Shelby Osborne: College football's first female defensive back

http://news.yahoo.com/ ^ | June 7, 2014 | David Clark Scott

[BBell]

Shelby Osborne: Football is her passion and she joins the thin ranks of women in men's college football. Most women have played as kickers. Is Shelby Osborne creating a new normal?

When Shelby Osborne walks onto the football field this fall, she'll be treading on ground few women have dared to walk.

Fewer than a dozen women have played college football on a men's team. But this week, Osborne made history when she signed a letter of intent to play football with Campbellsville University in Kentucky – as a defensive back, the same position she played in high school.

No woman has played that position in men's college football.

Her job will be to guard against the pass, and the run. She must be fleet of foot, agile, and able to take a hit. Defensive back can be a physically demanding position. But so can combat in the US Army, where women are increasingly showing they have the physical attributes necessary to get the job done.

[Chode]

Did it just morph into a “head-trauma-equality” theme? LOLOL!!!

[mikrofon]

Her job will be to guard against the pass, and the run

But against the drop-kick, they're SOL.

Strange way of saying that she won't be on special-teams, which I assume was the intent…

[ExCTCitizen]

When I see a female playing in the AAC, SEC, B1G or ACC,that is when it will be accepted. Campbellville is a D 3 school.

[SSS Two]

Damn! And Campbellsville is the best team in the country! Better than Florida State!

Campbellsville beat Cumberland TN 24 - 19
Cumberland TN beat Union KY 45 - 43
Union KY beat UVA-Wise 24 - 17
VA-Wise beat West Liberty 24 - 13
West Liberty beat Glenville St 16 - 13
Glenville St beat WV Wesleyan 35 - 32
WV Wesleyan beat Urbana 34 - 13
Urbana beat Concord 22 - 10
Concord beat Lenoir Rhyne 18 - 10
Lenoir Rhyne beat North Greenville 35 - 17
North Greenville beat VMI 37 - 24
VMI beat Gardner Webb 27 - 9
Gardner Webb beat Furman 28 - 21
Furman beat Ga Southern 16 - 14
Ga Southern beat Florida 26 - 20
Florida beat Tennessee 31 - 17
Tennessee beat South Carolina 23 - 21
South Carolina beat North Carolina 27 - 10

North Carolina is better than Florida St because North Carolina beat Boston College 34 - 10 while Florida St only beat Boston College 48 - 34

[SSS Two]

Campbellville is a D 3 school.

Cambellsville is a NAIA school, not D3.

[terycarl]

I foresee some serious “holding” penalties called!!!

[fso301]

When I see a female playing in the AAC, SEC, B1G or ACC,that is when it will be accepted. Campbellville is a D 3 school.

NAIA/D3 teams would run roughshod over any high school team.

This is just a publicity stunt. The girl was on her high school team for a single season and only got to play if the outcome of the game was not in doubt.

She'll likely never play a single down.

[Altura Ct.]

So what?

[GGpaX4DumpedTea]

“We had a woman in our men’s corporate basketball league. Same result.”

At one company I worked for we had a young graduate from Geogia Tech who had played women’s basketball there. We had some ‘tough’ factory workers’ playing basketball at the Company Rec Center. They invited her to play. She literally knocked ‘em on their butts!

[fso301]

At one company I worked for we had a young graduate from Geogia Tech who had played women’s basketball there. We had some ‘tough’ factory workers’ playing basketball at the Company Rec Center. They invited her to play. She literally knocked ‘em on their butts!

I've seen similar a number of times.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I wasn’t looking at some grand concept here. College football does not limit participation to males. So she has the right to try out. The school has the right to put her on the team, she has the right to go out and play.

And if we were going into a more religious discussion, I’m not sure i see a biblical principle being violated either.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I think of soccer because first, it isn’t too much of a contact sport, second, some parts of it are more about finesse than pure power, and third, as a minor sport in this country, you are not likely to find all of the best male athletes on the field, so I am convinced that the top few female athletes at that level could be better than the last few males who want to try out for the sport.

Except again, with soccer having a female league in college, and a sometime professional league, and because I see no way for any female to make it on the professional male teams, there would be little reason for a girl to try out for the men’s team, better to be a star on the women’s team.

But i agree with you about baseball, and not just at pitcher, a particularly gifted female might well be able to play outfield, the hitting would be more problematic I think. Pitching though, that’s interesting, I wonder if any of the best female softball pitchers have ever entertained the notion of being an underhand baseball pitcher in a minor league team?

[Svartalfiar]

But so can combat in the US Army, where women are increasingly showing they have the physical attributes necessary to get the job done.

No, not really. Very few woman are physically able, and most of them aren't mentally up to it. Ask all the Marine's female Infantry officers, they'll tell you.. Wait,they won't cause there aren't any. Yes, women have gotten stuck in combat occasionally, and some have done decent, some not, but they aren't used as combat-specific personnel. Because the huge majority can't.

