You may suspect I'm telling you all this because I'm about to say something critical about women and sports. Well, you caught me. I want to talk about the story of Heather Lynn Mercer and the Duke University football team — a case study in the follies of feminism.

In 1995 Mercer tried out for the team as a field-goal kicker; she wasn't very good by men's standards (some said she was fairly consistent from 30 yards out; others said 40), but Coach Fred Goldsmith let her on the team as a walk-on. But she never dressed for games and Goldsmith — who reportedly grew concerned about the distraction of having a woman on the team — cut her the next season. In a decidedly boneheaded moment, he also made a crack about how she ought to try out for a beauty contest instead.

Mercer protested and ended up — what else? — suing. She got a jury to award her $2 million plus her legal expenses. Duke appealed, but in mid-March of this year, a federal judge upheld the award. Mercer announced that she'd use the money to establish a scholarship fund for female athletes.

Think this was a simple victory for fairness? Think again.

"Mercer went out for football and it doesn't seem as if she wanted to be treated fairly," said Los Angeles Times sportswriter Diane Pucin. "She wanted to be treated differently." After all, Pucin noted, the fact remains that Mercer's kicking was inadequate; a man with such limited ability wouldn't have made the team at all. And men get insulted and cut by coaches all the time. "It's a subjective judgment," Pucin wrote. "It's what a coach gets to do. Like it or not, it's still part of playing sports." Do we really want to haul in the lawyers every time an athlete feels ill treated?

Then there's the amount of the award. "Be honest," wrote Tribune Media Services columnist Mitch Albom. "Isn't $2 million a little ridiculous if no physical harm or serious emotional trauma was done to Mercer? It's a politically correct decision with a decidedly incorrect payoff."

Ironically, as both writers pointed out, Mercer's case probably hurt the prospects for women who want to join men's teams-because lawsuit-wary coaches won't let them try out to begin with. That's a power that can't be taken away from coaches, unless you also want to require that women's teams must let men join. (Anyone have any doubts where that would lead?)

The upshot, Pucin wrote: "When people use accusations of racism or sexism in silly, unbecoming ways, then the real incidents of sexism and racism are taken less seriously. Mercer has made it much more likely that a truly talented female athlete who wants to participate on a men's team won't get the chance."

Pucin and Albom both make some good points, and I'm with them most of the way. But I have to part company with them in one respect. Even in the rare case where a woman might be capable of making a men's football team, I don't think she should.

I know what some readers are thinking: But that's not fair! It's a natural reaction, since most of us are in the habit of thinking that individual choice and individual merit trump all other considerations. But there's another way to look at things: from the standpoint of their impact on society. And that's a view we shouldn't brush aside too quickly.

A society that doesn't want to descend into barbarism reinforces men's protective instincts toward women, especially in matters of physical strength and violence. You can't maintain civilization when 300-pound linemen place a female kicker in their sights and charge like bulls, for the entertainment of thousands of screaming fans. Rules against "roughing the kicker" notwithstanding, that sort of spectacle is bound to lead to the further brutalization of our culture. Once "liberation" proceeds to that point, it's hard to believe many women will feel they've gotten a bargain.

Moreover, a healthy society doesn't view male-female relations through the paradigm of competition at all. Feminists, on the other hand, tend to see interaction between men and women as a never-ending jockeying for position, and they're forever nursing resentment over the notion that men are keeping the good stuff (money, power, prestige) to themselves.

If you want to see a very different perspective, look no further than the Bible, from its provisions for the care of widows to the Apostle Paul's instruction for marriage ("Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. . . . Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her").

Naturally, feminists — who are offended by the very idea of gender roles — see this ethic as just an excuse for exploitation and domination. Yet it's actually just the opposite. Ordinary women have always found it provides protection against the rough-and-tumble contests common among men. For that matter, ordinary men have benefited over the years too, proving their masculinity not (as we often see today) through criminal violence and promiscuous sex but through the socially and spiritually positive role of protector and provider to women.

If that model hasn't always been followed in our culture (and it hasn't), at least it's usually been upheld as a goal to strive for. Now it's worth striving to recover that vision. If that costs a handful of women their goal of playing ball with the boys — well, sorry, but I have to think that's a bargain. And I suspect a lot of women would agree.