A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (and break NCAA records)

The University of Connecticut's women's basketball team won their 89th game in a row this week.  That number is significant because the longest previous winning steak was 88, set by the UCLA's men's team in the 1970's.  UCONN's accomplishment is more than impressive: it is epic.  They have absolutely demolished the competition for roughly 2.5 years.  They have won back-to-back National Championships.  They boast loyal fans and a packed stadium each time they play on their home floor.

But the coverage of the UCONN women's team noteworthy feat has been absolutely ridiculous and, ironically, undermining to the advancement of women's sports in our culture.  First there was the coach of this historic team, Geno Auriemma, who said this after his team tied UCLA's record the other night:

"I just know there wouldn't be this many people in the room if we were chasing a woman's record," the Connecticut coach said Sunday near the end of his postgame news conference. "The reason everybody is having a heart attack the last four or five days is a bunch of women are threatening to break a men's record, and everybody is all up in arms about it."

First of all, the "We don't get no respect" routine that athletes and coaches in every sport (and at every level) perform all of the time is getting so old.  No one hates these girls that you've coached to a legendary win-steak, Coach A.  What I do have a problem with is the subtle implication of your remarks over the past few months as you've inched closer to the 89 number.

The subtle implication here is that Auriemma is directly comparing what his team has done against women's teams to what John Wooden and his UCLA Bruins did against men's teams.  This is non-sense on stilts.  The important number here isn't that UCONN has won one more game in a row than did UCLA, it is that should the ladies of UCONN ever play one game against any men's team, let alone the Bill Walton-led UCLA teams of the late 1970's, they would lose by 50 points.  And that's being kind.

Our culture, even our sports culture (or at least much of the emasculated sports media culture), has bought the Left's preposterous notion that because women can be CEO's and teachers and bankers like men (and in many cases, better than men), that they are equal in every single solitary way.  Even physically.

You'd have to turn off your brain to come to this conclusion, and apparently millions of Americans have.  Men are on average taller, faster, and stronger than women.  It is a difference on the genetic level.  Whether it was Natural Selection or the God of the Bible who made us, we are who we are.  I cannot for the life of me see why this is so offensive to some people's sensibilities that they have to lie to themselves and others (especially young students in public school).

Please hear me: women are the best thing God ever created.  I love women.  I love that women in this country are free to pursue their interests and free to walk down the street without being draped in head-to-foot linens.  I love that women can play sports and enjoy the camaraderie that comes with being a part of a team.  I respect the women who play on the UCONN basketball squad that decimated their competition for almost 3 years.  It's awesome and I wish them nothing but the best.

But men are different than women, and the refusal to embrace that unalterable reality is the subtext of the coverage of this win-streak.  Some might say this doesn't matter.  Some might say I'm over-blowing this and that I'm the typical chauvinist pig.  Maybe.

Maybe not.