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by Mike Fish, CNNSI.com 12/26/02
Now that emotions are heating up, verbal salvos are flying and both sides are headed to Washington, you can expect a beauty of a fight over Title IX in the coming weeks and months.
This thing has been festering for 30 some years, ever since President Richard Nixon signed the mandate for equal athletic and academic opportunities at educational institutions into law. Oh, you've had the football guys carping about having to pay the freight for women's sports. You've heard the disenfranchised, if you will -- the wrestlers and other minor jocks coldly slashed from college budgets -- blaming the Title IX crowd for their plight.
Nobody paid them much attention. Not even the courts bought into all the whining. The law was the law, after all.
But it's a new day, and protectors of Title IX are themselves now screaming bloody murder as the Bush administration weighs hefty tweaks that could dramatically weaken the law. The blue-ribbon committee appointed by Secretary of Education Rod Paige to review Tile IX won't issue its recommendations until Jan. 8, yet already there are claims that women stand to lose as many as 100 athletic opportunities at major college programs.
If you listen to those who want Title IX left as is, this is the byproduct of an assault led by the likes of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., an old wrestling coach, and a slew of anti-Title IX folks now empowered within the Department of Education.
Is the process rigged, as they contend? Well, that's a potentially inflammatory charge in today's political climate, but some facts do make you wonder:
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Editorial notebook: Choosing up sides for Title IX
By Alison apRoberts -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 a.m. PST Thursday, December 26, 2002
I'm afraid of the ball. My daughter is not. That's what Title IX has done.
There are some who would like to bench the 1972 law that put girls on an equal footing with boys on the playing field at schools. The law during its 30th anniversary year has come under increasing attack as the slayer of men's sports in schools.
Education Secretary Rod Paige convened a Commission on Opportunity in Athletics to look at the law, particularly to consider ways to make it easier for schools to show they are not discriminating. (One of the simpler current methods is demonstrating that the percentage of women in sports is roughly equivalent to the proportion of women in a given student body.) The commission is supposed to issue its report by the end of January. Supporters of Title IX are worried.
I am too. As a mom who grew up in the days before Title IX, I love what this law has done for my daughter and for me. I like watching my son play games, too, but watching my daughter and other girls play is something I take personally.
When I was in high school, we girls did something in P.E., but I'm not quite sure what. I vaguely remember boring, wimpy versions of basketball and football, but nothing worth getting red in the face about.
My daughter and her teammates on the high school freshman girls' basketball team get plenty red in the face. The yelling, the collisions, the combative stances are both thrilling and alien to me -- they let me taste an experience I never had.
Yes, playing sports can teach kids about teamwork and working hard and all that, but the real payoff seems to be the simple pleasure of play, the transcendent joy of all-out, focused physical effort. Winning is nice too, when it happens.
What's not to love about girls playing like this? Sports let adolescents experience the thrills and risks they seem to crave so deeply. It also happens to be a great way to wear them out so they might actually go to bed at a reasonable hour for a change.
Title IX changed my daughter's world for the better. Those who want to dismantle it better be prepared to face all the moms like me. We know all about growing up without sports, and we don't want our daughters to lose out on their chance. We might have been timid on the playground when we were young, but many of us are no longer afraid to play hardball.
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Has equality in sports gone too far?
A federal panel mulls changes to Title IX, which has remade women's sports over 30 years.
By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor 12/27/02
St. John's University in Jamaica, N.Y., recently decided to drop its football team. True, the small college is not a gridiron powerhouse: You won't see it battling for a national championship in the Sugar Bowl.
But the cut is serious, nonetheless. The official reason for the move: Title IX - the landmark 1972 federal law that mandated gender equality in education and has had a striking impact on college sports.
While the university also trimmed some other male and female athletic teams, school officials say they needed to drop the 62-member football team to meet a specific test of equality under Title IX: fielding numbers of men and women athletes in proportion to the student body - which has a growing female majority.
The issue of proportionality lies at the heart of an emerging fight over the controversial 30-year-old Title IX law that has already had a dramatic impact on the economic and social culture of American higher education.
The statute has unquestionably produced many new sports opportunities for women. Yet detractors say misinterpretation of the law has also needlessly resulted in the elimination of men's sports teams and fewer opportunities for male athletes.
Now a national blue-ribbon panel that has been reviewing Title IX is about to issue its recommendations - and the lobbying is escalating on both sides.
