The Casualties of Title IX

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance..."

—United States Code Section 20, 

 

Since Title IX has been put into play, well over 400 men’s athletic teams have been cut, according to a 2005 article at TheIND.com⁵.  As Ann Coulter wrote in her USA today article in 2001¹

“Men's teams are being decimated in pursuit of an insane feminist dream that has morphed into federal policy: to make women's sports equal to men's.”  (A woman wrote that one people.)

According to one CBS News.com article, “Colleges have cut hundreds of wrestling teams, along with dozens of men's gymnastics, tennis and track and field teams. Men's swimming is also taking a bath. Remember Olympic gold medallist Greg Louganis? He polished his art on the University of Miami's championship swimming and diving team. That team no longer exists.^3”

Wrestling is a shadow of what it once was.  And in 2002 Dennis Dodd threw some of the blame at FOOTBALL².  As he pointed out, up until that year Division I universities had cut zero scholarships from football in order to comply with Title IX requirements.  Obviously Dennis is a wrestling fan and he has some valid points.  But he also touches on the real issue is that Title IX was poorly written and even more poorly enforced.  Dennis hits the nail on the head when he says “They count against Title IX requirements, and there is no comparable women's sport to balance them out,” talking about football.  Dennis is correct in pointing to the humungous coaching staffs, salaries, and budgets that football programs are known for.  But if you are a college athletic director are you going to cut the program that the boosters contribute the most to and which brings in the biggest bucks?  Heck no! 

Even Cheer Leading has been involved in Title IX, and it wasn’t what the customers wanted⁴. As Walter Olson points out in his 2007 article on Overlawyered.com, schools were making the cheerleaders go to girls athletic contests even though the girls didn’t want them there.  I can attest to this scenario.  I thought it would be cool one time to get the cheer squad to come out to one of our softball games because it was a big game and I was looking for any extra motivation I could dig up.  My girls quickly put an end to that thought.  THEY didn’t want the cheer leaders there.  You don’t have cheer leaders at a softball game.  What was I thinking?

So I’m going to try to put into a nutshell some of the Title IX fallacies.  And you can be assured I am not against woman’s sports.  I’m a woman’s sports coach.  Title IX was originally meant to get rid of discrimination but instead it has created new discrimination.  And for the most part it may be doing more damage than good.  Why can’t we increase woman’s sports without cutting male sports?  Why does someone think equality means spending exactly the same dollar amount or having exactly the same number of participants, etc.? 

Dodd pointed out in his article that among the craziness land-locked Kansas State University has a woman’s rowing team.  What?  Are they driving over to the Mississippi River for contests?  Talk about travel.  Yet many colleges have cut wrestling and baseball to comply with Title IX.

So here are some questions for you to answer.  Your comments are welcomed.  Perhaps if enough people respond, not just to my articles, but across the board, maybe somebody will look at Title IX as it applies to athletics and make the appropriate adjustments before it brings the downfall of all sports.  (Of course, I’m sure there are those who would support that outcome as well.)

1.       Equipment, uniforms, team sizes, etc. are different for different sports.  How can we measure the balance under such conditions?

2.      Just because there is a higher percentage of female enrollments at a given school doesn’t mean there are going to be more female athletes.  I think the type of school (what kinds of courses are taught there) should be considered. 

3.      Why should monies donated by boosters, parents groups, etc. be lumped into the consideration of budget size for a given sport?  A football team is going to have more participants by the nature of the beast.  This means more parents involved or contributing to the program.  That’s not the school spending the money. 

4.      One of the allowances towards Title IX compliance is by what the student body wants.  That may be hard to determine and of course could fluctuate.  (Read the story of the Scottsdale Community College Artichokes.)  Apparently that poll can now be taken by email. 

