Women's Volleyball Under Threat Due to the Great Sport of Cheerleading.

Left: Great skill and timing wasted on football games
We all have memories of our mothers and the little sayings and things they would go on about.  One of my mum's favorites was that in the US "You can go to university for football".  Although having left school at 14, "Left school on Friday and went to work on Monday in me school uniform" she would say, she associated university with a academic studies.

She was also fascinated, as I was, by American sports as there were always these young women dancing on the sidelines showing their acrobatic skills a waving these tassels around.  "What that has to do with this game I don't know." she would say.

It seems that cheer leading, which is the official title for this sort of  activity is reaching new heights. A federal lawsuit has been filed that will determine whether cheer leading is a sport or not.  The suit has been filed by the members of the women's volleyball team at  Quinnipiac University in Connecticut in response to the university eliminating women's volleyball in favor of a "competitive cheer squad".

The university's argument is that the cheer squad is much less costly, it serves more female students, they claim which shows their dedication to the welfare of young women.  The women argue in their suit that the university is "exaggerating" the number of female athletes at the school  and wants to count cheerleading as a sport in order to "get around" Title IX.  Title IX is the federal law that mandates equal opportunities for women in athletics.

Even with such a law in place, women are not treated equally in sport and opportunities for women are fewer in comparison to men.  We have laws against racism and discrimination but no one with any sense would argue that these laws are sufficient.

The bottom line is that women's volleyball does not bring in the money in the way that the sports associated with cheerleading do; and these are male dominated sports.  But there is a lot of skill in cheerleading from what I can see, the sort of skill and precision that would be necessary for a successful "competitive" women's athletic program; that is what should be expanded and removed from professional male sports.  Like everything else in a so called "free market" economic system though, what lives and what dies is determined by the return on investment.  Sport is big business and women's volleyball just isn't the best investment and women's athletic events would not draw the numbers a football game does; women as cheerleaders are not a big draw for female audiences either.  "If poker can be a sport, why not cheerleading?"; the mouthpieces of capital will  argue. Its all about freedom you see, they're doing it for the young women, giving them opportunitites they wouldn't otherwise have.

The same job creation argument is being made in Missouri against stricter laws for sex clubs; they're attacking  employers that are providing good jobs in hard times.  Isn't that nice of them?  If only the terms "capital accumulation" and "exchange value" were as widely understood as "pop fly" we'd be in good shape.

Oh, and I read here that more money is needed for the pacification of Afghanistan.  There you have it.