Steroids. Marijuana. Extra benefits. All are illegal in intercollegiate athletics. But if a university needs to count a man as a woman, they find a way to do it.
“I know why they’re doing it, and I don’t like it,” said Janna Blais, senior woman administrator for Northwestern’s athletic department. “It really doesn’t sound right to me.”
On April 26, TheNew York Times reported that many Division I schools are altering student athlete numbers to comply with Title IX, a law meant to give women an equal opportunity to compete in intercollegiate athletics. Tactics noted in the story include listing women who never competed for certain teams and counting male practice players as women.
“I think it’s wrong for a school to lie like that and basically manipulate the entire system,” said Kendall Hackney, a sophomore forward on the Northwestern women’s basketball team. “I read the article to myself saying, ‘Are you serious? This is ridiculous.’”
Title IX, passed in 1972 as an amendment to the Civil Rights Act, set specific standards for gender equality in higher education. In the first 33 years of Title IX’s existence, the number of female athletes in the NCAA increased by 456%, according to the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education. The legislation lead to the creation of many women’s teams throughout college athletics, but critics allege that in order to establish relative equality they have been forced to cut a significant number of men’s teams.
“It probably stems from something a lot bigger than I can address,” said Geno Auriemma, head coach of women’s basketball at the University of Connecticut, in an interview with ESPN.com. “Some people just take the easy way out.”
But Northwestern, unlike other athletic departments, strictly adheres to Title IX, according to Blais. She says while there are men who practice with women’s basketball occasionally, they’re never placed on the official roster.
“They don’t practice [with the women] more than once a week,” Blais said. “Those are usually just pick-up games the players are doing themselves.”
In addition, Northwestern has double-counted only a few athletes in the past. It’s not a regular practice, according to Blais.
“We had football players playing baseball and a women’s lacrosse player who also did soccer,” Blais said. “We don’t have track, so we’re not triple counting our cross country runners.”
While Title IX helped Northwestern win five women’s lacrosse national titles, it hurt sports like baseball, men’s swimming, and wrestling. Those sports, along with men’s soccer, don’t offer the maximum number of scholarships allowed by the NCAA, according to Blais. Men’s soccer, swimming, and wrestling are allowed 9.9 scholarships by the NCAA, but they provide only 5, 8, and 9.4 respectively, according to statistics released by the athletic department. Men’s baseball is allowed 11.7 scholarships, but only provides 11.2 due to the strain of Title IX.
“We’ve had to hold back a bit on the men’s side,” Blais said. “Would we love to give them all those dollars? Yeah, but we’re not able to.”
Hackney said Title IX is important even if some men’s sports don’t get every scholarship possible. “I feel for the men’s athletes, but if it wasn’t for Title IX, I wouldn’t have the opportunity to play and be on scholarship,” Hackney said.
The biggest handicap on smaller Division I men’s sports is athletic departments’ need to match 85 football scholarships with women’s scholarships, according to Auriemma. Northwestern is not an exception.
“We’ve maxed out our women’s scholarships,” Blais said. “There’s nothing on the women’s side that’s going to balance out 85 football scholarships.”
The problem is that universities have to spend money in order to make it, according to Blais. Sports such as football and men’s basketball provide athletic revenue for Northwestern, so if cuts are made, they occur among smaller men’s teams.
“It’s sort of a vicious circle,” Blais said. “People want to do everything they can to allow football and men’s basketball to be competitive because they bring in revenue.”
Title IX shouldn’t be changed to exclude football or men’s basketball, Blais said. Instead, regulators need to focus on closing loopholes that allow teams to count male practice players as women.
“If you amend it you get an arms race in football and basketball that can’t be stopped,” Blais said. “If you get rid of it, people will forget about it, and if you forget about it, no one will do the right thing.”
Hackney said that excluding football from Title IX might not be such a bad idea. “It would make football seem more elite and could have some downfall, but I wouldn’t be totally against it because there’s no way of matching a women’s sport with football.”