RENE A. HENRY
KGSJ FELLOW PRSA
1474 21stAvenueSEATTLE, WASHINGTON98122-2904
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ISSUES FACING COLLEGE SPORTS
College and university presidents and chancellors, athletic directors and governing boards face a myriad of challenges today. When money began pouring in from television rights and sponsorships college sports at many schools became a big business. In almost every state in the U.S. the highest paid individual on a public payroll is either a football or basketball coach. Salaries of governors and state legislators as well as college and university presidents and chancellors pale by comparison. Some lawyers are seeking to have colleges establish a trust fund to provide medical help for former athletes who suffered concussions during their playing days.
While there are dozens or more issues, for this paper I am addressing only five. Four have federal oversight: Title IX which has been law for nearly 50 years; the Glass Ceiling for more than 25 years;the Equal Pay Act of 1963; and the Clery Act of 1990. The other issue is tuition transparency.
For years there was no priority for athletic departments to comply with any laws because the responsible authorities failed to enforce them. The typical attitude in higher educationhas been complacency and the philosophy of Alfred E. Neumann. This has been changing significantly since the president, athletic director and a vice president at Penn State University were sentenced to jail.
I would want to believe that our nation’s colleges and universities are examples of positive values and principles and behavior does not need to be legislated for a school to do the right thing.
Title IX
College sports were not the primary reason for Title IX when President Richard M. Nixon signed amendments to the Higher Education Act in 1972, that said “No person in the United States, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”
According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association there are three basic parts of Title IX as it applies to athletics:
1. Participation: Women and men must be provided equitable opportunities to participate.
2. Scholarships: The total amount of athletic aid must be substantially proportionate to the ratio of female and male athletes. For example if a college with 90 female athletes and 115 male athletes and a scholarship budget of $100,000 an equitable distribution would be $44,000 in scholarship aid for the women and $56,000 for the men.
3. Additional Benefits: Equal treatment is mandated in coaching; equipment and supplies; game and practice times; locker rooms; medical and training facilities and services; practice and competitive facilities; publicity and promotion; travel and daily per diem allowances; access to tutoring; housing and dining facilities and services; and recruitment of student athletes.
After nearly a half century, whether or not a college is in compliance with Title IX depends on who you talk with and how the law is being interpreted. Almost all of the news articles I found on the Internet talked about how colleges were struggling to be in compliance, that very few were in compliance and some were even eliminating men’s sports to seek a proportionate balance.Numerous other articles call it a quota or blind quota system. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights says there are three ways – commonly called prongs – an institution can comply:
1. The number of male and female athletes is substantially proportionate to their respective enrollments; OR
2. The institution has a history and continuing practice of expanding participation opportunities responsive to the developing interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex; OR
3. The institution is fully and effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.
Accordingly, under existing regulations, a school is in compliance if it meets any one of the three prongs.
Many advocates for compliance often cite onlyprong one as an area where schools fail to comply while at the same time these schools could show results in prongs two orthree that prove compliance. I would question if an institution has more women than men, would men therefore not be the underrepresented sex according to prong three? I believe it would depend if sports opportunities were less for men than women.
Athletic departments report their numbers annually to the DoE.Title IX sought to increase student-athlete participation for the underrepresented sex and some colleges considered the law problematic and eliminated one or more men’s sports teams seeking to gain compliance and then blamed Title IX for its action. Sports eliminated at some colleges were outstanding and graduated future Olympians. Other institutions with less integrity have gone so far as to falsify rosters of women’s teams listing names of female students who were not on the team.
What is ludicrous is how some schools have responded. Amajor public state university added a women’s rowing team to its list of sports in a state where no high school had any rowing program. In another state where high school wrestling for both boys and girls is a major sport, not one of the major public universities has wrestling programs. From 1972-2012 NCAA Division 1 wrestling programs dropped from 146 to 80 teams, men’s swimming from 181 to 136 and men’s gymnastics from 59 to 16. Many institutionshave added a sport just to show proportionality and without regard to the interests of students wanting to participate in the sport.
Rowing is the oldest collegiate sport in the U.S. but there is no NCAA-sponsored national championship for men. And lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in the country and while schools have added it as a women’s team sport few have done so for men at the Division 1 level.Are these institutions meeting the needs and wishes of their student bodies?
Most schools have several club sports teams based on the interests of the students. One easy way to comply with prong one would be to upgrade a women’s team to varsity level and with much of the organization and recruiting already done. Adding one or more club sports to its varsity program over several years could be a feasible way for a school to comply with Title IX. A survey of the student body regarding college sports teams could have interesting results with prong three and some of these sports could be in the club program.