Some expect the commission, named by Department of Education (DOE) Secretary Roderick Paige, to propose rewriting certain regulations, including the key proportionality test, to make it easier for schools to comply.
Any rollback in the law's reach, or new flexibility built into it, would be welcomed by many coaches involved in smaller-scale men's sports like wrestling, which are often the first cut in funding battles over athletics.
But women's groups, which consider Title IX one of the seminal gender achievements of the past three decades, are mounting a fierce drive to keep the measure intact. They're worried about the makeup of the commission. They argue that the 15-member panel has 10 representatives from NCAA Division 1A schools - institutions typically having football and basketball programs that make it difficult to meet Title IX's proportionality test.
"The system is being rigged to provide greater advantage to an already advantaged population" of male athletes, says Athena Yiamouyiannis, director of the National Association for Girls and Women in Sports.
Women's groups, too, are pushing Title IX as a civil-rights issue and thus are hoping the Trent Lott debacle on segregation will prevent the White House from revising any enforcement rules. "I hope the Bush administration takes from this episode with Senator Lott the understanding that civil rights is of critical importance to massive number of Americans," says Jocelyn Samuels of the National Women's Law Center. "It's not just a bunch of radical feminists."
Department of Education officials and commission members, however, deny the charges of bias. The work and the process have been "exemplary," said Ted Leland, athletic director of Stanford University and a co-chair of the Title IX review commission.
Impact of Title IX on the field
There's little argument that the impact of Title IX has been enormous. In the decades since it was enacted, the law has transformed opportunities for women at all levels, but particularly in college.
Without the law, there might not have been a Mia Hamm, the world-famous soccer star, who honed her skills in college. Women's college soccer has soared from just 1,855 participants in 1981-82 to 18,548 in 2000-2001, a 10-fold leap.
Meanwhile, some argue that many men's teams have been dropped in recent decades to meet the proportionality test - which they see as a form of reverse discrimination. Indeed, a group of college wrestling coaches is suing the DOE to change its proportionality requirement - even if the commission doesn't ultimately recommend such change. While many of these critics support the progress of women's and girl's sports, they believe Title IX is being unfairly enforced.
"We've lost over 434 college wrestling programs since the early 1970s, not all to Title IX, but a good number of programs have been," says Michael Moyer, executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association.
Women's groups counter that Title IX isn't to blame for the cuts. Instead, they point to big-money college sports, like football, that often squeeze small-scale men's sports like swimming and gymnastics.
Hobson's choices
Just what is behind the elimination of athletic programs is often difficult to determine and draws differing views from even the athletes themselves. Take the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In April, the school announced it would axe its trophy-winning men's gymnastics team as well as its men's and women's golf programs. University officials cited an out-of-control athletic budget as the culprit.
But even though Title IX was not officially mentioned, many athletes blame the law anyway, including William Callahan, a junior who competes on floor exercise, parallel bars, and the high bar. It was tough for him to hear that his team would get cut, in part because his girlfriend is a female gymnast whose team survived. "It seems like we have stupid sports up here just to compensate for Title IX requirement," he says. "We have women's crew up here where the lakes freeze over. We recently built a women's hockey rink right next to the men's. I don't understand it."
As it happens, his sport may survive. Mr. Callahan says fund-raising efforts have earned $2.2 million, with just $500,000 more needed to keep gymnastics and the other sports going. He adds that he has to watch his sharp Title IX comments because his girlfriend says the law is good.
Ms. Samuels of the National Women's Law Center argues that Title IX has actually helped male athletes. While conceding some men's teams have been dropped, others have been added, so that the overall participation by male athletes and even the number of teams have grown, she says.
In 1981-'82, there were 64,000 (28 percent) women playing college varsity sports compared to 167,000 (72 percent) men, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Twenty years later in 2000-2001, there were 149,000 (42 percent) women and 207,000 (58 percent) men.
A major criticism, however, is that men's teams are being wiped out. Yet a March 2001 report to Congress by the General Accounting Office shows that between 1981-1982 and 1998-1999 the number of men's teams showed a slight increase (0.4 percent).
Still, women's teams easily outpaced the men, surging 66 percent. Today, the number of women's teams at four-year schools outnumbers male teams 9,479 to 9,149. More men still participate overall because many traditionally male sports, like football, have bigger rosters.
One school's solution
To navigate the requirements of Title IX and limited budgets, colleges are devising delicate compromises. In the mid-1990s, officials at the University of Rhode Island faced a quandary: the school had about 100 more male athletes than female athletes. Either it would have to add more women's teams, or cut male teams to comply with Title IX - or risk losing federal funds.
