Interesting story- NCAA Womens Officials

[Dan_ref]

Hold on here guys. Here's the introduction to his article, there is not 1 single thing that I do not agree with.

Note he does NOT say title ix is the only reason women play sports - he says if not for title ix sports men would still have a stranglehold on scholastic sports. Note he does NOT say that women officials are not as good as men officials - he says the best women are as good as the best men, only difference is there are many many more men officials to go around and that means there are many more at the highest levels. If you believe that (and I do) then his solution IS obvious: spread the best equally between the woman's game & the men's game. Whether that will happen or not is an entirely different discussion. I happen to believe it will be a looooong time before that happens, if ever.



If not for the prodding of feminists, Title IX would never have been applied so broadly, and women's sports as we know it today simply would not exist. Without the kick in the butt from the feminist movement, girls probably still would be playing the six-person version of the game, and boys and men would have continued their stranglehold on the pleasures and benefits of athletics.

At the same time, though, the feminists pushed hard for the use of female officials - but settled, sadly, for having women referees only for girls' and women's games. (Yes, Violet Palmer is still in the NBA, but more on that later ...) Partially, this is because there aren't that many female officials, and partially it is because of a continued male bias against females in sports.

So the system that has developed at the college and professional levels is bifurcated: There's one group of officials for women's games, and another for men's. (In high school, there may be one association assigning games for both genders, but some refs don't get the call for boys' varsity games, and (surprise, surprise) those refs are often female. They might be good enough to get assigned to a girls' varsity game, but when the boys play, they're nowhere to be found.) The group doing women's games contains women's officials; the group doing men's games do not.

Now for a brief aside: Because there are many fewer female officials than male officials, and because there is a very real push to get as many women as possible doing college games, female refs are promoted quickly. The result is that a woman doing a Big 10 game, say, has much less experience than a male counterpart doing a men's Big 10 game, and also has much less competition to get the gig. In other words, she doesn't have to be as good, relatively speaking, as a comparable ref on the male side, and she doesn't have nearly as much on-court time.

Does this mean female officials aren't qualified? Of course not. The best female officials are just as good as the best male officials - there just aren't as many of them, and they are spread very thin in the women's game. And when those elite officials aren't working games, the female replacements aren't as experienced as similar male replacements on the other side of the game.

The solution? Simple, and a logical extension of the feminist movement in athletics that has proven so successful up to this point: Combine officiating associations at the collegiate and professional level.

[rockyroad]

Interesting article...on one hand, I agree with some of his points. For anyone to say that men have an equal chance of "moving up" the D1 ladder as a woman does is naive. I've been there - and been told flat out "You are better than them, BUT..." . I have watched assignors hire female officials with one-tenth (or less) the experience of myself and others, and tell us "I have my reasons". Are there great female officials - absolutely! Are there great male officials working the Women's game - absolutely! Are there officials who don't belong at that level - absolutely! (On both the Men's and Women's side, btw).

On the other hand, it's pretty silly to say we should have the same pool of officials doing both sides...the games are different. Yes the men's game is faster, played above the rim, etc, etc...but in a lot of ways, it's easier to officiate. Physically it may be more demanding (altho reffing a good Women's game where the score is in the upper 90's for both teams is exhausting), but mentally it's not. I have had to "fill-in" for officials (granted, this was D-2 and D-3) in men's games, and the game was much easier to officiate - the fouls were way more obvious, the advantages gained were way more obvious, etc...on the other hand, I had a d-1 men's official have to work a Women's d-2 game with me several years back ( he works Pac-10. West Coast, and Big Sky) and his comment afterward was "That was the hardest game I've reffed in years. You have to make a decision on every single play." The games are just different...