A former president of the NCAA and prong one advocate said Title IX has not had an impact on male students because more are competing today. In a July 8, 2012 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer that he co-authored with Stephen J. Marmon, Michael Harrigan points out that participation by men in college sports has increased significantly in the past 50 years not because of Title IX but because there are many more NCAA member schools and most women-only colleges are now co-ed and provide, as they should, sports opportunities for men.In the 1970s Harrigan was director of the President’s Commission on Olympic Sports and Marmon, an author-journalist, formerly covered the U.S. House of Representatives for the New York Times. While men’s sports at some schools have been eliminated, overall more men are participating in college sports than in 1972 but these statistics can be misleading. Harrigan says one needs to look at each school individually to determine the various drops/adds of sports that have occurred.
Are the sports being offered by a college what the student body wants? “Colleges should stop using the proportionate rule,” Harrigan wrote in his article. “Get rid of it and the unnatural team patterns will end. Base campus sports programs for both sexes on real supply and demand for each sport." He cited that a wide range of cultural factors drove the growth of sports for women and for years mostly female physical education teachers opposed competitive sports for women. “A basketball game between California-Berkeley and Stanford in 1896 was the first women’s intercollegiate athletic event but it wasn’t until 1969 that a national women’s championship in that sport was created,” he says.
In 2015Nancy Hogshead-Makar, CEO of Champion Women wrote detailed legal memos to more than 50 NCAA schools that she believed were not in compliance with Title IX based on the data reported to DoE. Her organization urged that: 1) new sports for women be added; 2) empower local women’s groups to get involved with college athletics; 3) empower women’s coaches and administrators to speak up on behalf of girls and women in sports; and 4) assure Title IX and women’s sports remain a priority through any new restructuring of college athletics. Ms. Makar says that college women received $190 million less in athletic scholarships and if colleges provided men and women with equal opportunities to participate in sports, 134,528 more women would have a varsity sports experience.
Dollars spent on scholarships also can be misleading and another area where schools should be looked at on an individual basis. A state college or university can show a disproportionate difference based on the numbers of in-state and out-of-state student-athletes and the differences in cost of tuition. Some institutions, including all of Ivy League universities, do not offer provide athletic scholarships.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a non-profit organization that generates more than $1 billion a year in revenue and regulates some 450,000 student-athletes at 1,281 institutions. “The NCAA believes in and is committed to diversity, inclusion and gender equity among its student-athletes, coaches and administrators,” the NCAA posts on its website. According to Stacey Osborn, director of public relations and media relations, “The NCAA expects its member schools to adhere to Title IX and not ignore its legitimate application, which would be a disregard of the law.”
As part of its regulatory and enforcement role in college sports the NCAA is in a much better position to enforce Title IX than the Department of Education. It could requireall schools to comply with Title IX on any of the three prongs to be eligible for any post-season competition. Since all schools have had nearly 50 years to comply the NCAA could make this mandatory in five years.
In FY 2013-14 there were 3,609 complaints filed regarding athletics with DoE’s OCR, more than all of its other categories combined. There were 854 complaints for sexual/gender harassment/ sexual violence, many involving athletes, and depending on the the regulatory agency, a school could be held in violation of both Title IX and the Clery Act.
I sent a series of letters, emails and called DoE’s OCR and asked why athletic departments were not being cited for non-compliance. Finally, Corwin K. Jennings said if OCR finds an institution in violation it will work with the college for a resolution and that it has attained strong remedies in the past without enforcement action. He declined to give any examples but added that in 2007 a case was referred to Justice for action and that no schools have had federal financial assistance revoked.
The Glass Ceiling
Four distinct characteristics must be met to conclude that aGlass Ceilingexists. The Department of Labor has concluded that the Glass Ceiling is most clearly defined as those artificial barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward in their organization into management-level positions. One of the goals was to promote a quality, inclusive and diverse workforce capable of meeting the challenge of global competition.
As part of the enforcement program under Executive Order 11246, as amended, the Glass Ceiling Initiative was launched 25 years ago during the George H.W. Bush Administration by Cari Dominguez, director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs at the Department of Labor. Until then no one had focused on higher level advancement issues affecting women and minorities. Most of the focus had been on entry level recruitment and hiring. Congress followed and established the Glass Ceiling Commission to take a broader look into issues affecting the advancement of women and minorities.
