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Christine Brennan's column

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by runningman, Jan 11, 2007.

  1. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    That argument doesn't fly.

    A better one: Because women don't play football, you don't need to use the qualifier "men's" before football. In basketball, that's not the case.
     
  2. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    NCAA men's basketball and women's basketball are not the same sport.

    Men's basketball was, for all the years before women's basketball, simply called NCAA basketball.

    Therefore, the "men's" before basketball is unnecessary; it is perfectly acceptable to call the two NCAA basketball and NCAA women's basketball.

    Linguistically, this follows all known precedent. Otherwise, we must preface all references to hockey with "ice" to differentiate with field hockey, and all references to football must be preceded by American-style to differentiate it from Australian-rules football or soccer.

    Reading more into it, is, well, reading more into it. But it isn't there in the words.
     
  3. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    And another swing and a miss. The NCAA didn't have women's basketball until it did, so at one time men's basketball didn't need the gender distinction. Try again.
     
  4. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Ice hockey and field hockey are two different sports, played on different surfaces with different equipment and different rules.

    American football and Australian football are two different sports, played with different equipment and different rules.

    Men's basketball and women's basketball are the same sports, played on the same surface, with the same equipment, and the same rules.
     
  5. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    Except that the women's basketball is smaller, right? Someone will point that out soon, as if they negates Brennan's point.
     
  6. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    buck --

    That's borderline insane.

    If they are the same game, why would they be divided?

    They aren't the same game, and they shouldn't be treated as such.

    And J_D -- it isn't just the ball. Three-point line?
     
  7. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    So give the sport a different name? OK, let's do it.

    Women's basketball.
    Men's basketball.

    So if you just say "basketball" you're not being specific enough, at least not to make the point the announcers tried to make.

    The American League and National League have different rules. So do colleges, high schools and MLB, and there are differences in equipment too (wooden bats, mental bats). It's still called baseball.
     
  8. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    J_D --

    I honestly don't have a problem with that. For years, announcers have been making distinctions between NCAA basketball and NBA basketball.

    When it's obvious you are talking about college sports, that distinction doesn't need to be made.

    And whether it seems PC or not, for a long, long time, it was just college basketball. Or Florida basketball. Or whatever.

    To make an argument out of leaving off the modifier when, following all accepted rules of usage, the newer sport needs the modifier, seems silly to me.

    If the argument is simply that the announcer's got a fact wrong, I tend to agree. It's when you try to indict society at large for a tangential point at best -- and a fallacy at worst -- that I disagree.

    Brennan let her feminism overtake her inante knowledge of language, here, IMHO.
     
  9. Johnny Dangerously

    Johnny Dangerously Well-Known Member

    I'd love to stick around while this continues to become a fundamentalist argument along the lines of "The Life of Brian" and the Judean People's Front, but as this thread descends into the excruciating minutia of smokescreens that have little to speak to the essence of Brennan's point, I will bid you all adieu and happy posting. I stuck around long enough hoping to find a sound argument against her point, but I realize -- way too late -- there isn't one.

    Have fun.
     
  10. zeke12

    zeke12 Guest

    Summarize her point in one sentence, or drop the pretension.
     
  11. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    In one sentence: It's not that hard to say "men's basketball" and "women's basketball"; there is a distinction there, and it should be made.

    After 1982, you can't just say "basketball" anymore.
     
  12. joe

    joe Active Member

    I'll watch women's basketball when Sue Bird gets naked, and not a second before.
     
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