Gimme a law or regulation & you’ll find some rich elite dudes exploiting it. Hint: it’s not for the love of the game. In the end the women (actually those actually profiting from them) will extort $$ from the men because we live in an “enabling” age. They’ll get a few $$ to shut them up but the gap between the haves & the have nots will continue to grow. Little to no effort will go into improving the root cause of why the women generate a small fraction of the interest the men do. Rinse & repeat.
Well, until some hairy dudes “identifying” themselves as females start taking all the women’s spots then we’ll implode.
I think your point of view would be valid in an ideal and fair world.
DISCLAIMER (you will read words that may trigger you, but be patient, that's not my goal I promise.).
What you consider to be the enabling age is a result of generations of systemic oppression causing some to have generational wealth at the expense of others. Its like anything else, it must come to an equilibrium and that is what we are seeing now.
I agree with you that people should be compensated for what they are worth, but again that is in an ideal world. In the real world, some people definitely have more advantages over others due to sex, race, or what social ladder they were born into.
The same argument can be made for women's sports. Now I don't know what the level of interest is or will be in the long run, but women's sports (and many other things in life) have been set aside and pushed down. Maybe if there was a level playing field, women's pro teams could afford to pay more developmental leagues, pay for more marketing and other things to create a larger pool of female athletes and generate more interest in the sport (Again, I'm not saying this will be the outcome, just saying that generations of inequality with respect to women's sports have not allowed us to actually see what might be).
But I firmly agree with
@slugboy on this. This is an issue with NCAA not providing fair treatment for all teams in a not for profit event. The whole point of the NCAA is to provide a level playing field for athletes.
Analogy:
Try seeing it from the perspective of all the times LSU, UGA, Alabama,... get away with major NCAA infractions while GT gets slapped with sanctions and titles taken away for a couple hundred dollars worth of clothing (2009 FB ACC Championship). Its not fair, but because the factory schools(akin to NCAAM teams) garner such large following and support, they will get away with it 9/10 times, while we(akin to NCAAWB) will get slammed 9/10 times. It sets us back with respect to recruiting and ultimately slows our attempts at catching up to factories with respect to success. Will we get there given a level playing field? Who knows? Will it be much easier/possible? definitely.
The above example can be applied to many things in life.
Respectfully, I am genuinely interested in how you view this and what your thoughts are about what I've just said and explanations for your views.