I agree with you Stealth, I never took a year off of work. I went to work to supoort my family AFTER I was able to support a family. My wife or babies were not mentally damaged in any way because I wasn't there during the day. I took the night shift and still worked days. School is not the time to have a child and don't tell me it was an accident. No, I don't think he should get the extra year. He is not going to school 40 hours a week 365 days a year. He could have cared for Mom and child and still went to school and played ball. I'm sure I'll catch it, but it is JMO.
I'm really glad that you're all so tough and suck-it-up. It makes me feel more secure to know that I live in a world of such virtuous people. However...the devil's advocate who stands behind my chair is saying, "Gee, ya know, I bet the NCAA eligibility rules aren't exactly a 3x5 card's worth of unambiguous English, and I also bet that very few of the tough, suck-it-up, takers-of-personal-
responsibility have read (for instance) all the fine print on their health insurance or their car insurance or their terms of employment, and gosh golly I bet there are a lot of things that these tough types would have to say if/when they got caught by a clause/interpretation of one of these various contracts that they didn't know about, but I'll bet that, 'Yeah, I should have known,' is not early or often among them."
Life is full of trade offs. NCAA rules are ridiculous but if a player is getting a scholarship for playing football (which is ridiculous anyway) then I guess he better make the choice to play or pay. Butler was promised a scholarship for playing football but he decided to take a year off and now is fighting for eligibility so he won't have to pay tuition. To me whether you are a man or a woman, if you are essentially paid for a job, and you make the choice to take time off for parenthood, the employer should have the right to find another employee who will show up to work. Making babies is a personally choice and should be made if you can afford it, want it, and are willing to make the sacrafice for it. It isn't something that should be subsidized by the employer, our tax dollars, the NCAA or anybody but the people who are making the babies. The notion that taxpayers and employers should be subsidizing people who cannot afford children for making more children is stupid. Why do we give people who can afford million dollar homes a tax break but not people who can only afford to rent? Why do we give a tax break for having children when families with children tax our social service system more than single, childless wage earners? This whole concept is backwards. Bottom line, if you want kids its gonna cost you. If you don't want to pay, don't have them. More importantly don't ask me to help pay for them.
LBB, tell your devil there are plenty of folks at each school in each athletic department and at the NCAA who's sole mission in life is to deal with these things. And they have phones and email addresses. If my future hinges on a decision, I check the fine print, and then call someone who deals with said fine print full time. He was picking a college not renting a car or signing up for a gym. The NCAA will clamp down this rule before anyone else can use it. Because you can bet any time a blue-chip recruit needs to go to prep school because of grades some coach would roll this out to get him an extra year.
SummersEve, I guess that means you never make a mistake with the paperwork. Congrats for you! I don't have a dog in this hunt; I don't have an opinion about whether NCAA regs should allow for paternity time. My guess is that the guy just took the time and didn't bother to check whether it would all work out. Diligent? Not very, but then, neither are many college-age kids, and neither were most of us when we were that age -- even when important stuff was at stake, believe it or not. So, perhaps a bit less righteous indignation is in order, at least from those of us who are less scrupulous than SummersEve at reading and understanding all the fine details of every agreement we enter into. I'll fully admit that I'm in that category, but I won't believe that nearly all the rest of y'all aren't.
HUH? Damn were my history teachers confused, they told my Japan did that. It's a joke, son, a joke. Also a joke hun. I believe you're talking about the difference between having ovaries and a uterus vs. not having them. What's so obvious about this? Your right M'Lady, poor choice of words or phrasing or something. Still, men and women are not equal physicaly so to try and make the "rules" equal IMO just doesnt make since. The boy just does not know about Animal House, nor Foghorn Leghorn. I say...I say...I say...I saw Animal House at a theater in '78. Yea I am that old, just have childish tendinces (peter pan syndrom) some would say. "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son. "
Your right M'Lady, poor choice of words or phrasing or something. Still, men and women are not equal physicaly so to try and make the "rules" equal IMO just doesnt make since. Why do you put "rules" in quotes? Is this meant to suggest that they aren't really rules? As far as men and women not being "equal physicaly[sic]", you need to make the distinction between "the same" and "equal" before you can even begin to come up with a point to support whatever argument you're trying to make about NCAA regs. Women, in general, have ovaries and a uterus, although not every woman does. Most women of college age who are possessed of ovaries and a uterus are physically capable of conceiving and bearing a child to term. Men cannot do that. But you can't just use that as the sole basis to argue, "...and therefore 'the rules' ought to be different." You have to take into account the NCAA's rationale for allowing women to extend eligibility because of pregnancy, if they do, when they do. Why do they grant the extension? Because of the physical rigors of pregnancy, and what it does to a woman's training? Or because of the time involved in parenting the child? Until you know which of these the NCAA had in mind (or both, or something else altogether), you cannot categorically state that lack of a uterus means that there is no logical justification for a similar extension for men.
Dwight: Number one, inverted Penis. Meredith: Could you mean vagina? Cause if you do, I want that covered. Dwight: I thought your vagina was removed during your hysterectomy. Meredith: A uterus is different from a vagina. I still have a vagina.
...come up with a point to support whatever argument you're trying to make about NCAA regs. That's just it, im not trying to argue. I simply (albeit perhaps to simply) said that because of differences between the sexes trying to make the rules around paternity leave the same for both doesn't make since to me. Nothing more nothing less.
From Ufez's last link: The rule doesn't treat women different from men; it treats pregnant women different from men as well as non-pregnant women. Many women (those who are not pregnant) are treated the same as men under the rule, and thus the rule does not treat similarly situated persons differently on the basis of sex.
