The Sports Guy

     Any person with a remote knowledge of sports would think I would be talking about the ERA pertaining to the baseball term earned run average, but you are mistaken. The focus of my column is the ERA term concerning the Equal Rights Amendment. Many sports fanatics also know this term as Title IX.
     Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in educational programs and activities at educational institutions that receive federal funds. It is a broad education law affecting all curricular and extracurricular offerings, from medicine, law and science to drama, dance and athletics.
     No law has meant more to women in sports than Title IX. With regard to collegiate educational opportunities for females, leveling the playing field has meant $372 million a year in college athletic scholarship funding and varsity sport opportunities for over 150,000 women.
     Has this amendment lived up to its expectations? The answer is no. It shows flaws in many areas.
     First, the law was enacted to give females equality in collegiate athletics. According to the NCAA Gender-Equity Report, female athletes receive approximately 36 percent of all sports operating expenditures, 42 percent of all college athletic scholarship money, 42 percent of all athletic participation opportunities and 32 percent of all college athlete recruitment spending.
     The second flaw of the amendment is that women ultimately could have more athletic opportunities than men.
     “Athletic budgets are proportioned to university enrollment,” GCSU athletic director Stan Aldridge said. “Nobody would complain as far as the government or the NCAA if we added another woman sport here.”
     This means that the university is only obligated to add a male sport if it conflicts to the proportions of student enrollment. GCSU could add two female sports and would only have to add one male sport.
     This amendment is cheating both parties.  Although men’s sports get more attention now, it only be time before women sports take over. Congress needs to go back and tighten the parameters of this legislation.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Apr 6 2007. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry