When you’re channel surfing and land on a college baseball game while watching TV, about the last thing you’d expect to see being promoted is the very thing that’s relegated the sport to second class status in collegiate athletics. But there it is, front and center on your TV screen.
This summer marks the 50th Anniversary of the landmark passage of legislation known as “Title IX” that makes “sex based discrimination” unlawful for any school or educational program the gets funding from the federal government. Title IX is widely credited with igniting the growth in girls and women’s sports that continues today.
Let’s be honest here: Title IX has done wonderful things for the growth and quality of women’s sports – while doing irreparable damage to several sports – like baseball – on the men’s side. That’s just an uncomfortable fact.
Women’s sports at the collegiate level should never get lesser treatment than men’s sports, even when it comes to relatively small things like the size of weight training facilities at the NCAA Basketball “Final Four” tournaments. The women’s facilities should be every bit the same quality as the men’s. Games, matches and tournaments should be run the same way. Equality across the board.
And for the most part there is. The progress began in the early 1970’s and while it’s been slow, it’s also been steady, and after five decades there’s not very much for women to be collectively concerned about in terms of Title IX compliance around the country.
It’s a different story if you’re a male student-athlete who wants to play baseball in college. Then there’s very much an absence of equality.
Let’s give the politicians from five decades ago the benefit of the doubt. Certainly it was an unintended consequence of Title IX that there would need to be the immediate reduction and in many cases elimination of men’s sports at the college level in order to meet the new regulations. You can assume that wasn’t their intent. But they didn’t have much foresight, either.
It was obvious to many in the NCAA at the time that numerous colleges and university athletic departments – who needed to spend big on their football programs in order to get the necessary return and fund the entirety of their athletic programs – could meet these new, strict guidelines and still fund all their non-revenue generating men’s programs. With football rosters numbering well into the hundreds and no corresponding women’s sport to balance that with, there was an immediate problem. So men’s programs like baseball had to get the axe in order to balance things out in terms of roster sizes and budgets. It wasn’t just smaller schools, either. Power Five schools like the University of Wisconsin, Iowa State, the University of Colorado and many many others had to drop baseball in order to get into compliance with Title IX.
So after all these years, it’s crystal clear: Nothing has done more to damage and stunt the growth of college baseball (and other men’s sports like wrestling, tennis, and others) in America over the past 50 years than Title IX. That’s undisputable. Which makes it all the more head scratching that the NCAA has decided to make the celebration of Title IX front and center during the men’s College World Series.
Someone at NCAA HQ needed to be a lot better at reading the room.
Whoever came up with the idea to put a Title IX logo on the backstop in full view of the TV audience needs to have his or her head examined. It’s a slap in the face to the hundreds and hundreds of male athletes and coaches who have seen their baseball programs get the axe – many while they were still active student-athletes – than to have the very reason promoted right there on the backstop on the games’ biggest stage.
Title IX isn’t going away, nor should it. But maybe the do-good politicians should give some thought to finding a way to amend it, and promote actual, real gender equity in college athletics.
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