*Sarcasm Alert*

I know there are a lot of (male) sports fans who feel nothing but disdain for soccer. Waiting for the articles that talk about how "The World Cup is being shoved down our throats."

Speaking of the World Cup -- the Title IX blog takes a gander at some issues it raises (Title IX, World Cup, Human Rights and the Quote of the Day), starting off with:

The College Sports Council, which advocates for Title IX "reform," has used the start of the men's World Cup to issue a report on the alleged lack of growth of men's soccer at the collegiate level in the United States. This is not a new argument as I have noted previously.

But CSC claims that Title IX has stymied the growth of men's intercollegiate soccer while women's soccer has been allowed to flourish.

One of our favorite Title IX and women's sports advocates, Professor Nancy Hogshead-Makar, expertly dismantles CSC's study and findings (in the above link), so I won't bother to do it here.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again -- don't mess with the Prof. Lots of interesting thoughts and observations follow Kris' opening, and I love her ending frame, mostly because it underscores how bloody far the NCAA has come in its support for women's collegiate athletics after initially undermining the sh*t out of it.

But I going to end with something that made me smile this morning: this great response to CSC's claims by NCAA director of gender initiatives, Karen Morrison.

"The CSC continues to bend the data like an errant soccer kick when describing trends in intercollegiate athletics and in particular college soccer. Soccer continues to grow in popularity around the world and on our campuses. It is one of the four fastest-growing men's sports in the NCAA. There is no evidence that the relatively minor differences overall in soccer participation are related to Title IX."