Chauvinistic wrestlers attempting to kill Title IX

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Women are worthless athletes. They are slow, weak, un-athletic and uninteresting. Women's sports bring about a new appreciation for the fine art of handicapped curling.

Sound familiar? Heard that one?

How about this:

Females are paltry and putrid in processes not pertinent to procreation, pan-frying, pantries and pie making, or so say the Paleolithic pigs that proclaim that palpable perspiration is not permitted to protrude from a female player's pores.

Got that?

For reasons known only to Zeus and the fire god himself, this chauvinist attitude, whichever one you chose to translate, has seeped into the American government and has resulted in what could be a catastrophic blow to the underrated world of female athletics.

My primitive counterparts have proposed a change to Title IX, the legislation that has allowed women to pursue college sports and receive athletic scholarships since 1972, that is nothing short of a death sentence for women's collegiate sports as we know it.

Under the proposal, a school would be allowed to devote as little as 43 percent of its athletic scholarships to women. Currently, schools were required to keep the percentages as close to 50 percent as possible.

For the record, American colleges are 55 percent female. So why the change? What possible justification could the Bush administration and their underlings have for such a blatantly sexist proposal?

Wrestling. Yes, wrestling.

The legislation took away wrestlers scholarships and gave them to women for sports such as basketball and volleyball. Wrestlers were left to fight for college money with the rest of the peasants.

But after 30 of years of ignoring their ignorance, Washington has taken up the cause of disgruntled small-sport athletes in the form of a commission intent on reforming Title IX. The commission will hold its final meeting today.

It will vote on the changes, make them into a report for Secretary of Education Roderick Paige, deliver it to him Feb. 28 and hope he will enact them.

If Roderick accepts the changes, he will spiral women's collegiate sports back to its 1960s form. He will also completely ignore a major flaw of the men's small sports argument - that it is stupid.

Yes, their scholarships were taken away, but how many athletic scholarships did women have? Close to none.

Men and women are on an equal plane with academic scholarships, so why should athletics be any different? In reality few, if any, females can compete with men at the collegiate level, therefore it is discrimination to give a disproportionate amount of athletic scholarships to men.

As for the small sport men?

Tough. Get a job. No one gives me a scholarship to write columns and I don't complain about it, so wrestlers should not complain about not getting one to roll around on a mat.

Besides, women's sports are interesting and can be a blast to watch. I consider it a privilege to have covered SIU women's volleyball during the fall. I witnessed many gutsy and amazing acts of athleticism and perseverance during that team's run to a second-place Missouri Valley Conference finish. Try not to laugh, but Kristie Kemner's performance during volleyball's final win over Southwest Missouri State gave me flashbacks to Michael Jordan in game 5 of the 1997 NBA finals.

Women's basketball could be interesting as well, but I have never witnessed a home victory at the SIU Arena, so the jury is still out.

But I have never been able to watch a single wrestling match without changing the channel or leaving the gym.

Thankfully, this University, should Title IX suffer the proposed execution, will have no part of it. SIU Athletic Director Paul Kowalczyk said he wants a successful program, regardless of gender. No matter what the rules, nothing will change at SIU.

"I want the best program across the board," Kowalczyk said. "That means men's and women's. I want all of our sports to have the opportunity to compete for the Missouri Valley Conference championship and be recognized nationally, as much as that's possible."

He has always been straight and honest with me, so it is very likely he means that. But I cannot say the same about other schools and athletic directors, especially the 30 that were warned about Title IX violations in the middle of last year.

On Feb. 28, the decision of one man will affect the free-ride status of more than 150,000 women. Performances by electric athletes like Kemner and Amy Harre may be scrapped in favor of wrestlers who display the charisma of a circus peanut.

Entertainment and equality are both in the balance.

Michael is a junior is journalism. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the Daily Egyptian.