Death to the NCAA

The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), since its formation in 1910, has arguably been the world’s premier national amateur sport organisation. Only now, in the wake of the Northwestern players union dispute and the O’Bannon vs. NCAA court case, is it being exposed for what it really is: a greedy and exploitative capitalist organisation, whose revenue is made on the back of effectively slave labour. The NCAA makes a killing in profits each and every year and yet the workers at the bottom of the food chain, the players make nothing apart from scholarships provided by universities. If they were a listed company, they would be found guilty of paying below the minimum wage, but because the NCAA is a “non-profit” they get away with it. Worse than this, the NCAA in their rulebook state that student athletes are prohibited from working for a wage, even though a normal student, even an academic scholarship one can work. This means that for many students living in poverty, their only hope is to be a star and make it big time into the NFL. This is a stunning example of the failure of our capitalist system of which sport is a microcosm.

My take is that the level of the NCAA’s exploitation is such that the players have become modern day slaves with such oppressive rules that a player can’t be given money from a friend for lunch or clothes. This is a scandal that must be resolved with the players in mind. Any other resolution would lead to more oppression of players already burdened with studies and caring for themselves and often families. The NCAA’s control of players’ identity through video games and merchandise is beginning to be tempered only now through the fight by people like Ed O’Bannon, a former UCLA Bruin basketballer.

The widespread crimes committed and the shocking retrograde rules put in place by the NCAA have led me to believe that the NCAA should be destroyed and collegiate sports should no longer be the pathway to professional sport. Through a club-oriented system as opposed to a school-oriented system, the lead-in leagues would be professional but with lower pay than the top flight leagues, a massive improvement on the dreadful conditions faced by student athletes in America today.

Finally, having been a massive Alabama Crimson Tide football fan before I saw the harrowing oppression that goes on in collegiate sports around the USA, it made me want people to know that their innocent amateur sport they love so dear is anything but innocent and just another part of the fascist capitalist world we live in.

 

The Future of Batting

Watching India capitulate to an abysmal 94 all out last night, it got me thinking about why top class cricketers, seem to have such difficulty playing in the Test match arena in conditions that are not perfect. Even Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara, possibly two of the finest young batsmen in the world right now, looked out of their depth against James Anderson, Stuart Broad and the other English bowlers.

The problem with all of these players seems to be an over-tendency to play strokes and feel for the ball before they are set in. This, more often than not leads to an edge and an easy catch for the keeper. This has become more apparent in recent years as players have not put as higher price on their wicket as in previous years. The easy solution to this is for batsmen to see off their early deliveries to get their eye in. The more difficult problem is the putting a high price on their wicket, which comes from many factors, the most glaring of which is the amount of One Day and T20 cricket that players play around the world these days, which allows players to put in a few shocking performances as long as they entertain the crowd with big hitting, all the while making thousands and millions of dollars doing it.

Maybe a less obvious problem, but to my mind almost more important is that so few Test players play domestic first-class cricket, for so many years the stepping stone into the big time. Now, the stepping stone is just as likely to be the Big Bash or just being a talented player, which means you don’t really have to prove yourself before starting your career. Another reason for first-class cricket’s importance is that many pitches on the domestic scene are under-developed and bowling wickets and thus teach players about how to tough it out on tricky pitches, the sort that players like Jack Hobbs were known for their play on. Even the Sheffield Shield pitches now are batting paradises that are used for Test cricket like the Adelaide Oval and Brisbane. If we want our cricketers to truly be the best in the world, we would make our Shield games be played on suburban tracks rather than the best. This might teach our kids on the values of playing a ball on its merits and being cautious rather than slogging. It is no surprise to me that out of the top ten players with the all time test highest batting averages, four are English players who had long and illustrious County cricket careers (Sutcliffe, Paynter, Barrington and Hammond), who would’ve played on all sorts of pitches that swung and spun prodigiously and were unpredictable in bounce, which forced them to play each ball how they saw it and defend for long periods if they had to, which would’ve taught them well for Test matches.

One Day and Twenty20 cricket need to have a diminished role in the future of cricket if the standard of batting is going to improve, because the fundamentals can only be found in a longer form of cricket where runs and longevity are valued more than fun and entertainment. Money and fun can only go so far in sport, and to my mind with the current leadership of the sport, batting and real batsmen who see off the new ball and don’t worry about run rate will soon be something of the past.

 

Penny Mackieson On: AFL & LGBTI

‘AFL’ is the acronym for ‘Australian Football League’. ‘LGBTI’ is the acronym for ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex’ people. AFL plus LGBTI equals…?

There has been much discussion in recent years regarding whether or not the AFL, as the leading football competition in the nation, should also lead the way with inclusivity regarding LGBTI people and anti-homophobic measures.

Arguments in favour of the AFL doing so include that: it has set a number of precedents with its championing of Indigenous players, multi-culturalism, and anti-racial discrimination and anti-doping measures; based on the incidence in the general population there are probably at least 12-32 players (of the collective 792 on the 18 AFL club lists) who are gay and the AFL should overtly support those players; Victorian footballer, Jason Ball, came out in 2012 with considerable support from the AFL community; and it would take only one current AFL player who is gay to come out – with the considerable support of the AFL community – for the steam to be let out of the pressure cooker of unnecessary and unhelpful conjecture and gossip, thus allowing everyone to move on. After all, look what happened when former Australian swimming champion and world record breaker, Ian Thorpe, came out recently – nothing much, aside from everyone expressing their relief that Thorpey had finally realised it and/or found the courage to acknowledge it publicly. Australians did not fall down dead in the streets from shock; Australian sport did not cease never to resume; and current Australian swimmers did not suddenly ‘turn gay’.