The bottom line here is instead of trying to make everything equal with a dose of political correctness and fear of lawsuits, why not just make it a standard that if there are enough women interested in a given sport that isn’t offered that steps are taken to add that sport.  Let’s make sure that we allocate a FAIR amount across the board for scholarships.  In this case FAIR doesn’t mean equal and it doesn’t necessarily amount to equal proportions because of different cost factors as I mentioned above.  And yes, whether or not a given sport, i.e. football, brings in revenue to the university should definitely be considered.  For some crazy reason, men and women both seem to be much more willing to shell out big bucks to go see their potential national championship winning football team as opposed to the women’s badminton competition.  Trust me ladies, if you could pack 50,000 people into a stadium to watch the woman’s (enter sport here) contest you would have no problem getting funding for that sport.

So, how would you solve the Title IX issues?

Works Cited

Coulter, Ann. USA Today - Title IX Defeats Male Athletes. 25th July 2001. 8th August 2011 .

Dodd, Dennis. CBS Sports - Football Needs to Start Making Title IX Sacrifices. 12th June 2002. 8th August 2011 .

Leung, Rebecca. CBS News - The Battle Over Title IX. 11th February 2009. 8th August 2011 .

Olson, Walter. Outlawyered - Title IX and Cheerleading. 16th January 2007. 8th August 2011 .

The WEb Site of the Independent Weekly. TheIND.com - Title Run. 2005. 8th August 2011 .

There are plenty of articles on these subjects.  Just do a Google search.  If I add every article I check out my Works Cited would take up another blog or two.

Title IX Revisited. Does Title IX Need an Overhaul?

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance..."

—United States Code Section 20, ^[1]

Recently a group of coaches, players, parents, and former players, has filed a suit AGAINST enforcement of Title IX, the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act  As a girls softball coach, I’m sure that to one degree or another, probably to a lesser extent, I’ve been an indirect beneficiary of Title IX.  However, according to so many blogs, rumors, and water cooler conversations, it may be possible that Title IX has caused as much damage to scholastic sports as it has benefited same.  And as I dig into the subject to make sure I get my facts and fiction straight, I quickly have realized that I cannot cover this subject in one blog post.  So I will officially announce that this post is the first in a series of blog posts on the subject.  I am dedicating some time and effort into these writings primarily for one reason; A challenge to Title IX, when considered in the context of our overall economic conditions, may be one of the most significant events in its impact of scholastic sports in a long time.  As far as softball goes, a Title IX challenge will put the bat safety issues on the back burner, about ten rows back, real fast.

According to an Associated Press article on Yahoo Sports last week, it says before the law, less than 300,000 girls participated in high school sports, compared with 3.5 million boys, according to the department. In 2007-08, the number of girls participating increased to 3 million, compared with 4.4 million boys.  On the surface, it seems to have definitely increased opportunities for female athletes.  But this current lawsuit is based on the equal protection clause, citing that Title IX is taking away opportunities for male athletes.

Personally, I am against legislating quotas whether in sports or in any other part of life.  That’s right; I am one of those “less government” people.  I think as much good intention as there might be in placing quotas on various aspects of our lives, placing quotas is just as discriminatory if not more so than not having quotas in the first place.  Whether it’s affirmative action programs, immigration legislation, or Title IX, I think it is just as wrong to say to someone who is absolutely qualified to participate in whatever it is they want to participate in, that they cannot participate because we already have too many of your (enter qualification feature here) and not enough of another.  I will go one step further:  I believe that placing said quotas tends to exacerbate the problems more than it tends to solve the problems.  Too many times we have placed legislation to solve one problem that has created a greater number of other problems and only increased the intensity of issues behind the original problem.  So back to Title IX.