Professional leagues and teams are light years ahead of colleges and universities and conferences and put many to shame when it comes to inclusiveness. “College sport still had the lowest grade for racial hiring practices and gender hiring practices among all of the college and professional sports covered …” wrote Dr. Richard Lapchick, director of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida in its 2016 Racial and Gender Report Card: College Sports.Another report added “Major League Baseball has long been recognized as a leader in the diversity and inclusion space.”
In 1999, Major League Baseball was the first professional sports league to adopt a policy that mandates minority candidates be included in interviews for all openings at the general manager, manager and scouting director levels. Because of the MLB Equal Employment Opportunity policy, commonly known as the Selig Rule, 44.3% of coaching positions for all MLB teams are now held by people of color. Women make up 29.3% and ethnic minorities 28.1% of all front-office professional employees. One or more women serve in a senior vice president or vice president role for 26 MLB teams. The league also had seven women holding on-field operations roles and 22-year-old Emma Charlesworth-Seiler became the newest professional female baseball umpire this season when she began umpiring games in Florida’s Gulf Coast League. She started umpiring Little League games in 2014 in her hometown of Golden Valley, Minn., and is now the eighth woman to umpire in an affiliated league.
In March 2016 MLB held its fourth Diversity Business Summit and to date has spent $20 million with diverse suppliers and more than 100 job seekers have been hired. “MLB has some of the most important diversity initiatives in sport under Commissioner Robert D. Manfred, Jr.,” said Dr. Lapchick’s report.
In 2003 the National Football League enacted the Rooney Rule that requires minority candidates to be interviewed for head coaching and for senior positions at the league office. Most team offices interview at least one minority and one woman for applicable positions. The rule was named after the late Dan Rooney, owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers. As a result there are five African-American head coachesor 31% of the 16 NFL teams compared to only 16 or 12.5% of the 128 Division 1 FBS college football teams. In the past the NFL has had even more minority head coaches.
The NFL was the first professional league to have a woman as a game official when Sarah Thomas joined a crew in 2015. The league has other women in the development pipeline.
The National Basketball Association has mandated Glass Ceiling compliance for all of its member teams. Last year Becky Hammon became assistant coach of the San Antonio Spurs and the league’s first full-time coach and the first of any of the five major professional sports. During the 2001-02 season Lisa Boyer served as a volunteer assistant for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The NBA also has had three female referees: Lauren Holtkamp is active; Violet Palmer is now serving as a manager in Referee Operations; and Dee Kanter subsequently served as WNBA Supervisor of Officials.
On September 5, 1979, Ann Meyers became the first woman to sign an NBA contract which was worth $50,000 with the Indiana Pacers. At 5’9” she was the 1978 College Player of the Year at UCLA and the first four-time All-American. This was before there was the WNBA professional women’s league. Following rookie camp Pacers’ coach Bob “Slick” Leonard said he felt bad when he had to cut her from the team. “She really did a great job. I was proud of her.” Jack McCloskey, assistant coach, said “Fundamentally, she’s better than half the guys out there.”Hall of Fame great Bill Russell was even more complimentary when he said “Annie was one of the best basketball players ever. I didn’t say male or female. I said ever.”
Unfortunately, not all professional leagues are as inclusive and dedicated to equality as the NBA, NFL or MLB. Women professionals in soccer and ice hockey, where the leadership is chauvinistic and male-dominated, had to litigate in court to get any reasonableness of fairness.
The NCAA has nothing comparable to the Selig or Rooney Rules and would not comment on the Glass Ceiling Initiative. The greatest number of Glass Ceiling complaints received by the U.S. Department of Labor are from colleges and universities. Most complaints involve the issue of tenure but as with Title IX, not one institution has ever been sanctioned with the loss of federal funds.
The NCAA makes note of a 2016 Presidential Pledge that has been signed by more than 700 university presidents and and almost 100 conferences of its 1,281 members. The pledge commits to “establishing initiatives for achieving ethnic and racial diversity, gender equity and inclusion with a focus and emphasis on hiring practices.” The Pledge falls short ofproviding any recommended guidelines or how to accomplish this such as having at least one woman and one minority in any hiring pool.Dr. Lapchick noted in his college report that more than 60% of all women’s teams are still coached by men and no more than 50.7% of the assistant coaching positions of a woman’s team were women in Divisions I, II and III. “It is rare for a woman to coach a men’s team,” he said. “Opportunities for coaches of color continued to be a significant area of concern in all divisions. African-Americans were so underrepresented as head coaches in Division III that the percentage of women coaching men’s teams was higher than the African-Americans coaching men’s teams.”