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Not to argue too much in the hypothetical. I can see the possibility of women as kickers, although I am wondering which NFL team, at a position that frequently can mean the difference of millions in dollars in revenue for a ball club, is going to take a chance on a female kicker.

I can speak first-hand about basketball though, from personal experience. I played Div. III college basketball, lettering for 4 years (class of '97). I dont' know if you have any experience w/ college hoops, but the BEST of the Div. III players would be fairly average in Div. II. And the BEST of the Div. II players would be fairly average in Div. I. And the BEST of the Div. I players could be fairly average in the NBA. Only the BEST of the BEST, of Div. I players end up being able to excel in the NBA.

To put my own talents in perspective, I was, relative to my own team, an average player for all 4 years. Even as a senior I wasn't good enough to warrant a starting spot (although i was in the 7-man rotation; but I wasn't a starter). My school was average, in terms of how competitive we were in comparison to ALL Div. III schools. Never qualified for the Div. III tournament (qualified twice for the ECAC tournament - a very small, regional "NIT", if you will). So you get an idea of where I stacked up, relative to my team, Div. III, and college basketball in general.

In my hometown in southern Cal, over the summers, I worked out in a private gym that had a basketball court. The players who played on this court HAD to be members; ie, the competition was limited to in-house, and the great players of southern California weren't stampeding to get "next" on this court by any stretch of the imagination. I grew up working out and playing at this gym, so I had a lot of old friends there. Relative to pick-up games, the quality of play was AT BEST average. Most of the time it was composed of old timers, 15 year olds, bodybuilders who wanted to get in some recreational cardio exercise, and a handful of bona-fide hoopers. Again, this is to give you an idea of the level of quality at this gym's court.

Natalie Williams is a three-time All-WNBA First Team selection (1999, 2000, 2001), a three-time All-Star selection (1999, 2000, 2001), Led the WNBA in rebounding in 2000 with 11.6 rpg , was a member of gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic Team in Sydney, Australia in 2000, was USA Basketball's Female Athlete of the Year in 1999. In 2002 she led the league in offensive rebounding and was #4 overall rebounding. In other words, she's no slouch.

Natalie used to come and play every now and then at the gym. I heard about her showing up and playing, fairly regularly, but never actually watched her. I had a friend at the gym, who was friends w/ the UCLA women's coach at the time (not sure if she's still there), and it was this coach (who was a gym member) who would bring Natalie to play.

Well, one day I show up, and this pretty big looking girl (she's 6'2, 210, according to her stats) shows up, and I figured it was her.

I won't go into details, but that game CONVINCED me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that women are no closer to being able to play in the NBA than they are being able to flap their arms and fly. In that gym, there were easily 10 guys (out of a total of 20), that I would have chosen to have on my team before I would pick her.

So, you may have a case to make for kickers in the NFL -- women can hide at that position. But there's nowhere for them to hide on the NBA court, and that is something that I dont' predict will EVER happen.

As important as special teams are kickers are almost never drafted, they're picked up off of free agency. One of the great "what was he thinking" moments in recent NFL history was when Al Davis actually used draft picks to get both a punter and a place kicker (what he was thinking was that he had an 8-8 record the year before and had lost 4 of those games by less than 1 field goal and had missed a field goal in each, he also had the shortest average punts in the league and was giving up cherry field position, three years later the Raiders were in the Super Bowl, though they got killed). Teams take chances on the kickers all the time, look at Anderson for the Vikes the guy has retired a couple of times and halfway through the season the Vikes beg him to come back. Most kickers make league minimum for their years of play. For an amazingly crucial position it gets almost no respect.

The NBA will be the last place women break into for two reasons. 1 - team size, the NBA has the smallest teams of the major sports and thus the best talent pool ratio of the sports, that makes it very hard to break into for anybody; 2 - the NBA has been described by many as a traveling brothel, of the court lifestyle is legendary for its debauchery, not an environment that's going to welcome women as equals until it absolutely has to.

My prediction for the NFL is that once they settle in as kickers women will start gobbling up the so-called skill positions (wide receiver, then RB, then cornerback and safety, then QB), these are positions that require good hands and smarts over brawn. The NHL will probably proceed faster though, there's already been a woman goalie in the minors, and a lot of the women in the women's league complain about the no checking rule (many of them started off by using hockey to get revenge on their brothers) so there's some serious bucking for change in the NHL. I don't pay enough attention to baseball to make predictions, but given some of the beer guts I see waddling around the bases on ESPN hilights I'm suprised there aren't any women in it already.