WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF JUDITH M. SWEET
VICE-PRESIDENT FOR CHAMPIONSHIPS/SENIOR WOMAN ADMINISTRATOR
NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION
BEFORE THE
SECRETARY OF EDUCATION’S COMMISSION
ON OPPORTUNITY IN ATHLETICS
AUGUST 27, 2002
On behalf of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its more than 1,200 member colleges, universities, conferences and affiliated organizations, I am pleased to have the opportunity to provide the Commission with information about the impact of Title IX on intercollegiate athletics; comments about the application of the law; and, on an ongoing basis, assistance wherever possible as you undertake your important charge.
For those of you associated with a college or university, the NCAA is a familiar organization. For others, it may be helpful to review why the organization exists and how it operates. Nearly 100 years old, the NCAA was founded in 1906 to address specific concerns with the rules of play in the sport of football. Beyond formulating playing rules, the Association was as much an annual roundtable for a discussion of issues in intercollegiate athletics as it was a policy-making body. In the early 1920s, the member colleges and universities began using the auspices of their Association to proscribe national policy on a variety of issues, including amateurism, recruiting, eligibility, and playing and practice seasons.
Today, there are 977 active institutional members and 124 conference members. The colleges and universities self-determine their membership in one of three divisions and within another two subdivisions for football in Division I. Each division has autonomy over its bylaws and policies and has a number of committees to oversee development of legislative proposals, to set standards for implementation of bylaws and policy, and to adjudicate violations of those rules and regulations. Management Councils of administrators and faculty manage the governance structure in each division, with a body of presidents (Presidents Council in Divisions II and III, Board of Directors in Division I) at the head of the policy-making structure. Divisions II and III continue to put ultimate authority in a one-school-one-vote assembly of their membership and, since 1997, Division I has placed final authority in its Board of Directors.
The NCAA Executive Committee, which comprises members from the three divisional presidential bodies, has overarching authority for guiding principles of the Association, for all litigation issues and for determining the annual budget. It is this body that gives guidance to all three divisions and sets standards for such core principles as student-athlete welfare and gender equity.
The NCAA derives its authority entirely from the will of the membership. The vast majority of decisions regarding institutional athletics programs – including which sports to sponsor or which ones to cease sponsoring – are made at the campus level and are superceded only where the broader membership has set standards through national policy.
We have taken the time and space in our written testimony to provide documentation of the landscape regarding intercollegiate athletics before 1972, when Title IX was signed into law and in the 30 years since. We do this to impress upon the Commission the importance of this law in protecting the access of the under-represented gender to a variety of activities on campus, including participation in college sports. In 1972, women were the under-represented gender in intercollegiate athletics, and they remain so today.
Thirty years ago, there were no NCAA championships for women. There were no college athletics scholarships to speak of for women and there were few opportunities for competition. There was virtually no media coverage of the few competitive opportunities that did exist and certainly no television coverage. It was rare for newsstand publications to carry any type of article about a female athlete, and there were no publications devoted to women’s sports. The star athletes in college sports were often household names, but none of them was a woman. The female athlete as a role model was virtually unheard of. A young boy wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a jersey with a woman’s name on the back.
The athletics opportunities for women were few; the prospects for growth were dismal. According to a 1971-72 survey of NCAA member institutions, only 29,977 women were participating in sports and recreation programs, compared to 170,384 men – more than five times as many men as women. With numbers like that, it might be fair to wonder why college women would show any interest at all in athletics.
What a difference 30 years, legislative impetus, opportunity and support make. Today, nearly 150,000 women are competing in sports at NCAA member institutions. In the last ten years, female participants have increased by more than 55,000. The number of collegiate women’s soccer teams has grown from 80 in 1982 to 824 in 2002. The NCAA offers 87 championships in 22 sports for men and women. Forty-three of those championships in 19 sports are exclusively for women and there are three co-educational championships. Bowling will be added as a women’s championship in 2003-04. According to a recent membership survey, women now account for 40 percent of the participants in intercollegiate athletics and receive about 40 percent of the scholarship dollars.
Female athletes such as Lisa Leslie, Marion Jones, Janet Evans, Lisa Fernandez, Cynthia Cooper and Julie Foudy have, in fact, become household names in their own right. Elite female athletes play professional basketball in the WNBA and professional soccer in the WUSA. The women’s teams from the United States are expected to bring home a sizeable haul of medals in most sports in every Olympics, and young girls – and boys – proudly wore Mia Hamm’s No. 9 at the 1999 Women’s World Cup and again at the 2000 Olympics.
