d. God you are stupid. College is the only reason the WNT is successful. It is also the only reason that makes financial sense for a family to spend so much time and money on their daughter’s soccer odyssey. There is no “distortion.” There is only the free market working in glorious splendor, with clubs making money and families paying for the benefit they are seeking - college opportunity.
Investment in womens' college soccer is driven by Title IX, not by free market forces. It is more like welfare than capitalism.
I was waiting for someone to finally bring that up. Congratulations, you are smarter than most of the people here, but still wrong.
Title IX is a government “restriction”, like anti-trust and equal employment opportunity laws. So, yes, you might consider it a restriction on capitalism, but really it is a restriction on capitalism that actually benefits a free market. You see, capitalism and a free market are not the same thing. Capitalism, for example, begets monopolies, but monopolies are also anathema to a free market.
The purpose of the law is actually to promote a free market by prohibiting behavior that gets in the way of it over the long term. Note that Title IX isn’t a sports law. It is a law that requires equal opportunity for women in higher education, and equal sports opportunities happens to be one of the means of accomplishing that. When you look at the law in its full context, instead of losing the forest among the trees by ignoring all of the law besides the one part you want to talk about, there can be no question that Title IX has accomplished its goal of opening up free markets by increasing the number of women who were previously excluded from college opportunities and the labor force without it. Just like a law prohibiting monopolies is good for a free market, and just as laws requiring that companies treat minorities the same as others, Title IX is good for a free market.