"}The Kournikoving of College Sports and Its Discontents
Lol, I hadn’t considered this, after the Supreme Court let college athletes earn money the top earning female college athletes are mostly just random hot chicks:
Overall, of the top 5 in women\u2019s collegiate earnings, four of the athletes are some variation of blonde, and yes the list skews attractive.
Small-sample-size alert, but there are implications here, implications oh-so-carefully broached in Kurt Streeter\u2019s New York Times article, titled, \u201cNew Endorsements for College Athletes Resurface an Old Concern: Sex Sells.\u201d Such a fraught topic gets the most wordy subhead imaginable, lest the NYT risk putting a foot wrong here. So after the title, it reads:
Female college athletes are making millions thanks to their large social media followings. But some who have fought for equity in women\u2019s sports worry that their brand building is regressive.
That\u2019s not the only concern, apparently. From Streeter:
Race cannot be ignored as part of the dynamic. A majority of the most successful female moneymakers are white. Sexual orientation can\u2019t be ignored, either. Few of the top earners openly identify as gay, and many post suggestive images of themselves that seem to cater to the male gaze.
Like or hate the demographic outcomes (we at HoS are neutral on such matters), there\u2019s no conspiracy here. This is the free market, the one many high minded sports writers demanded that the college men have access to in the interest of fairness. This same set just didn\u2019t anticipate free market results on the women\u2019s side that they\u2019d regard as unfair. Women\u2019s sports, from the perspective of the prestige sports writer, was about a greater quest for equality that managed to highlight marginalized groups. Now, all of a sudden, it\u2019s about\u2026.hot blondes getting paid?
Men have their general preferences, preferences that are reflected in the dating market, and now, apparently, the NIL market. It\u2019s a touchy subject, but certain groups do better on the dating apps than other groups. Short guys can attest that life isn\u2019t exactly fair in this space.
As observed in dating site statistics and also in common sense noticing, a large cohort of men show more interest in a slender straight-presenting blonde than in some other sorts of women. These men also show more interest in women who appear available to the intentions of guys. These average revealed preferences are uncomfortable for some to deal with, and here comes the NIL revolution, making it all so salient, putting a number to what\u2019s been suspected.
NIL legalized a market that was always there, one sports media barely considered while hyperfocusing on what this revolution meant for big-time college football. Men, who comprise not just the majority of sports fans overall but the majority of sports fans who watch women\u2019s sports, had the collective capacity to upend the incentive structure of collegiate female athletics. We just didn\u2019t see it because the status quo had NCAA women\u2019s sports high on prestige (from winning competitions) but low on monetary compensation (scholarships). Now that compensation is allowed, the system finds itself scrambling to reckon with what gets rewarded.