if you want to give her credit for the possible 21, which she has completed in short order due to her superior skill, that’s £33,333 per set. By that calculation, Federer and Nadal can only make £20,000 per set. Today’s final went five sets, so on an actual per-set-played basis, Federer made the same as if every challenger had taken Venus to 3 sets.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love women’s tennis. I’ve always been a bigger fan of the women’s game than the men’s. They have much nicer legs. But if you want to talk about superior skill, Venus could pump up her biceps all she wants, but she could still not compete against the men. Not just the best of the man – any of the men. No woman has ever beaten a ranked men’s player.

For all of her talk about Billie Jean, remember that BJ beat Bobby Riggs when he was in his 50s and she was in her 20s. He had been the top tennis player in the world two years before she was born. It is often forgotten that Riggs beat then-No. 1 Margaret Court 6-2, 6-1 several months before he lost to Billie Jean.

The male players know the women shouldn’t make as much. British No. 1 Andy Murray is opposed to the equal pay and former No. 1 Tim Henman has called the women greedy. John MacEnroe favours equal pay, but openly admits the women don’t train as hard as the men. I clearly have a more favourable view than Pat Cash, who has called women’s tennis “two sets of rubbish”.

Clearly legs that look as nice as those of Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic, or Michaëlla Krajicek are worth something, but £700,000?

Indian Honour Scalped by Political Correctness

The University of Illinois has finally bowed to the pressure of false accusations of racism brought by NCAA, which in turn was pressured by the political agenda of the leadership clique of the National Congress of American Indians and post-Marxist academics who need a liberal cause.

This has been since August 2005, when the NCAA decreed that universities with American Indian mascots would not be allowed to host lucrative post-season tournaments. If you want to make a university leave all reason behind, just hit them in the budget. Greed will win every time.

Back in August 2005 I wrote one of my Mental Meanderings about this topic, because to give it justice took more space than the reading tolerance of the casual blog browser. Because I temporarily lack hosting for my Meanderings archive, but now have that “more” feature on WordPress, I’ve posted the full article below the fold.

Jesus in Prime Time

It was scary at first. When Chicago started the game with a kickoff return for a touchdown, I almost gave up hope right there. There there were fumbles and more fumbles. The Colts got on track, then Vinatieri shanked a field goal at the end of the half. You saw it – why am I even recapping it?

The second half went a bit more to plan. Colts win 29-17. I cheer, but very quietly at 3:00 am.

In accepting the Vince Lombardi Trophy, Jim Irsay and Tony Dungy both talked sincerely and at length about God. I was most impressed when Jim Nance wanted to focus on Tony being an African-American and Tony wanted to focus on being a Christian.

“But again, more than anything, I’ve said it before, Lovie Smith and I, not only the first two African-Americans, but Christian coaches showing that you can win doing it the Lord’s way. We’re more proud of that.” That was Tony’s sermon from the biggest pulpit on the planet. With one billion viewers worldwide, he reached places with the name of Jesus where the Gospel may otherwise never be heard.

Okay, enough of Christian ethics and morality. Jim Nance quickly moved on to Peyton Manning.

Yes, nice guys do win sometimes. Admittedly, when it came to coaches, that one was in the bag when the Conference Championships were over. He chose to use Jim Irsay and Tony Dungy this time and bring some happiness to Indianapolis and Colts fans wherever they are.

God wins! God wins! Go…….God!

Blue Sunday

It’s Super Bowl Sunday. Not that you needed me to tell you, of course. It’s just that for the first time in a very long time, I actually care about the game.

The last time I had a team in the Super Bowl was 1972, when the Cowboys and the Dolphins played in Super Bowl VI. I was a Cowboys fan. Actually, it while watching that game at my Aunt Twila’s house that I became a Cowboys fan. I’m not sure when that went by the wayside, but I do know that the next Christmas I got NFL sheets and pillowcase. This all occured before Mr Claiborne, my first PE teacher, began the process that put me off sports for years to come.

That was the year after the last Super Bowl in which the Colts appeared, when a 30-second commerical cost $72,000. This year the same half-minute of advertising carries a price tag of $2,600,000.

When I mentioned this to Mrs H, she said, “260 million dollars?!” I said, “No, 2.6 million.” She said, “That’s still terrible. What a waste of money. There are children living in tunnels.” It’s good to see she is reading my blog.

The last Super Bowl party I attended was in 1998 at the home of a parishoner. The only other I ever remember being invited to was when I was living in the UK in 1992. I remember the party, but not much about the game.

I won’t be having a party tonight, but I did go out and buy some tortilla chips and salsa to create that party atmosphere. I don’t have any Colts paraphenalia, but I’m wearing blue and white.

Colts Win!

I was refreshing the screen constantly in the last two minutes. I couldn’t have been more on the edge of my seat had I been watching the television. I would have preferred to have watched the television, of course, but I was still following closely.

The play-off choke-hold is finally broken.