While mainstream media still devotes much more attention to men’s sports, the average bookstore now includes magazines and books highlighting the accomplishments of women in sports. Most of the student-athletes – female or male – competing in NCAA championships probably don’t think twice about the NCAA offering championships for women and are unaware of how opportunities for women have changed in the last 30 years.
In 2002, the Women’s Final Four at the Alamodome in San Antonio, drew a sellout crowd of 29,619 – just a few less than the total number of women participating in college sports 30 years earlier. It was the first time the Women’s Final Four had appeared in a dome, but it was the 10th consecutive sellout in Women’s Final Four history. Almost 600 media credentials were issued, and television covered the event from selection Sunday through the final buzzer.
Clearly, Title IX has promoted opportunities for female athletes over the last 30 years.
As impressive as the results of federal law and the hard work of campus leaders have been over the last 30 years, there is much work still to be done to ensure that men and women who attend NCAA member schools have equitable access to athletics participation. Although women comprise 54 percent of the undergraduate student population at NCAA member schools on average, they represent only 42 percent of the participating student-athletes, receive only 36 percent of the operating dollars and have only 32 percent of the recruiting budgets.
In the years since it began sponsoring NCAA championships, the NCAA has taken a progressively more active role in assisting its members with gender-equity matters. In 1992, after publication of the first NCAA Gender-Equity Study, the NCAA executive director established a gender-equity task force and charged it with determining ways in which the NCAA could assist institutions in achieving gender equity, examining NCAA policies to evaluate their impact on gender equity and recommending a path toward measuring and realizing gender equity in intercollegiate athletics. One of the recommendations of the task force was the creation of a sourcebook for NCAA members. That sourcebook, “Achieving Gender Equity: A Basic Guide to Title IX and Gender Equity in Athletics for Colleges and Universities,” is now in its third edition. It is free to NCAA members and includes information on current case law, the basics of Title IX compliance, information about NCAA emerging sports and even promotional ideas for women’s sports.
This last spring, the NCAA conducted its 11th Title IX Seminar since 1995. The now annual seminars are designed to assist NCAA member schools in understanding the intent of Title IX and to provide them with the necessary educational resources needed so they can comply with the law. The Association has placed emphasis on institutional gender- equity plans through the Division I certification process and the Divisions II and III self-study processes. And, in 1994, legislation was passed that identified “emerging sports” for women that, while not yet sponsored by member schools in sufficient numbers to create a championship, counted in other important ways for institutions in terms of Division I revenue distribution and sports-sponsorship numbers. The intent was to further increase the menu of sports available for women and to encourage institutions to increase opportunities for women by sponsoring these sports, several of which have recently become NCAA championships as a result.
At the same time, the NCAA has increased the minimum number of sports sponsored in all three divisions for both men and women as part of an institution’s membership requirements. The Association’s Division I revenue-distribution plan recognizes the value of broad-based programs, both in terms of the number of sports and the number of athletics grants-in-aid. In 1996, the NCAA membership established a moratorium that precluded the discontinuation of any championships through 1998-99, thus protecting both men’s and women’s Olympic sports where sponsorship had declined. The moratorium was replaced in 1997 by legislation that specifies that even if sponsorship for an Olympic sport drops below minimum established requirements (40 schools for championships established before 1995 and 50 for those thereafter), the championship remains unless the membership specifically votes to dissolve it. This action shows strong support on the part of NCAA members to maintain Olympic sports as part of the NCAA championships program even though individual members may have chosen to no longer sponsor an Olympic sport.
Like any social legislation designed to change the deeply embedded status quo, Title IX has had – and still has – its critics. Over the last 30 years, the voices of dissent have been less strident regarding the law itself – perhaps as more daughters, granddaughters, nieces and acquaintances have benefited from access to athletics participation – and have grown more concerned with the standards used to measure compliance. The Department of Education’s standards consider an athletics program to be in compliance with Title IX if its student-athletes by gender are in proportion to the gender makeup of the undergraduate student body, if the program can demonstrate a history of expanding its program to meet the needs of the under-represented gender, or if the program can demonstrate that it has fully and effectively accommodated the interests and abilities of the under-represented gender.