Did you know that Title IX, when it was written and put into law, had absolutely nothing to do with scholastic sports?  I didn’t even realize that until recently.  Title IX was an “add on” to much of the civil rights legislation passed in the 1960’s.  It was passed in 1972.  Without going into all the details, Title IX was originally about discrimination in hiring practices at federally funded institutions (read “colleges and universities”).  Click here to go to Wikipedia’s information on Title IX.  (I use Wikipedia as a general source since in some cases its validity can be questioned.  However in this case I believe the information to be accurate enough to provide a general overview of what Title IX was and how it came about.)  There was some effort to diminish the application to collegiate sports but it was pretty much squashed.  Depending upon who you talk to Title IX “applied” says either “you have to spend as much money on woman’s sports as you do on men’s sports” or “you have to provide equal opportunity for women athletes as you do for male athletes.”  Either one is difficult to measure but I could agree with the second one far easier than the first.  How do you compare dollars spent or opportunities presented from one sport to the next?  The main criteria to determine if a school is in violation seem to be a proportionality test.  This test looks at the proportion of athletes compared to the proportion of student enrollment.  If you have a 50-50 split between males and females enrolled at a given school, and your athletic participation is 65% male and 35% female then you are probably going to be hit with a lawsuit.

How do you compare football to any woman’s sport?  How do you compare football to any other sport, male or female, period?  How do you justify dropping wrestling, a sport that most women have shown little interest in participating?  How do you drop track and field or cross country, two similar sports that women were probably as interested in if not more so than just about any other sport? How do you factor in the fact that girls tend to be less likely to participate in competitive sports compared to boys?  Do you see the issues building?  The purported idea of Title IX was to provide greater opportunities and equality for women primarily in the workplace and mainly in educational institutions.  It was expanded to apply to scholastic sports and I believe that there is no doubt that it has helped to create many more opportunities for female athletes without question.  The main questions I will be addressing in the next few weeks are:  1) Has Title IX gone too far? 2) Has Title IX been misapplied or used as a “scapegoat” at a number of schools? And 3) Is there a better solution in solving all the issues involved than the legislation we currently have – Title IX?

Please don’t jump on me yet.  There are a number of cases where Title IX enforcement has been needed.  Here is a link to an article by a Maryland umpire who felt that the safety conditions at the girls’ softball fields were not being considered as much as at the boys’ fields.  But even in this case, there are more factors involved than just whether it’s boys’ fields or girls’ fields.  I will also break these factors down in a later issue.

http://www.titleix.info/Faces-of-Title-IX/Meet-the-Faces-of-Title-IX/-Jack-Mowatt-Softball-Administrator-and-umpire-Prince-Georges-County-Maryland.aspx

Please bookmark this page and come back next week for the next edition.  And please, feel free to leave comments (with civility applied of course) especially if you have been involved or impacted directly by Title IX issues over the years.  Each week I will add a few links referencing the articles I’ve researched.  Next week, I will discuss the casualties of Title IX.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX - Wikipedia

http://news.yahoo.com/group-sues-over-title-ix-high-school-enforcement-151136377.html;_ylt=Aqt3CSUk9Ub0rmbmLX.6QlMLMxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTNhOWgxZjUyBHBrZwNmM2Y3YmNjMi1jZDgyLTNlOGUtOTc5Yy0xNjBhNjcyNzEwM2IEcG9zAzYEc2VjA2xuX0NvbGxlZ2VfZ2FsBHZlcgNmOTRjODBkMC1iM2MzLTExZTAtYmY3ZS0xY2Q1ZDQ4ZjM3Nzg-;_ylv=3

AP Article on Yahoo

Protecting Our Young Athletes

“Should bunting be banned” is the common title of many blogs and news reports following the tragic accident in Winslow, Arizona.

(CBS/AP) 

PHOENIX - A 13-year-old Arizona boy was killed in a freak accident after a baseball hit him over the heart as he tried to bunt, officials in his Little League said Friday.

CBSSports.com reports that Hayden Walton went for the bunt during a game Tuesday night in the close-knit northern Arizona city of Winslow, said Jamey Jones, a Winslow Little League official.

"He took an inside pitch right in the chest," Jones said. "After that he took two steps to first base and collapsed."

He died the next morning at a local hospital.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/04/sportsline/main20068965.shtml#ixzz1ORfSJtb1

I responded to this incident on the CBS site and actually more so in response to many of the comments that were made on this site. 

