I was up late on Monday night reading an article on discrimination for my Intro to Philosophy of Law class. After reading for a while, I turned on my computer and clicked onto the University’s athletics Web site.
When I saw the headline of the women’s soccer team not getting a bid to the NCAA Tournament, I was instantly outraged. “What?!” I exclaimed out loud. I was incensed. I read the article and I had to double check that the teams that were picked included the 3rd, 5th and 6th placed teams and not ours. I was enraged. After reading the article, however, I suddenly reached a cool, rational calm. An injustice had just occurred, and I wasn’t going to let the NCAA get away with this without any kind of protest. I had gone to some of our home games and put my heart out there, cheering our team on. And to let the NCAA selection committee do this without saying anything? No, something has to be done.
My main rational in my letter to Kristin Fasbender of the NCAA was this: that their decision to exclude the University let all of NCAA Division I Women’s Soccer teams know that finishing 2nd in a conference will keep them from getting a bid to the NCAA Tournament, yet finishing 3rd, 5th and 6th will get a team a bid.
The way the NCAA chooses teams to go to the tournament has to change. I stayed up that night until 3 a.m. writing every Pac-10 Athletic Director about this injustice – that what is happening to our women’s soccer team could very well happen to theirs in the future if the NCAA doesn’t change how its bidding decisions are made.
I went to bed feeling better, but was still feeling as if I could do more. I got up the next morning and went to my class. It turned out to be cancelled for the day and on the way home I realized, maybe it’d be best if I wrote the all the conference commissioners as well. If anyone is going to have any weight to throw around to have the NCAA change its bidding rules, it’d be them. So, I came home and wrote to all of the conference commissioners, the head guys, a similar letter that I wrote to the Pac-10 Athletic Directors. I felt tired, but vindicated. I did everything I could.
So far, I’ve received 2 e-mails from them. The first came from Rich Ensor of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference sounding much like Rick Schlickman of the NCAA selection committee. The second was from Robert Vowels of the Southwestern Athletic Conference who stated that “I received your e-mail and I wanted to let you know that it did not go into the recycle bin. We will talk about this subject at our conference winter meetings.” Thank you.
After I read today’s article with Rick Schlickman’s inexcusable rationale for not picking our team, my confirmation of what I did yesterday was further refuted. There are still a few days until the NCAA Tournament starts and hey, anything could still happen.