Arguments against the AFL leading the LGBTI charge include that: the AFL cannot be all things to all people and should not be expected to be; no former VFL/AFL player has ever come out publicly; it appears there is no gay current AFL player who is prepared to identify publicly as such; and, in any event, it is questionable whether the AFL community is ready for such a campaign given Australia has not yet embraced same-sex marriage.

For example, take the responses of Australian media figures to Channel 7 football commentator Brian Taylor’s recent disparaging “big poofter” comment regarding Geelong Football Club’s Harry Taylor. Many observers have already noted that subsequent comments made by other sports commentators and media hosts were inadequate, disappointing and reflected that homophobia is part of the accepted culture of AFL circles. Just yesterday (01 August 2014) it was reported in The Age that another homophobic slur (“faggots”) has since been posted on Facebook by Greg Evangelou, one of Port Adelaide Football Club’s corporate sponsors. To the AFL’s credit it offered counselling to Evangelou with Jason Ball – now a prominent anti-homophobia activist. However, to the AFL’s shame it did not insist that Evangelou take up the counselling; and to Port Adelaide’s shame it did not subsequently sever ties with Evangelou.

From my perspective as a feminist, I would argue that the AFL should be pushed on this issue, otherwise the Australian football community may never consider itself ‘ready’. For example, women – technically not a minority and, certainly, a very visible group in the community – have been integral to the success of Australian football since the game was first developed in the mid-1800s, consistently comprising about half of all football crowds in addition to their extensive involvement in their own partner’s/children’s football competitions and as consumers of AFL products, etc. Yet there have been, and continue to be, precious few women formally employed in AFL roles, let alone significant/leadership ones. Further, as a passionate female football supporter, I know first-hand from numerous experiences over the years that the AFL and its constituent clubs do not consistently know whether, let alone how, to market themselves to women, with women often referred to as ‘ladies’ or, worse, ‘the ladies’. Even the female partners of AFL players continue to be condescendingly referred to as WAGs (‘wives and girlfriends’) and encouraged to parade like vacuous Barbie dolls on the red carpet on Brownlow Medal (AFL best and fairest player award) night.

All this, despite that the AFL has had a designated ‘Women’s Round’ for many years now; as part of Women’s Round the AFL has hosted a women’s football match (Melbourne versus the Western Bulldogs) in consecutive seasons, 2013 and 2014; and women’s Australian Rules football competitions are currently the fastest growing sporting competitions in Australia. AFL data reported in The Age today (02 August 2014) indicates that “169,000 females participated in the game nationally in 2013 – a huge jump from 57,000 in 2011.”

On a brighter note, I heartily commend the establishment of the Purple Bombers, “a new membership for gay and lesbian fans” of the Essendon Football Club to be available from 2015 (as also reported in The Age on 01 August 2014). Maybe this development will inspire the AFL to take on more of a leadership role in regard to this sensitive matter. However, judging by the level of sexism that persists in the AFL community, I won’t be holding my breath that eventual achievement of an AFL-sanctioned pride round equals genuine embrace of LGBTI supporters and players.

Defensive Rights in Sports

Whenever I hear someone saying that the AFL’s scores are too low or that these rolling mauls are becoming too much like rugby, my reaction is one of disgust because defence is becoming an endangered species, on the brink of extinction. Defence, together with offense are the main facets of any team game. The critical idea of defence in sport is to stop the other team scoring through any legal means possible, and thus coaches use tactics and structures to minimise the damage by the other team on the scoreboard. Many of these tactics and structures have been banned by sports and leagues to restore a “beautiful aesthetic” to the game. In the AFL, Paul Roos, then coach of the Sydney Swans was criticised by AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou for his team playing “unattractive football”. This by a man, who in his time as CEO, did more than anyone to restrict the role of defence in the AFL. Many supporters of the AFL, mainly of clubs that lost to Sydney during that premiership winning season, agreed with Demetriou, saying the football Roos’ team played was “ugly” and various other denigrating phrases.

Defensive tactics should be and will always be an integral part of any game, but many bosses of sports have put in place draconian measures to make offense the order of the day. One example of this in the AFL is the deliberate out of bounds, to stop teams clearing the danger of an opposition attack to the safest part of the ground. In cricket, there are the ridiculous field restrictions to stop captains and coaches putting fielders where they want to. And from the king of the dumb anti-defensive sport, basketball, there is the defensive 3 seconds rule, basically stopping elite level teams from a zone defence, because most zones revolve around blocking off the key and lay-up opportunities, and also there is the blocking rule, which means an attacking player can run into a defender, and if the defender moves even slightly he/she is charged with a foul.

The second part of the anti-defensive rights movement is the idea spun to us by sporting head honchos that high scoring matches are more popular to watch than low scoring games. This is a fallacy because the reason people go to games isn’t to watch a beautiful looking match, it’s instead to see their team win. To most fans it doesn’t matter if their team wins 23-22 or 125-115, a win is still a win. Evidence of this is that the highest scoring VFL/AFL Grand Final of all time, the 1972 decider between Carlton and Richmond, when the score was 177-150 had a lower crowd than the 1968 one when the score was 56-53. People would rather see a strong battle between offense and defence, but too often in sports, defence is neglected and abused to create the illusion of a “beautiful” game. We need our major sports to find a way to allow more defensive tactical rights to coaches and teams to stop offense having a monopoly on modern sport.

Wickmayer defeats Stosur in R1 Wimbledon

Samantha Stosur’s first round defeat to unseeded Belgian Yanina Wickmayer 6-3 6-4 means the 3rd time she has been knocked out before winning a match in the past 5 years at arguably the biggest stage in tennis. The 69 minute match in which Stosur looked shaky continues her dismal run on grass.