Portside

Well before Title IX was taken seriously, well before there were record ratings for women's sports on TV, before there was the dominance of the U.S. Olympic women's basketball team or the sold-out crowds at the NCAA Women's Final Four, there was Pat Summitt. She turned a women's sports team into a national brand in the 1980s and 1990s. And she did it not by playing by the old, demure, ladylike rules of women's sports, but by crashing the boys' sports party.

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It is March Madness, after all, when the NCAA makes 90% of its billion-dollar budget. As the business of college football and basketball expands, and as more and more players find themselves used up and spit out with neither compensation nor education to show for their time, this is the moment to talk about the future of the so-called "student-athlete."

Too often feminists and leftists dismiss the importance of sports in society and only focus on the machismo culture encouraged by professional/college athletics. Although that culture is real to an alarming extent, I dare say it is also an elitist attitude that is not conducive to mass organizing and needs to be re-considered.

The reaction to video footage of the tirades by Rutgers basketball coach Mike Rice suggests that the public is no longer willing to give coaches broad leeway when they turn to abusive tactics.