Stakeholders Celebrate Strides Made, Identify Areas for Improvement, and a Senator Sends 10 Questions to the NCAA on its Role with Title IX
Athletics Veritas is a weekly series aimed at helping higher education executives, faculty, and other stakeholders stay tuned in on trending national issues impacting college athletics, especially NCAA Division I. Athletics Veritas is created by senior DI athletic administrators around the nation.
Title IX Celebrates its 50th Anniversary This Week: Stakeholders Celebrate Strides Made, Identify Areas for Improvement, and a Senator Sends 10 Questions to the NCAA on its Role with Title IX
Executive Summary
Title IX— the landmark federal civil rights legislation— celebrates its 50th anniversary this Thursday June 23rd
The Women’s Sports Foundation recently published a report identifying strides made in the first 50 years, areas for improvement and trending issues tied to Title IX
A Front Office Sports report examines industry stakeholders' views on whether NCAA championships such as men’s and women’s basketball should be combined events or stand on their own.
Senator Roger Wicker (R – MS) sends ten questions specific to Title IX to NCAA President Mark Emmert which, broadly speaking, raises questions about whether the NCAA has a role in monitoring its member institutions for compliance with Title IX.
Stakeholders identify trending issues tied to the application of Title IX in the college sports sphere, including trans and cis-gender participation and the support and advocacy of male and female athletes in the NIL arena.
This Thursday, June 23rd, Title IX officially celebrates its 50th anniversary. Title IX is civil rights legislation prohibiting federally-funded schools from discriminating “on the basis of sex.” Within the scope of the law, equal sports participation opportunities are a key and visible calculus to measuring schools’ compliance with the law.
The Women’s Sports Foundation’s (WSF) recently published a Title IX Report celebrating the 50th anniversary entitled “We’re Not Done Yet.” The report provides a comprehensive look, both quantitatively and qualitatively, on strides made since 1972 as well as areas for improvement.
From a numbers standpoint, the WSF report showed the following progress made in girls and women participation:
At the high school level, dramatic increases have been seen in participation opportunities, rising from 294,015 in 1972 to 3,402,733 in 2018-19, (the most recent reporting year).
Girls comprised 7% of high school athletes participating on varsity teams in 1972. In 2018-2019, that figure rose to 43%
At the college level, we have come quite a distance. 29,977 of female athletes from 1971-72 compared to 215,486 competing on teams sponsored by NCAA institutions in 2020-21.
The percentage of women athletes competing on college teams has risen from 15% in 1972 to 44% during the 2020-21 academic year.
The WSF identified many strides made since 1972 while also identifying opportunities and areas for improvement. Here’s an excerpt from that report’s Executive Summary:
“As Title IX’s anniversary year unfolds, women are among the highest-ranking and most powerful government officials in the country, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris (the nation’s first female vice president as well as the first African American and Asian American to serve in the role) and U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who is serving her fourth term in that position. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, member of the Laguna Pueblo, made history as the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary. Pathways once closed or significantly inaccessible to women have opened as Title IX created greater access to academic pursuits leading to careers in an array of occupations for women, including but not limited to astronauts, athletes, carpenters, chief executive officers, construction workers, doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs, farmers, filmmakers, firefighters, football coaches, investors, journalists, lawyers, musicians, police officers, military personnel, rock stars, Supreme Court justices, and television news anchors. For girls and women playing, competing, and working in sport, times have changed dramatically from the days when girl and women athletes were viewed as novelties.
Since Title IX’s passage in 1972, generations of U.S. citizens as well as students at recipient institutions regardless of national origin, immigration status, or citizenship status (Goldberg, 2021; Lhamon, 2014) have witnessed the ascension of women’s sport, inspired by the consistent excellence of U.S. female athletes on the international stage. Women of Team USA who competed in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games earned a total of 66 medals. If the U.S. women were their own country, their collective performance would have fallen third behind only the Russian Olympic Committee and China (Planos, 2021).