As for this chick, hopefully she's actually able to handle it. But given those pictures, I'm thinking this is all PR.

[CharlesWayneCT]

It was a big deal when one of the top women players in the world managed to beat some washed-up old former professional male (Bobby Riggs) — and even then, he was convinced if he had a second shot, he’d have beaten her.

Women’s tennis is the strangest thing; they play fewer games, but have won the right to get the same prize money, because the fans actually love to watch girls playing tennis.

And actually, I like the women’s tennis, because they can’t serve as hard, so each game is really contested, not like most men’s matches where either one guy falls apart, or they both play well, win their serves, and the whole match is about a few points.

In fact, I’d love to see them add a new serving line about a foot back from the backline for the men, just to make it harder to hold a serve.

Meanwhile, they play mixed doubles, and it is funny to watch how hard the men work at making sure the women don’t have to touch the ball. And these are top women players.

[GeronL]

I kind of like women’s hockey at the Olympics. lol

[fso301]

It was a big deal when one of the top women players in the world managed to beat some washed-up old former professional male (Bobby Riggs) — and even then, he was convinced if he had a second shot, he’d have beaten her.

It now appears to have been a mob fixed outcome.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3059127/posts

[Ransomed]

I’m just not sure the best female athletes would be able to change direction as fast as even the slowest guys in soccer. You could be right though, endurance I don’t think would be a problem.

“Except again, with soccer having a female league in college, and a sometime professional league, and because I see no way for any female to make it on the professional male teams, there would be little reason for a girl to try out for the men’s team, better to be a star on the women’s team.”

That’s a good point. But I guess you would have to look at if there is salary differential between a star female player in women’s soccer and a run of the mill female player in men’s soccer. You would think that would also be an incentive, if it was possible.

Outfield would probably be out because of range and throwing, although there have surely been slow and ponderous outfielders that can’t throw. But they always have a stick that makes up for it. First base is the same thing, it’s better to have a good defense guy there but a lot of teams make the same sacrifice if the guy can hit. Best is if they can pick it and hit.

If it was possible to throw fast pitch softball from a baseball mound you have to think someone would have tried it. Maybe they have. I have seen exhibition where a female softball pitcher throws to MLB hitters and they always do very well. But the ones I have seen are from softball distance on flat ground, which gives it such a different look to the hitter that they look pretty helpless.

There’s Chelsea Baker. A very impressive young lady. Learned the knuckleball from Joe Niekro before he passed. I guess she is doing really well in high school baseball. I think the knuckleball is the way to go for a female trying to make it to the most elite of the bigger sports. There really isn’t any equivalent to the knuckleball in football or basketball. Don’t have to be fast, strong or an extraordinary physical specimen. Just very skilled, because it is very, very hard to do effectively.

http://tbo.com/plant-city/plant-citys-chelsea-baker-continues-to-get-some-major-league-attention-20140519/

How fast can women throw from a regulation baseball mound? If you can get a really excellent change-up off of that speed, then that might be another way to go, but I still think knuckleballs are the way to do it if it ever is done at all.

Freegards

[CharlesWayneCT]

I like women’s curling. Although I think it is weird — if there was ever an olympic sport where you’d think the men and women could compete together, it seems it would be curling.

But apparently even there the increased stamina of the male sweepers would make it hard for the women to compete.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Then there is “Quidditch”. Yes, that quidditch, from Harry Potter. They have been working to make it into a college sport. They actually have done pretty well, they have an international quidditch championship for years now, and they have 80 teams from around the world show up and play. Some schools take it pretty seriously. This year the world champion was University of Texas (just like last year, I believe).

But being a sport from a fictional world, it is fully embracing the modern ethos, and is proud of being the only “co-ed” sport.

Or as I like to call it, the one way a college male can legally beat up on women to get out their pent-up aggression.

Because watching the University of Texas play is like watching a lifetime movie. Their basic strategy is to get the women isolated and then break them. So a typical UT game will have at least one person hauled off on a stretcher and taken to the emergency room (I watched 3 girls and one guy taken away this year).

It is pretty much legal plays, since the sport is “contact”, although each year they strip out more contact, and I presume that by next year they’ll have removed most of the remaining contact in order to get any university to sanction them, because it is a brutal sport, where half the people on the field are just people like you and I, and the other half are now actual college athletes, like start football players from high school who couldn’t quite make the college team.

I often say I wish I owned the crutch concession at a quidditch tournament, because every team will have someone broken by the end. No pads, running with a broom between your legs, head-on collisions between 200-pound men and 100-pound women.

There are some great videos on the internet. Brutal sport for a made-up kids book activity. and proudly “co-ed”, although also fully into the transgender movement so I presume one of the serious teams is going to find a couple transgender girls to fill out their roster.

[RitaOK]

My apologies.

I see all this gender neutrality business as one more subjective tack on the map of US social/cultural/political/institutional collapse.

Never fear, my opinion is plummeting out of favor fast. :)