Being a sports columnist is easy.

We get to make predictions no one holds us accountable for. Throw in a couple of pop culture references and you are considered witty. And our soapboxes are so high, only Charlie Sheen rises above opinion scribes when it comes to a storming, principled rant.

Best of all, we can feel morally superior to the rest of you by writing an 800-word defense for a social justice issue.

This week, the Masters – unlike any other – brings about its own special brand of media moral kowtowing.

With the green jacket members of the Augusta National Golf Club proudly trumpeting the backasswards good ‘ol boy network for The Great Game in all of its horrifying glory, there is no shortage of ways for a righteous-minded sports columnist to attack the southern gents.

Clapping at an audible level after a hole-in-one is strictly forbidden. TV cameras are not allowed on all 18 holes. It took until 1990 for Augusta to allow a black person to join the club. Clearly these people think “Leave It To Beaver” got it right.

But it is the big injustice – the Augusta National Golf Club refuses to allow women members – that draws the attention of the week.

Which means it is time for a plethora of national columnists to defend women’s rights in sports.

This certainly seems like a good thing. Only the most staunch of libertarians will defend the Augusta National Golf Club for exercising their right to run a private business as they wish – and even most of those defenders have a “it’s the south being the south” kind of feel to it.

There are few in the media who would argue Augusta National Golf Club’s membership policy isn’t in need of major reform.

But that is just it.

All the media does is argue or rave or opine.

Many of the columns written that will bash the Masters chairman Billy Payne for hypocrisy or just straight-up being a jackass (which he is) will have the dateline of “AUGUSTA, Ga.” Criticizing the event while providing absurd amount of coverage to it rings fairly hollow.

This isn’t an issue that requires a boycott of an entire season or anything extreme either. It is a four-day event with a pretty obvious solution if someone actually wanted to promote change – just don’t show up. Don’t cover every single aspect of the tournament, don’t watch on TV and don’t eat a freaking pimento cheese sandwich. A prominent columnist who truly cares and doesn’t just want to feel like they are socially just could try leading the way through action instead of just words.

The disregard for women in sports has manifested implicitly in another issue as well over the past few weeks.

With documentaries on ESPN, HBO and PBS raising the issue of whether college athletes deserve to be paid or not, there has been a movement from national voices (Jason Whitlock) and bloggers alike (The Big Lead) to put more money in the hands of college athletes.

Which is fine. It is certainly a worthwhile argument to have, regardless of what side you fall on.

But there is one absolute, positive, unequivocal truth to arguing college football and basketball players should get paid.

You are going to need to cut from women’s sports to do it. As Title IX is written right now, universities are so handicapped in supporting their athletic departments that only 14 of 120 FBS schools finished with their budgets in the black for 2009.

While there are certainly ways those numbers can be helped – coach and athletic directors’ huge salaries are the ones most cited – cutting from administration members won’t be enough to pay men’s athletes what they are “worth” while maintaining decent women’s programs. Critics of the system love to point out that the bowl system pays out ridiculous sums of money, yet a Badger Herald open records request of UW’s Rose Bowl expenditures show the Badgers merely brought in $79,168 in profit from their trip to Pasadena. And that money has to be split between 22 other sports.

Whether this oversight for women’s sports is ignorant or simply ignored hardly matters, the end result is making sure men get paid at the expense of women when it comes to playing ball.

Being a sports columnist is easy. You just bang out a rant defending the rights and equality of the unprotected in big-time athletics.

The emptiness of the words matter little when you are taking a socially just stand.

Michael is a senior majoring in journalism. Think the media really cares about women in sports? Or are they just faking it to feel good? Let him know at [email protected].