Cal Winter
Jefferson City
Dear Editor:
Since the recent World Cup victory of the U.S. Women's Soccer Team, the issue of pay disparity between male and female athletes has become a more prominent news story.
The many millions of people who enjoy watching sports on TV generally want to watch the most dominant teams and athletes. Because females are not designed by nature to be able to equal the performance of males in sports activities, women's professional sports almost always offers fans second-rate entertainment. That is why viewership of men's sports is several times greater than viewership of women's sports. Since TV ratings are by far the most important factor in determining team and league income, it is reasonable that male athletes, who usually provide much more valuable TV entertainment, should get a higher salary than their female counterparts. The meeting of biological reality and economic reality simply dictates that male athletes will generally receive higher salaries than females. Some very influential females and their sycophants have a hard time with this idea. Men in the media or in politics who wish to keep their career intact had better come to understand that the women's complaints are fully legitimate, and those men had better say so loudly and with a smile.
I suggest that rather than listening endlessly to what surely has to be female athletes' feigned misunderstanding of economic and biological reality, along with their usual claim to being victims of sexism, let's dispose of the whole question of pay disparity in sports by ending the practice of segregating athletes according to sex. Let there be no more male or female teams and no more sex-based segregation in individual sports on any level of play. I say let my daughter face the relatively brutal world of boys sports from the beginning of her life, and if she becomes a champion, she will be a real champion in the real world, and she will be well paid for it.