Frustration

With no television coverage here, I’m using Yahoo to watch the play-by-play line on the Conference Championship games. Yahoo are not up to their usual standard today and the 30-second refresh is rather meaningless.

The Bears have put away the Saints and now the Colts and Patriots are in the first quarter. With the Pats scoring first, the inevitable here-we-go-again feeling is setting in. I’ll watch the score for as long as I can while I read a book.

Above the Fray

Wolverhampton Wanderers (Wolves) have banned Cardiff City fans from attending the January 20th match at Wolves’ Molineux ground.

This situation may seem strange to American readers. I’ve never known of a situation in American sports where a professional team has banned the supporters of the visiting team. But then again, it’s not that common for Colts fans to go to New England, just to beat the living daylights out of Pats fans, while smashing up a few pubs just for good measure. Neither is it common for Mavericks fans to organise with Spurs fans to stage a massive gang rumble outside the American Airlines Center before or after a game, complete with knives and brass knuckles.

When it comes to football, some fans will not be denied. A couple of Cardiff fans got the idea to hire an airship to watch the match. Now the only problem is the space available. They have about 100 people interested, but blimp cabin will only hold 30. According to one of the organisers, the ship is costing “a few thousand” pounds. Even if “a few” is 3000, that £100 per person to watch the match, though I suppose that does include the novelty of an airship ride.

Contrary to BBC reports, the airship will not be flying in international airspace. That would be either 12 miles off the coast of the UK or 62 miles above Wolverhampton. Neither is good place to use binoculars to catch the action on the Molineux pitch.

Rather it will be flying at about 1000 feet. I still have my doubts that the floating spectators will be able to pick out the numbers on the shirts as the tiny gold Wolves and red (away kit) Cardiff dots move up and down the little patch of green below. For £100 (or more) I would want to know what’s actually happening in the match.

Staying Connected

I know how old I am when I realise that I have enjoyed sports for twenty years. By this I mean I have enjoyed watching sports. I’ve rarely enjoyed playing sports, unless you include hitting the cricket ball to Aidan in the back garden or kicking the football with him. Even that is severely limited due to my own disabilities.

I only ever played a team sport when I was in the third grade. I signed up for Pee-Wee baseball and got assigned to team, the name of which escapes me at the moment. The sponsor was an auto body shop or auto parts store of some sort. The manager was a brother or cousin of the owner. (He was later a city councilman and was one of my supporters in my first foray into grassroots politics.) The assistant coach was apparently inebriated most of the time, though I only found this out when I got older. I played right field or center field whenever there was some compulsion to let me on the field.

In Pee-Wee ball, right or center is where you put the worst players, because the ball rarely gets out there. Most eight-year-olds are naturally right-handed and if they make substantial contact, they tend to pull the ball into left field. I think I may have fielded a couple of balls over the course of the entire season.

That’s more balls than I hit, though. Actually, it’s more ball than I even swung at. My bat never crossed the plate in a competitive situation. I was too scared. I got on base occasionally due to the inaccuracies of eight-year-old pitching and I think I may have even scored a run on errors at some point.

I know I’ve told the story before of how I ended up stuck out in West Texas with nothing to do but watch sports on TV, even after I got a job at a KOA Kampground.

I’m by no means sports mad. However, the opportunities to watch American professional sports on Channel 5 is, among other things, a way to stay connected to my homeland. Tonight I’m watching San Antonio at Cleveland in the NBA. The bonus is that other than the Pacers, I gravitate to the Spurs as a favourite team – despite the fact that I’m only familiar with one player in the current lineup. Until tonight I thought it was live, but by looking at the NBA pages on Yahoo I saw that while I’m watching the first quarter, the game is in the third. I better close that tab, so I don’t ruin it for myself.

In the Beginning

Because they never show the daytime games over here, the only time to see American football is in the wee hours. Last night/this morning I stayed up to watch the Green Bay-Chicago game to finish the season. It ended Chicago’s season on a down note, but they still managed to finish at 13-3, a game better than the Colts. I know they are an NFC team so it doesn’t directly affect the Colts, but it’s still a better record.

I don’t know if it is coincidental, but I have a lot in common with the football teams I support, both the Colts of the NFL and the Arkansas Razorbacks of the NCAA. They start well and then fail to deliver in the end. I’m a good starter. I get out of the blocks with new ideas, plans, resolutions, projects, and the like. I sprint for a few days/weeks/months and then run out of steam.

This blog has been the exception to the rule so far. I originally thought of it as an alternative to journalling, which, despite many attempts, I had never been able to do beyond about the 10th page in a spiral notebook, and rarely even that far. Here it is 2007 and I’m moving toward the 4th anniversary of blogging. I’ve blogged most days during that time and I have probably only gone more than a week without something to say on a couple of occasions. (If you are new to this blog, don’t be fooled by the dearth of archives listed to the right – this is due to an unfortunate situation with my previous web host.)

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions because I know I can’t keep any of them. I have trouble with new week resolutions.