Should women and men play on teams together?

Ran across this column today and thought I might throw it out to the SportsJournalists.com masses to see what you thought.

http://socialistworker.org/2010/05/27/leveling-the-playing-field

In it, the writer argues that many statistics back up the notion that segregating athletics based upon sex is an antiquated one that should be eliminated because it just perpetuates the bias that women are inherently less athletically gifted than men.

For one, I find this paragraph to be misleading and perhaps self-serving ...

I think comparing means of everybody involved doesn't really give an accurate view of what we're talking about here. We should be looking at the top, if we're talking about women playing together with men at the top levels of sports. And when you look at marathon after marathon, you'll find the top woman would rarely crack the top 20 of the men's field and often barely gets into the top 50. And since everybody runs together, these marathons aren't segregated and, thus, are a pretty decent place to gauge this question, I think.

Regardless, I've always thought women should be openly invited to play in the "men's leagues," which really shouldn't be about being men only but about having the best athletes in the world. If they were truly set up in that manner, it seems that it wouldn't really be segregation at all but a case of the women who weren't athletically gifted enough to play in the top league to still have a league where they could compete.

 

As far as I know, there's nothing stopping women from competing in "men's" leagues. They just aren't good enough. A few extremely cherry-picked statistics and anecdotes don't change that.

 

If there was a female baseball player who could play major league baseball it would happen. Could a woman play goalie in the NHL? Possibly, relfexes and coordination are not gender related, are they?

In track, time is not gender specific, could International Olympic female sprinters and middle distance runners even compete in college track? Female swimmers also can't compete equitably with men. Golf and tennis?
An exceptional female golfer could compete if her fairway driver and long iron game was close to perfect.

In tennis, no way. Playing best of 5, mens rules, the top 5 female players in the world wouldn't get out of the 2nd round of any pro tournement, and it would be a stretch to think they could get out of the 1st round.

Basketball? A decent JuCo team would crush a WNBA team

 

Hockey goalie is one where I could almost see it happening. It's become so formulaic, so much based on having positioning drilled into athletes' heads from a young age, that I could possibly see a woman rising through the pro ranks.

 

I could see a woman playing men's college basketball if she were a tall guard and an extremely high percentage shooter.

 

I don't think so. The physical pounding would be too much. You'd be guaranteed that within the first five minutes, a guy like Byfuglien would run her.

Hell, most of the NHL teams aren't interested in goalies under 6'.

Gump Worsley wouldn't be drafted today.

 

If any of them were good enough they already would have been drafted or signed.

None of the great women's basketball players could play on the men's team in college? If they were that good, do you not think the men's coaches at Tennessee or Stanford or Rutgers would have been raiding the women's team?

Line them up and let them all play together. Let's see what happens once the men get over thoughts of "I can't hack a girl driving the lane." Put the lacrosse teams together. Send a female wide receiver on a crossing route. World Cup teams? Combine them or have a match to see who wins. Put the PGA and LPGA fields on the same courses and tees.

I'd watch. I'd probably even pay to watch.

 

Men and women should definitely team up.

Oh, sports. Never mind

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_athletics

Men >>>>> women in every single comparable event.

Every single one. It's not a "bias," it's a fact.

Morons promote this argument because it "sounds" progressive and egalitarian, but the logical progression is the eventual destruction of all organized sports for females.

Because if "gender specific" sports are eliminated, very quickly the WNBA would be overrun by guys who got cut from the intramural team in college, womens' tennis would be dominated by guys who played Class C doubles in high school, women's softball taken over by guys who were spare outfielders on their HS teams, etc etc.

As noted, women are not banned by rule from MLB, NBA, NFL, etc etc -- they don't play because they aren't good enough.

Although some promoting the argument aren't morons, they are simply advancing a passive-aggressive stealth argument to get rid of womens' sports althogether.

 

I didn't need to see what you whack to, yab