So the school trimmed a little from each of the men's sports and added a women's rowing team in 1997, says Lauren Anderson, associate director of athletic programs. Today women's rowing, with about 50 on the team, has brought the school closer to meeting Title IX proportionality rules. Many women have found the experience transforming.
"Sports are just something everybody needs," says Megan Barnard, a rower on a scholarship who gets up at 5 a.m. to practice. "When I look back at it, it completes my day and makes my day worthwhile. I wouldn't want to be here without it."
At St. John's, the compromises haven't come so easily. The percentage of women at the New York campus is growing every year. It hit 58 percent in 2002, making proportionality a difficult - and moving - target. "We must focus on those programs that reflect the changing makeup of our student body," said the Rev. Donald Harrington, president of St. John's in a recent statement.
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Title IX rules unfair to male athletes
December 27, 2002 rockymountainnews.com
In its 30 years of existence, Title IX has changed from a civil-rights measure guaranteeing equal opportunity for women in athletics to a rigid rule based on strict proportionality that does more to harm men than it does to help women.
It's way overdue for a makeover, and a commission appointed by President Bush appears ready to propose one early next month. You can hear the screaming from here. "It is shocking to see this commission throw out 30 years of progress in such a casual way," said Marcia Greenburger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center.
Of course, no one is proposing a return to 1972. Title IX, which passed that year, barred sex discrimination in any program at any college or university that receives federal funds, which almost all do even if only indirectly through individual scholarships. The law wasn't directed at sports in particular, but there was little doubt that discrimination was part of the explanation for the stark disparity between men's and women's participation rates. Only 7.4 percent of high school athletes were female, and 15.6 percent of college athletes.
Since women are now more than 41 percent of athletes at both the high school and college level, many women who wanted the opportunity to participate were being denied it. The question is whether that is still true, or whether differences in participation rates are the result of individual preferences.
When the regulations implementing Title IX were adopted in 1979, they offered colleges and universities three possible ways to prove they had eliminated that pattern of discrimination. They could show that the percentage of women in athletics programs was the same as the percentage of women in the student body; they could demonstrate that they had a "history and continuing practice" of adding women's sports, or they could show that the athletic interests of their female students were "fully and effectively accommodated."
Over the years, the second and third options have fallen into disfavor because they don't offer a safe haven from lawsuits. Marking progress by the addition of women's sports made sense when the regulations were written, but it couldn't continue indefinitely. And the legal standard for "fully and effectively accommodated" was ill-defined.
However, the first standard causes problems as well. As female college enrollments climb, it becomes an ever higher target to reach; nationwide, 56 percent of college students are female. In pursuit of the target, institutions have cut hundreds of men's programs, especially in wrestling and swimming. Whether or not women's interests are fully accommodated, it is certain that opportunities for men are declining relative to their enrollment.
The current interpretation of Title IX does not even allow for the possibility that men and women may differ in the extent to which they want to participate in athletics. If the rest of higher education were regulated like athletics, universities would have to close their teacher-training programs for lack of male interest and their engineering schools for lack of female interest.
That wouldn't make much sense, and neither does the way Title IX has been applied to sports. Reform is badly needed.
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Women's groups pan Title IX overhaul panel
They say the committee is biased toward big-money Division I football schools and will dilute the effect of the landmark law.
By Frank Fitzpatrick 12/29/02
Inquirer Staff Writer
If the bleak forecasts of women's rights groups prove accurate, the blue-ribbon commission that was supposed to resolve the politically charged disputes surrounding Title IX will instead only intensify them.
Leading advocates of the 30-year-old federal law that banned discrimination in athletics predicted last week that the Bush administration's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics would issue recommendations that would widen the still-sizable gap between men's and women's collegiate sports programs.
"This will have devastating consequences for the rights of women and girls across the nation," said Jocelyn Samuels, vice president of the National Women's Law Center in Washington.
Athena Yiamouyiannis, executive director of the National Association for Girls and Women in Sports, said she expected many of the proposals disclosed during the group's most recent public hearing, Dec. 4 in Philadelphia, to be part of its final report.
Those proposals, she said, included recommendations as mundane as the elimination of paperwork and as serious as a challenge to the existing standard for determining Title IX compliance. They revealed, she said, that the commission "is being used as a vehicle to push a predetermined agenda."
