Slandering Title IX Reform and Supporters of Wrestling

Over at Because I Played Sports, Megan Lauren O’Donnell is tying herself into logical knots trying to deny that the manner in which Title IX is enforced has resulted in the elimination of men’s wrestling programs all over the country. In addition to compounding that fallacy, she makes it worse by claiming that opponents of Title IX reform are fighting against the expansion of women’s wrestling at the collegiate level, when, as we’ve pointed out in the past, the exact opposite is the case.

It’s more than enough to make your head spin, especially when you consider that one of the biggest obstacles in the way of the expansion of women’s wrestling is the NCAA itself, and it’s refusal to give it the “emerging sport” tag.

Another point: Megan’s argument also completely ignores the fact that one of the reasons schools don’t add women’s wrestling is that they’d rather add large roster sports like crew that help them hit their quota numbers instead of sponsoring sports that women are actually demonstrating interest in.

I will say one thing: unlike many other bloggers who are fighting reform of Title IX, at least Megan is honest enough to allow others to leave comments on her blog — something few others of her ilk are willing to do. Please stop by and join the conversation.

CORRECTION: As has been pointed out in the comments, Because I Played Sports is edited by Megan Heuter, not Megan O’Donnell. We regret the error. However, as Megan herself admits, we still don’t know the identity of the person who wrote the post. Megan says she hasn’t figured out how to add another author inside Word Press, but as somebody who’s been playing with Word Press for a couple of days now as well as blogging for more than 7 years, I don’t find that explanation terribly convincing.

Be that as it may, we continue to be astonished at the pretzel-like logic used in the original post on this topic. But the greatest joke of all is this: that the idea that the post pushes — that schools should adopt women’s wrestling in order to keep men’s teams alive — is an idea that was generated by men’s wrestling coaches in the first place.

In other words, there is absolutely no opposition to women’s wrestling on the part of the College Sports Council and the National Wrestling Coaches Association. Attacking the wrestling community as a whole on this issue is simply non-sensical. In the end, the only reason that anyone would continue this line of reasoning would be to continue to slander many of the folks who are working so hard to make women’s wrestling a reality at colleges and universites around the country.