Lacrosse is nowhere near the global participation rates the IOC wants to see (compare their list of affiliated national federations with baseball’s, let alone karate’s), and if the Olympics expand any more, they’ll simply explode into oblivion.
But we can dream, right?
(And maybe one day the IOC will take up the idea of splitting up the Summer Olympics so more sports can get in.)
To recap the Duke lacrosse case in brief: Team members accused of rape, media firestorm ensues at Duke, evidence emerges that they couldn’t possibly have done it, students exonerated, district attorney disbarred.
Most people then moved on. The exceptions were the families of the team members who were not accused of rape, claiming the school and others didn’t do enough to protect them. That case, we learned in March, has lost steam.
The other people who did not move on: The cottage industry of people with an ax to grind against Duke, political correctness, “liberals,” academic elites or others who have supposedly wronged them in some way. They insisted Duke’s response to the case represented PC anti-masculine anti-athlete bias, and it would kill Duke’s ability to attract students, let alone student-athletes.
Here’s a quick look at application data (up from 19,358 to 31,785 in last eight years).
And here’s a look at how student-athletes are faring:
So in short: I think those folks were wrong.
Duresport.com 