Most of the angst concerns "proportionality," which courts historically have used to determine an institution's compliance under Title IX. It says a school's athletic population must closely reflect the gender makeup of its student body.
Opponents contend that since more women than men are enrolling in U.S. colleges, adherence to this numerical standard has created a quota system that endangers many minor men's sports, particularly wrestling. According to a government study, 171 collegiate wrestling programs vanished between 1972 and 1999.
"We support Title IX," said Mike Moyer, executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association, which has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education seeking to overturn the proportionality standard. "But what we don't support is the interpretation that makes proportionality a quota."
During a telephone news conference Dec. 19, the women's sports advocates suggested the commission was being driven by the interests of the major football powers. Ten of its 15 members are from Division I-A football schools.
"The Department of Education has clearly stacked the deck... . The system is being rigged to provide greater advantage to an already advantaged population," Yiamouyiannis said. "There are no representatives from Division II or Division III, none from junior colleges, and none from high school athletics."
As a result, those women's organizations believe the commission's findings will be skewed in favor of football, which, with its rosters of 100 players or more and enormous budgets, frequently gets the blame for continuing inequalities in men's and women's athletic programs.
The 2000 NCAA Gender Equity Study concluded that while women make up 53 percent of the student enrollments at Division I colleges, they get only 42 percent of the athletic opportunities and budgets. And while the figure is constantly changing, as many as 80 percent of U.S. colleges are not yet in full compliance with Title IX.
Commission members, who will finalize recommendations about Jan. 25 and file a final report in late February, have not responded to the women's groups' concerns. A Department of Education spokesman said the commission was tilted toward bigger schools because the agenda was filled with issues that most directly affected those institutions.
In Philadelphia, some panel members suggested proportionality be replaced with a 50-50 rule, under which, regardless of a school's female population, money and opportunities would be split evenly. Schools would also be given the flexibility of deviating from that standard by as much as 5 percent to 7 percent.
"That would eliminate thousands of opportunities for girls and women," said Christine Grant, the women's athletic director at Iowa. "After 30 years, women still get only 42 percent of the opportunities in college. And 42 percent is not equal opportunity."
According to Grant, the 50-50 rule could remove as much as $189 million from women's collegiate sports budgets.
Other proposals mentioned in Philadelphia included using interest in athletics, rather than enrollment, as the basis for allocating resources, and counting only students of "traditional age" in determining the proportion of resources to allocate to each sex.
Title IX applies to all publicly funded schools, but it is at the college level where the debate has been most heated. The law has precipitated enormous growth in women's sports. Since 1972, according to a Department of Education survey, the number of collegiate female varsity athletes has grown from about 32,000 to 150,000.
The law is administered by the Department of Education and enforced by its Office of Civil Rights. No school has ever been sanctioned by the OCR for Title IX violations.
President Bush's appointment of avowed affirmative-action opponent Gerald Reynolds as the OCR's chief last year led to an outcry from women's rights organizations.
The naming of the commission was widely viewed as a response to that concern. But when Education Secretary Rod Paige instructed the panel of athletic administrators, athletes and college presidents "to promote opportunities for male and female athletes," it immediately came under attack.
"Title IX was never meant to assist men in athletics," Iowa's Grant said. "Women have been the underrepresented gender, and it was intended to help them."
Women's organizations had been hopeful that the commission would take a hard look at big-time football's role in the Title IX problem, or at the spiraling salaries of men's football and basketball coaches that, they insist, feeds the disparity.
Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College, noted that by cutting the maximum number of football scholarships from 85 to 60, the average Division I-A college would save $750,000 annually, twice the average cost of a wrestling program.
"Currently, there are dozens of Division I men's basketball coaches who make $1 million or more, and there are dozens more football coaches in this category," Zimbalist said. "Knock them down to $200,000 and colleges would be able to add another three to six sports."
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By Joe Starkey
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, December 29, 2002
Steelers kicker Jeff Reed did a double take Wednesday when he saw Katie Hnida trot onto the field during the Las Vegas Bowl to attempt an extra point for New Mexico.
It’s not every day that a steamy, blonde-haired co-ed straps on a helmet and shoulder pads and huddles up with the guys.
“I said, 'Look at that dude's ponytail,’ ” Reed said. “They flashed on her, and I said, 'That's a chick.' ”
And everybody wondered: Could the chick kick?
