The Daily Universe: A Rant

A long, long time ago, (in a galaxy far, far away...) it was decided that men and women are equal. So why can't a very nice university, BYU for example, that has a fairly good paper, the Daily Universe, treat us as such?

Warning: Below is a rant about how amazing BYU's Womens basket ball team is and how they deserve more page space than Jimmer Fredette the day after they pound the Utes. No offense to Jimmer, but he can wait.



This past week presented the a chance for rivals BYU and Univ. of Utah to face off on the basketball court. The men's teams played at Utah on Tuesday and the women's team played in the Marriott on Wednesday. BYU won both games by a fair margin (DUH) But I find everything about these two matches sexually discriminating against the women's teams.

The men played on Tuesday, and the women played on Wednesday. Ok so the women always play on wednesday, but by having the men play on Tuesday as opposed to Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or even Monday (if two high profile games have to be on the same week), then they, the men, get press coverage Monday through Wednesday and, if your name rhymes with "Kimmer", Thursday. Now of course we couldn't have the women competing for page space, so they are completely forgotten until Thursday.

Even then the women are given a two pictures and three inches of a page! One single basketball player gets twice the space and the top of the page. In fact it took me a second look to discover that the article below Jimmer's was actually about the womens game and not the mens!

I find this appalling. At the very least the Newspaper could have held off on printing Jimmer until Friday or Monday, and given the campus community some notice in Wednesday's paper that the women were playing that night! But no they really hate us and show their vindictiveness and pity in one measly article!

If the paper needs something to write about they have five seniors, an (completely unbiased) amazing starting freshman, and some really great other women that deserve recognition for their hard work, effort, and kick-butt skills!

All of these ladies put forth a 100% effort every single day in practice and games, and only end up disappointed because their own campus can't even recognise that effort! Why?!? Why do we have this nonsense? Sure Jimmer is great. But one player doesn't make a team! The women consistently come together and put out a great show. But does any one come to watch? Not really, because they don't know!

Furthermore this is not the first time. Every single week the paper has this awful disproportioned allotment of paper space! Take last week for example. Last week both teams played Air Force, women away and men at home. For days surrounding the the mens game articles and speculation flew around campus. It wasn't until Friday that anyone thought that it might be interesting to think about if the women would do well or not. Then the following Monday the women received acknowledgement for squishing the Falcons.

But back to that question I posed earlier. Why? Sure maybe some really weird people would rather read about Kimmer...errr...Jimmer, but no one pays for the paper so why not give the women an equal chance? It would even help the school to have more students come to watch the women play. (They all have to buy tickets right?) So why not advertise for them? Who could it hurt? Certainly not the mens teams, the campus, or the paper.

Also, a little more positive endorsement by the campus community would hep these women as they pursue their passions in basketball. It would help give them confidence, why are we taking these things away from them? What have they done?

Rant is now over thank you for listening. We should all immediately flood the Daily Universe for requests to print more on the women's teams. 

By the way Congratulations to the BYU women's Basketball team in their defeat of the Utes. I look forward to a great show next Wednesday against TCU at Texas.