Title IX Has Harmed Men’s Collegiate Sports
July 3rd, 2008 by Glenn Sacks
I was recently quoted in CSU Fullerton women athletes outnumber men (Orange County Register, 7/1/08) about Title IX’s effect on collegiate athletics in California. The piece isn’t terrible but it is reflective of the way men’s and fathers’ concerns are covered (or not covered) by the media.
The article is largely an applause piece about the growth of women’s collegiate athletics in California. Much of this “progress” has been made simply by cutting men’s sports, and the criteria to determine which sports to keep or build and which ones to cut is very flawed.
Reporter Mary Jo Fisher throws my quote in there for “balance” but it ain’t much–my quote is short and without much context or supporting evidence. (To be fair, it’s possible that Fisher included a longer quote and/or more context but it was cut by a copy editor.)
The quote was drawn from an article I wrote seven years ago. While some of the numbers are probably no longer accurate, it does describe the problem with Title IX and why it has harmed many male college athletes. It appears below.
California Men’s College Sports Under Assault from NOW
By Glenn Sacks
Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal (10/29/01)
California State University men’s sports are under assault from feminist organizations who are pursuing a course which both ignores the desires of female college students and victimizes male college athletes. This week’s casualty was California State University Northridge’s (CSUN) 40 year-old football team.
The attack on male CSU athletes began in February of 1993, when the California chapter of the National Organization for Women (Cal-NOW) sued the CSU system for sex discrimination in athletics under federal Title IX legislation. The CSUs were forced to sign a consent decree with Cal-NOW in October of that year, and since then dozens of men’s college teams throughout the state have been eliminated.
The consent decree mandates that CSU schools achieve “gender equity” by bringing the percentage of female to male athletes and the percentage of female to male scholarship funding to within 5% of the percentage of females to males eligible to participate in athletics. It also requires that the female portion of the overall athletic budget be within 10% of the school’s male-female ratio.
On the surface this seems fair, but it in fact discriminates against male college athletes in several ways. For one, the consent decree judges “gender equity” by male-female enrollment ratios instead of student interest levels. Yet numerous studies demonstrate that female college students, in general, are less interested in competitive team athletics than males are, and are more interested in personal fitness activities (jogging, aerobics, etc.), than males. Even at all-women’s colleges the percentage of females participating in and expressing an interest in participating in team sports would not be enough to achieve the consent decree’s gender balance at most co-ed schools.
At the same time, some female athletic activities, such as drill team and cheerleading, are not counted as athletics. Thus a male football player and a female drill team captain both practice with their teams, do physically demanding training, and perform every weekend, but only the football player is considered an athlete, and only the money spent on his activity is considered for gender equity.
In addition, gender equity calculations unfairly count a sport’s athletes, scholarships, and budget without considering its money-making ability. While most male sports and almost all female sports are not profitable, some, such as football and men’s basketball, often bring schools large revenues–revenues which frequently benefit women’s athletic programs but which are completely invisible in gender equity calculations. (more…)
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