Not successfully, as it turned out. A UCLA defender blocked Hnida’s low attempt. Anyone who snickered obviously hasn’t been watching the Steelers’ kickers (Reed excluded) the past few years.
Surely, you’ve seen the replay. Within 48 hours of the kick, Hnida appeared on CNN, ESPN, The CBS Early Show and Good Morning America. It hardly mattered that she’d failed. She was the first woman to play in a Division I-A college game.
A New Mexico spokesman told me that Hnida had kicked out of a large divot. I asked her about it.
“Let’s just say the ground was a little uneven,” she said. “I should have adjusted.”
Hnida contended that her coach, Rocky Long, had not used her as a publicity stunt. She made 83 of 87 extra-point attempts in high school, plus a 35-yard field goal. She claims her range is 45 yards.
New Mexico’s other kicker, Kenny Byrd, missed a 34-yarder Wednesday.
“If you met my coach, he’s not a gimmick sort-of man,” Hnida said. “I never want to be a sideshow.”
Hnida’s attempt sparked a furious debate on whether women should be allowed to play college football. Male and female journalists alike — most of them failing to acknowledge that kickers aren’t really football players — railed against the idea, citing the physical risk. Even a kicker could find himself — er, herself — butting heads with a 300-pound oaf.
What if the 5-foot-9, 145-pound Hnida had to make a tackle?
“That would be a tough one to watch,” Reed said. “But if she's out there in pads and that's what she wants to do, then she's live.”
And she has every right to kick. Hnida doesn’t do kickoffs because of the possibility of having to make a tackle, but her goal is to be New Mexico’s place-kicker next season. Another person could handle kickoffs.
Jim Pollihan, who played soccer for the U.S. National team and now runs the Harrisburg Heat of the Major Indoor Soccer League, believes a woman will kick in the NFL.
“Just watching the U.S. women play soccer and seeing how they can strike a ball with accuracy and strength,” Pollihan said, “I think it’s just a matter of time.”
How does that hit you?
I love the idea. It’d be great to see a woman infiltrate the buttoned-down world of pro football, where players are penalized for wearing their socks too high and where it’s actually going to take affirmative action to increase the number of black coaches. Imagine a woman trotting out to attempt a game-winning field goal in the Super Bowl, her blonde pony tail bouncing out of her helmet.
It beats Scott Norwood any day.
And, really, would it be so bizarre? Think about some of the weirdo kickers we’ve seen. Think about the Gramatica brothers.
Think about Garo Yepremian. No girl could have thrown a ball more girly like than Yepremian on his historic, Super Bowl VII blunder. Guys like him allowed us to watch Gus The Field Goal-Kicking Mule and even Tony Danza with a sense of realism.
Hopefully, you have not seen — or even heard of — Danza’s 1998 film, “The Garbage-Picking, Field Goal-Kicking Philadelphia Phenomenon.”
Jim Power works for the National Kicking Service, an organization that runs kicking camps, one of which Reed attended. He can foresee the day when a woman kicks for a college team.
“Michigan went through four kickers who couldn’t make short field goals,” Power said. “Teams would be willing to sacrifice distance for accuracy.”
Power, who tried out for several NFL teams and kicked in the Arena League, worked with noted soccer player Michelle Akers. He said her range was just 42-45 yards but added, “She was as accurate as any pro ever. She was probably the best girl kicker I’ll ever see.”
Will a woman kick in the NFL?
“Never,” Power said. “Not unless they’re on steroids. They can’t kick far enough.”
Ray Pelfrey, a former NFL punter, agrees. He runs kicking camps for Professional Kicking Services and worked with Hnida.
“In a two-day camp, we do a lot of kicking, and (girls’) legs go to spaghetti pretty quick,” he said.
Hnida concedes that strength is an issue, but she believes a woman will come along who’s strong enough for the NFL. And it’s not like women don’t risk their health in other sports. You’ve got mountain bikers and boxers and even full-contact football players. More than 2,000 girls compete in boys high school wrestling.
Each year brings stories of women kicking at various levels of college football, although Pelfrey and Power only see one or two girls per year at their camps. Stephanie Weimer of McKeesport tried out for Penn State’s football team this year. Soccer star Mia Hamm showed up impromptu at a Kansas City Chiefs practice and blasted 45-yard field goals with both feet (let’s see Todd Peterson do that).
Look, coaches are coaches. They live to win, and if they hear about somebody whose kicking can help them win — whether it be a mule, a woman or Tony Danza — they will listen.