For all the progress made in helping girls and women in the United States realize their promise and potential as athletes and leaders in sport, those gains have been made without a full commitment to Title IX’s mandate of equitable and fair treatment and more general principles of gender equity throughout the sport system. Just months before U.S. women won their seventh Olympic gold medal in women’s basketball, obvious gender disparities that female athletes were subjected to at the NCAA Division I women’s basketball championship in 2021 garnered national attention, leading to an external review of their practices. Findings revealed that the NCAA’s broadcast agreements, corporate sponsorship contracts, distribution of revenue, organizational structure, and culture all prioritize Division I men’s basketball over everything else in ways that create, normalize, and perpetuate gender inequities. At the same time, the NCAA does not have structures or systems in place to identify, prevent, or address those inequities (Kaplan Hecker & Fink, 2021a, p. 2).”
Specific to college sports and the NCAA orbit, a recent Front Office Sports’ (FOS) article focused on whether women’s championships should be set on the same stage as their male counterparts and considered the success of pro tennis’ major events for the men’s and women’s side being hosted at same sites while also assessing the inequities reported around the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
A few industry stakeholders shared their perspective with FOS:
“Do you want to be able to chart your own path and stand on your own?” Arizona State sports historian Victoria Jackson told Front Office Sports. “Or do you join forces — and have not mixed-gender, but combined-gender events to line up in a more equitable way?”
As it relates to the NCAA basketball tournaments’ current structure, Big East Commissioner Val Ackerman asserts it creates a “natural limit” on growth: “The story of [the women’s] tournament is that it’s up against the men in every way, shape, or form.” Ackerman, who has been advocating for combined Final Fours since 2013, believes they would allow the college sports industry to attend both— which could increase ticket sales, outside events, and the overall platform. Fans and media wouldn’t have to choose, either.
“Is this the best event that this can be? Or could it be bigger? Could it be better?” Ackerman thinks there’s a future where the women’s tournament rivals the men’s.
FOS’ report found no consensus with the individuals they interviewed on whether men’s and women’s sports championship events should be combined. Nicole LaVoi, the director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport, is one of the experts that told FOS that she isn’t sold on combining events that are currently separate.
“Precisely at the time where women’s sport — viewership is on the rise, sales are on the rise, corporate sponsorship is on the rise … Why would right now be the time where we’re having conversations about combining it with the men’s when we have proven that women’s sport is a viable standalone product?” LaVoi said.
Lastly, it’s been on brand in recent years for Congress to step into college athletics conversations and the topic of Title IX is no exception. In a letter dated June 17, 2022, sent to NCAA President Mark Emmert, U.S. Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) asked the NCAA to provide responses to the following questions:
What data does the NCAA rely upon to support compliance with Title IX?
How is the data collected and at what frequency?
Is that data audited by the NCAA for accuracy? If so, please explain those audit methods and procedures.
What percentage of U.S. universities currently meet at least one of the three prongs of Title IX?
How much annual funding does the NCAA allocate to Title IX initiatives? Please differentiate the percentage of that funding between existing athletic programs compared to new women’s sports.
What penalties does the NCAA impose on non-complying institutions?
When does the NCAA expect all participant institutions to comply with one Title IX prong?
What steps has the NCAA taken to bolster compliance within non-compliant institutions and to expand access and opportunities for women’s opportunities in compliant institutions?
What administrative oversight measures does the NCAA use to oversee Title IX compliance?
Are universities evaluated annually for compliance with Title IX? If yes, what is NCAA’s review schedule?
The Senator’s questions may prompt conversation and clarity on whether, and to what degree, the NCAA national office has any legal responsibility for tracking and ensuring its member institutions comply with Title IX— and further, if non-compliant with Title IX, what penalties the NCAA would impose on its non-compliant member institutions.
The questions posed by Sen. Wicker may prompt the NCAA national office to affirm that its central role in supporting the fundamentals of Title IX, including non-discrimination and participation opportunities, is through advancing Title IX-friendly initiatives (including a review of how it conducts NCAA championships), as well as education outreach and programming to support its member institutions in Title IX while deferring Title IX compliance and enforcement to the U.S Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). As a point of information, the U.S. Department of Education’s website states that “OCR vigorously enforces Title IX to ensure that institutions that receive federal financial assistance from the Department comply with the law...”
A copy of the letter from Senator Wicker sent to NCAA President Emmert is available here.
Athletics Veritas is presented for information purposes only and should not be considered advice or counsel on NCAA compliance matters. For guidance on NCAA rules and processes, always consult your university’s athletics compliance office, conference office, and/or the NCAA.