Critics argue that the focus of courts and the Office of Civil Rights has been on the proportionality test and that it has become the de facto single test used to determine compliance. The unintended consequence of Title IX, they say, has been the cutting of so-called “nonrevenue” sports in order to get the number of athletics participants for an institution more in line with the undergraduate population by gender.
Others may argue that the increased expenses of providing opportunities for women to comply with Title IX have resulted in a reduction in spending for men’s sports. In fact, financial reports from 1972-1993 show that in Division IA for every new dollar spent on women’s sports, three new dollars were spent on men’s sports.
While some individuals suggest that women do not have a strong interest in sports participation, the numbers prove otherwise. In the last 10 years alone, female participants in the NCAA have increased by more than 55,000. The number of collegiate women’s soccer teams has grown from 80 in 1982, to 824 in 2002. The number of girls participating in sports at the high school level exceeds 2.7 million. As opportunity has increased, interest has increased.
Before I discuss
the findings of a report from the United States General Accounting Office (GAO)
in March 2001, allow me to share with you a message from the NCAA Executive
Committee, Division I Board of Directors, and Division II and III Presidents
Councils, all of which are decision-making bodies within the NCAA governance
structure and comprise university presidents and chancellors. In a discussion about the work of this
Commission at their August 2002 meetings, the presidents strongly endorsed the
positive results of Title IX and urged the Office of Civil Rights to apply
consistent Title IX enforcement and interpretations in all regions. Regarding decisions by member
institutions to cut men’s sports, this group of college and university CEOs
noted that institutions have dropped sports for various reasons such as
institutional philosophy, program priorities, finances, infractions, safety,
lack of conference opportunities, inadequate facilities, insurance costs and
others. But the single most
important message they wanted me to deliver was this: “Don’t blame Title IX for institutional decisions to drop
programs.”
The presidents’ position is supported by findings of the GAO report. The United States Congress included provisions in the Higher Education Amendments of 1998 that required the GAO to study participation in athletics, including schools’ decisions to add or discontinue sports teams. They examined the membership of both the NCAA and the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).
Among the GAO’s findings are these:
The conclusions are clear. The decisions to discontinue specific sports are made at the institutional level for a variety of reasons. If the decision is made to eliminate sports for gender-equity reasons, it is because institutions have chosen this path, not because Title IX dictates such action.
As I indicated at the outset of this testimony, the task before the Commission is an important one. In a perfect world, Title IX would not be necessary. There would be enough resources and the will to do the right thing and thus meet everyone’s needs. Social legislation exists, of course, because we do not live in that perfect world. Even in its charge to this Commission, the Department of Education acknowledges that extraordinary progress has resulted from the passage of Title IX. While we would like to think that this progress would have taken place without Title IX because it was the right thing to do, the fact is that opportunities and support for girls and women in athletics are still not equitable with those provided for men, even though it is 30 years since the law was passed.
Your charge appears to bear more on the federal standards for measuring compliance than on the necessity for the law. Through a series of questions, you have been asked to examine those standards with an objective to improve the effectiveness of Title IX. Law without standards for measurement and enforcement to assure compliance are hollow. It is reasonable to assert, as the current standards do, that where a specific gender of student-athletes is disproportionately under-represented based on undergraduate population, discrimination may be the cause. It is also reasonable to acknowledge, as the current standards do, progress toward compliance over time. And it is reasonable to believe, as the current standards hold, that the athletics interests of a specific gender of the undergraduate population have been accommodated even if that gender is under-represented among athletics participants.
These are three reasonable tests for measuring compliance. The degree to which this Commission can give direction to colleges and universities in achieving compliance with Title IX emphasizing application of any of the three prongs would remove the misunderstanding that proportionality is the only way to go. The law is clear. The intent is to correct inequities.
The NCAA stands ready to assist the Commission in any way it can as you deliberate. We have heard from our member institutions and will continue to hear from them, and we will share their thoughts with you. The ultimate test for compliance with Title IX may have been summed up best by the NCAA Gender-Equity Task Force in 1992. It defined gender equity in the following manner:
“An athletics program can be considered gender equitable when the participants in both the men’s and women’s programs would accept as fair and equitable the overall program of the other gender. No individual should be discriminated against on the basis of gender, institutionally or nationally, in intercollegiate athletics.”
With that definition in mind, would participants in both our men’s and women’s programs accept as fair and equitable 42 percent of the participation opportunities, 36 percent of the operating dollars and 32 percent of the recruiting dollars? Would we expect that of them?
Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today.