Should we make a law requiring chest protection?  Why doesn’t Little League do more? What about other sports, isn’t golf and tennis safer?  ON and on and on. 

One comment sites a blog that isn’t even available claiming 63 deaths by kids participating in Little League play.  Assuming that is correct let’s put this in a bigger picture.  Little League Baseball and Softball has a few MILLION kids participating in its leagues every year.  According to the Little League media guide, there are 45,000 (that’s THOUSAND) games leading up the the various world series championships each year.  And yet only 63 children have died (directly or indirectly) over their history (not just a single year) because of participating in these contests.

I think I would rather have my kids playing Little League baseball or softball than say, flying, riding a bike, riding or driving in a car on the freeway, skiing, skateboarding, etc., etc, etc.

Another comment points to Baylor University’s catcher, Clare Hosack, who took a foul ball to the face (she was not bunting as one commenter said).  She broke a few bones but had no concussion and was back behind the plate for the College World Series games two weeks later.  Furthermore, this amazing young lady CHOSE not to wear a helmet with a face mask which is allowed per NCAA rules.  Likewise, major league baseball players do not wear masks either and they are consistently facing pitches of 90 miles per hour and above.

And for you tennis and golf fans out there….in tennis the service of a professional player can reach 150 miles per hour.  Yet while I could not find an article about deaths from contact with a tennis ball (other than a bird), here is an interesting article about deaths of young athletes, including tennis players, from heart issues.  In golf, maybe there’s a reason for a lack of deaths, like, that you are (or should be) hundreds of feet, if not yards, from the person hitting the ball.

I could go on and on about the risks of sports, the safety of sports, the protections provided by certain equipment in sports, etc.  But there is a bigger issue here that is constantly in the forefront and that is how far we should go in protecting our kids playing sports.  I won’t even go into the adult side.  I was hit a number of times when I used to play slow pitch softball.  No, not by the pitch…I did move a little faster than that.  But I was a pitcher and was hit by batted balls on four different occasions.  Once I was hit by a line drive just above the heart.  I went to the hospital to have it checked out.  The doctor said that if I had been hit two inches lower it may have bruised my heart and I could have had more serious issues.  I still kept playing; at least for a few more years.

Parents constantly want their son or daughter to be the center of attention; to be on the best team; to be the star; etc., etc., etc.  We want it all.  We want that scholarship.  We want to be pro.  We want, we want, we want.  But when our little Johnny or DD gets hurt we want to blame somebody.  We want paid.  (I am not saying that this is the attitude of Hayden Walton’s parents, I am saying this as a general comment).  There was a lawsuit in New York by a player who broke her foot while sliding into a base at  a high school softball game.  She said she wasn’t trained properly.  I want to know how a player who had been playing since she was 7 years old could 1) never learn how to slide and 2) make her high school team not knowing how to slide.  I’m sorry moms and dads but we cannot protect our children from everything.  Maybe you can choose to NOT let them participate in anything, then they can sit on the couch watching tv all the time and die at 40 years old weighing 650 pounds and not being able to get out of the chair.

One of the comments on the CBS site asked why there wasn’t a law requiring chest protection.  Well, first, I don’t want a law requiring something to try to protect everything.  We have too many laws anyhow.  We shouldn’t need laws to tell us to do something we feel needs to be done.  If you feel your child should have a face mask, a mouth guard, etc., then buy it and put it on them.  If you choose not to do that then shut up.  Second, I simply have to point at one example that is indicative of our attitudes about many things, not just youth sports.  How many of you, especially if you live in California, are still texting while driving?  Enough said?

I pray that God will provide some comfort to Hayden’s family in this difficult time.  It is a tragedy that every parents hopes they will never have to endure.  My daughter was a softball pitcher and I can assure you that there were times that I worried about her safety standing 40 feet away from a kid with a stick trying to hit the ball she just threw.  But we have two choices when it comes to sports; when it comes to life: 

Participate to the fullest or take your ball and go home.