Northwestern Women's Lacrosse. Who Cares?

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard about Northwestern's Women's Lacrosse "flip-flop" fiasco during their recent visit to the White House, but why is this even remotely newsworthy? The thing that shocks me is that Northwestern actually won a National Championship... their first since a fencing victory the year that Pearl Harbor was bombed.

While I respect Northwestern as an academic institution, it has absolutely no business with an athletic program. I have a sneaking suspicion that they engage in intercollegiate athletics for four reasons:

• Helping the masses differentiate it from the University of Chicago
• Being the University of Illinois' athletic bitch
• Making every other intercollegiate team in the Big Ten look good
• Giving students in that dismal, cement town called Evanston something to talk about other than their most recent mugging in Chicago
  

I say we let the women's lax team have its moment in the sun and applaud them for achieving in spite of playing for a university that is athletically impotent. So what if some wore $16 flip-flops that were affixed with plastic rhinestones? Much like soccer players, women's lacrosse players are a breed all unto their own (probably why we get along so well). They're girls that choose to run around a field while swinging bats at each other's heads. Should we really be questioning them? Let's just be glad they didn't arrive at the White House in their cleats.