For non-Americans: Title IX was part of a civil rights law in the '70s forbidding sex descrimination in education. The athletic part is the most controversial.
My question: Is it true that Congress gave the NCAA the opportunity to exclude football from the law’s proportional regulations?
I am pretty sure the answer is no.
From here: “In 1974, U.S. Senator John Tower proposed an amendment to exempt “revenue generating” sports from Title IX. The amendment was defeated…”
I’ve never heard of it an explicit exemption for football being offered to the NCAA, but there was a failed attempt in the Senate to tack on an amendment to allow revenue-generating/donation-providing sports to be exempt (cite). Naturally, football would have been covered under such an amendment.
Tower’s amendment is probably what I’m thinking of. Thanks jas! Interesting that no women’s sports have rosters as big as teh scholarship limit for football. (I have no prob with runners getting counted 3Xs)
At universities with football programs this is generally mitigated by having a handful more sports open to women than men. For instance, one university I attended had the following official athletics:
Both genders: Baseball/Softball, Basketball, Cross Country, Golf, Track & Field
Male only: Football
Female only: Rowing, Soccer, Swimming & Diving, Tennis, Volleyball
The rosters of the five female-exclusive sports equal the football team.
Colleges have, esentially, two choices under Title IX: either add a lot of new women’s sports (the big football factories usually do this) or cut a lot of lesser men’s sports, like wrestling, diving, lacrosse, et al (smaller schools usually do this).
What would prevent them from solving it by letting women on the football team? It’s not discrimination if no women want to risk the injuries they’d get playing with men.
If I understand correctly, Title IX measures participation, not allowance. Simply allowing women to try out wouldn’t help unless significant numbers actually made the team.
If I understand correctly, Title IX measures participation, not allowance. Simply allowing women to try out wouldn’t help unless significant numbers actually made the team.
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My college complied by adding no women’s teams while cutting wrestling and fencing. It was routinely pointed out that (a) several women fencers were, at the time, competing against men from other colleges, and that (b) this approach would lead to fewer women participating; nevertheless, it satisfied the letter (and, arguably, the spirit) of the law.