A Letter to Two Post Columnists About “NIL boosters favoring men”
These well-meaning columnists are oblivious to the underlying reasons why female college athletes receive less in NIL compensation
Dear Mr. Samaha and Ms. Giambalvo,
Despite what I say further below, I want to compliment both of you for your recent article, As women’s hoops booms, NIL boosters favor men, records show.
As the father of two daughters, I always encouraged them to participate in sports for the physical benefits, to learn teamwork, and in preparation for their future careers.
I do, however, have a suggestion for another article that you should both consider about another vocation where one gender is greatly favored over the other – in fact, where the advantaged gender is favored nearly 30 times more than the other!
Before I make this suggestion, please know why I’m taking time to write this open letter to you.
I’m a lifelong reader of the Post who nevertheless has long noticed the paper’s feminist-inspired gender bias, provable by its imbalanced coverage of domestic violence1 and its 2018 publication of the op-ed Why can't we hate men?, where the Post provided a platform for a radical feminist to broadcast to the world a Nazi-like hatred for men:
Since that repulsive diatribe was published I’ve been sending open letters to Post columnists who have written articles that perpetuate this gender bias.
My suggestion is patterned after your article:
To begin your research for my suggested study, you might start by reading some easily found online articles:
Top modelling agent says male models 'suffer big pay gap' compared to women
There’s a huge pay disparity between male and female supermodels
In 2013, top paid female model Gisele Bündchen made $42 million
In 2013, top male model Sean O’Pry made $1.5 million
Do I expect that the Post will perform an investigation like your “NIL boosters favor men”, but one that instead reports on the massive gender pay gap in the modeling industry?
No, at least not in the foreseeable future, as the paper has a long history of provable anti-male gender bias – again, made undeniable by its “Why can’t we hate men?” article – that helps propagate a one-sided, gender biased feminist worldview that portrays men as privileged and overpaid, while presenting women as oppressed and eternally underpaid.
I believe this one-sided perspective was perfectly reflected by your article, which (1) is implicitly based on the existence of a “gender pay gap”, and (2) ignores the huge physical differences between men and women, and how these differences in turn affect the money paid to each sex.
The Myth of a Gender Pay Gap
“… women in college basketball put in more work for less money”
Your article implicitly reflects the assumption of a gender pay gap between men and women but without an understanding that for decades feminists have successfully spread the myth of a pay gap by using a statistically false comparison between the pay of men and women. (The Post has helped to propagate this myth.)
Feminists have used an “apple to oranges” calculation of pay between the sexes, deceptively using an uncontrolled comparison that takes the ratio of the median earnings of all women to all men without controlling for various compensable factors like job title, years of experience, education, industry, location, and other compensable factors. In 2023, this false comparison showed that women made only $0.83 for every dollar a man makes.
But a true calculation should have used a controlled comparison, one that takes these other “compensable” factors into account. In 2023, women in the controlled comparison made $0.99 for every $1.00 a man makes. See this post that succinctly documents this statistical bait-and-switch feminists have used to propagate the pay gap myth.
If you still have doubts, even the federal government has challenged the existence of a pay gap! In 2009 the U.S. Department of Labor produced a report, An Analysis of the Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women — Final Report which said,
“… the raw wage gap [between men and women] continues to be used in misleading ways [emphasis added] to advance public policy agendas without fully explaining the reasons behind the gap.”
See this post for a brief summary of this federal report.
The Undeniable Differences Between Men and Women
Although feminists have long claimed that “gender is a cultural construct”, the controversy about trans women athletes (i.e. males by birth) unfairly competing against biological women has laughably illuminated the sheer idiocy of this decades-old feminist claim.
Men are stronger, faster, and by a wide margin, fully out-compete women in sports.
A page from the Fair Play for Women website describes this fact:
“Reproductive anatomy aside, the physical differences between males and females were already apparent when our ancestors emerged from the trees, and now, in modern sports, we can measure them precisely. Males can run faster, jump longer, throw further and lift heavier than females. They outperform females by 10% on the running track to 30% when throwing various balls.
So big is the gap, there are 9000 males between 100m world record holders Usain Bolt and FloJo.
So early does the gap emerge, the current female 100m Olympic champion, Elaine Thompson, is slower than the 14 year old schoolboy record holder.
So unassailable the gap has proven to be, virtually all elite sports have a protected female category, to allow females to compete fairly against those with the same female potential, and to win, and, OK, to make a little money maybe”
That men are so overwhelmingly stronger, faster, and athletically more capable than women is at the heart of not only why the college women in your article make less in NIL income, it’s why the US Women’s Soccer Team was nominally paid less than the men’s team (although they in fact actually made more than the men!)
Following are just a few of many examples that further illustrate this vast “athletic gender gap” that is the main reason differences in male vs. female athletes:
US Womens Soccer Team LOSE 24 - 1 to Mens Team to Prove a Point (YouTube)
Carli Lloyd Confirms USWNT Once Lost to Team of 15-Year-Old Boys
Mr. Samaha and Ms. Giambalvo, to summarize what your article overlooks, let me return to the “male model gender pay gap” discussed above. An ABC News article, Why Do Female Models Make More Than Male Models? provided the following analogy about the reasons for lower-paid male models are similar to why men's sports is a much larger — and more highly paid — industry than women's sports:
“People love the WNBA but they are just not in it as much as the average guy in the fantasy football league," Woodard said. "In fashion, women are really involved in a way that men aren't involved. ... [They] pay more attention to it. ... Women even care about couture fashion even if they can't buy it, but they want to look at it and understand it.”
"Women are at the top-tier professional level when it comes to doing fashion," he said. "It's the only place where women outpace men to the degree that they do."
So the reason Gisele is a household name, but not Sean O'Pry, Woodard said, is because of sheer star power within the industry where women reign.
Again, like in sports, "there are some fabulous golfers out there but the TV ratings go up when Tiger Woods plays," Woodard said. "So when [Tiger Woods] is playing, it doesn't take away from other people's skills ... just their notoriety."
Wouldn’t you agree that this analogy explains why the female student athletes receive less in NIL payments?
My observation was confirmed by a February 2023 report by The Coalition to End Domestic Violence that described a 10-Year Suppression of the Truth on Domestic Violence by the Washington Post.