White female athletes, black male athletes and Title IX

University of Georgia professor Dr. Billy Hawkins has a new book out about the black athletes and intercollegiate sports. It appears, from this press release, that a majority of the book. The New Plantation, focuses on the young men in revenue-producing sports, primarily football and basketball. He compares the intercollegiate system and the role of black male athletes in it to the plantation system in the US pre-Civil War.
Hawkins does touch on black female athletes and Title IX in his book, making a very important observation about how Title IX has not produced more opportunities for black women in the way it has for white women. This is not a new observation, but the way he frames it is:
"Since Title IX has provided very limited opportunity for black females, but additional opportunities for white women to compete and black male athletes make up the greater percentage of the revenue-generating sports that contribute to athletic departments' revenue, and thus their ability to support these additional sports, a recurring historical relationship between the white female and the black male has been resurrected."
I take some issue with the way Hawkins phrases this given that I do not view the new opportunities for women as "additional sports": add-ons or extras. Also, note that many of these revenue-generating sports are not generating enough to even support themselves, let alone other sports. But the relationship remains an interesting one. Opportunities added to achieve or work towards equity are often done because of the large roster size of football, one of the sports Hawkins focuses. And, as Hawkins and others have pointed out, the majority of these added opportunities go to white women.

Will Maryland be the next to cut sports?

Hopefully not, says athletic director Deborah Yow. But despite early predictions that the recession is over, the University of Maryland is exploring all scenarios that would enable to survive the current economic crisis.
A recent report has outlined possibilities for keeping the department financially stable enough while remaining successful throughout the coming years of potential hardship. The report includes suggestions for increasing revenues--always the first, through arguably most difficult, task. It is also one that includes reducing expenses. A second option is to scale back on select sports. And the final is the elimination of teams.
But with 27 teams--5 more than the ACC average--the "last resort" option is definitely a possibility if options one and two do not produce the intended results.
The report commented on Maryland's commitment to gender equity. No details on how that commitment might manifest in the above options. But we have to remember that, in Title IX circles, the Maryland athletic department is most (in)famous for making competitive cheerleading an intercollegiate sport despite the fact that it is not an NCAA-recognized sport. And despite the fact that there were other viable women's club teams that could have been elevated to varsity status.
We will have to wait to see how Maryland does both in managing its economic woes and meeting gender equity requirements.

NCAA Releases Report on Athletic Department Profitability

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported last week that the NCAA has released a report on the finances of college athletic departments. The report is notable because it is the first time the NCAA has broken out "allocated" revenue (money the department gets from the institution itself) from "generated" revenue (money that it gets from outside sources, such as ticket sales and private donations) in reporting on the profitability of athletics. Past NCAA reports as well as government data fail to make this crucial distinction, and this fuzzy accounting has obscured the true cost of college athletics.

When you don't count institutional subsidies as revenue, only 17 out of 300 Division I program (5%) were profitable during the 2004-2006 period that was the scope of the study. 16 of these programs were in the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly, DI-A). Moreover, DI institutions' expenditures rose an average of 23%, outpacing the increase in revenue, which rose 16%.

Why is this important and what does this have to do with Title IX? The new report is important because it begins to dismantle the common misperception that college athletics can generate "profit" for the institution, which is to blame for the epidemic of profit-seeking that has unmoored college athletics from its educational mission. Among other problems the commercial mentality has caused (commodification of athletes, low graduation rates, etc.) it has also incited an arms race of spending on state of the art facilities and other amenities that are designed more to help recruiting than to contribute to a meaningful student-athlete experience.

To be sure, some of this spending trickles down to sports that do not operate in profit-seeking mode, a category that includes nearly all women's sports. The Chronicle gives some examples "state of the art facilities for sports that have no chance of recouping the costs of those structures" like softball, swimming, and soccer. This statement illustrates the problem with the commercial mentality of sport and why it is bad for women. The ability to "recoup costs" is inconsistent with not-for-profit, educationally sponsored athletics. This irrelevant consideration also results in a spending bias against sports that happen not to appeal to the public, which, unfortunately includes nearly all women's sports. The so-called profit sports still receive the lions share of the money. And the minority of funds that do wind up in "state of the art softball fields" are usually blamed as the sole source of economic strain that causes universities to cut teams, a burden borne largely by men's teams (but only because women are underrepresented in the first place). This situation creates backlash against Title IX and women's sports and alienates women's sports from its natural allies in men's sports like wrestling.

I have no optimism that colleges will change their paradigms out of concerns for the educational mission of sport. But rational administrators, confronted with the reality of the low likelihood of turning a profit, should think twice before entering into or sustaining a commercial mentality. Athletic departments need to accept their role in not-for-profit education, and spend accordingly --in a manner proportional to the value of sports to the students themselves, sacrificing "state of the art" in select sports in order to more equitably support a wider array of student-centered athletic opportunities.

Athletic Department Finances Scruitinized by College Paper

The Daily Tarheel has a smart piece about athletic department finances that attempts to dispel the "popular belief" that athletic departments are profitable. The article cites NCAA President Myles Brand's statement in January that 52 percent of all Division I-A programs require subsidies greater than 5 percent every year. It also probes the discrepancy between figures like this and recent financial data filed by universities under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act, which for 2004-05 suggest that most (110/120) DI athletics programs broke even or made a profit. NCAA data show a less impressive financial picture, a difference the paper attributes to accounting methods.

The EADA counts direct institutional support, unrestricted funds allocated to an athletic department by a university, as revenue, when in fact it is a subsidy. The EADA data does not include certain administrative costs, such as the cost of renting or owning facilities and some staff - costs that have risen dramatically as the years go by.

The article goes on to probe the arms race of coaches salaries, particularly football and men's basketball and recruiting costs.

The problem with this picture, in my opinion, is not that too many colleges lose money on athletics. It's that they are spending as if they were profitable when in fact they are not. If you believe the mission statements of university athletic departments, they exist for the sake of the student athlete. By that rationale, a team should be under no greater expectation to turn a profit than an English literature class, since both are opportunities that universities provide for the purpose of student education and enrichment. But only in a world where athletic departments don't spend like the pros will the pressure to generate revenue -- or the those mythical profits -- subside.

Football Booster Club Causes Title IX Problems for NJ High School

Last month we noted that the OCR was looking into whether the football team at Phillipsburg (N.J.) High School receives special treatment in violation of Title IX. In response, the school district hired its own lawyers to conduct an investigation. Though the district considered keeping the law firm's report under wraps, it later decided to make the findings public, which it did on Wednesday. According to the local press, the law firm's report "revealed that female athletes feel like second-class citizens in comparison to high school football players." A major factor that contributed to the inequitable treatment was fundraising (and spending) by the football boosters. Private funding outfitted football player in apparel and shoes and sponsored game-day meals, treatment that no female athletes received. (Additional details on the law firm report are here.)

OCR's position on booster clubs is clear: Attributing inequities to booster-raised funds does not absolve schools of providing equal treatment to student athletes regardless of gender. As the agency explained after confronting the issue in a similar case more than 10 years ago:

The private funds that are used to support District athletics programs, although neutral in principle, are likely to be subject to the same historical patterns that Title IX was enacted to address. If all benefits are not considered in examining interscholastic athletics, the purpose and effect of Title IX requirements could be routinely undermined by the provision of unequal benefits through private financial assistance.

Consistently, OCR does not allow colleges to use ticket revenue to justify inequitable funding for certain sports. The theory is the same: Title IX puts the obligation on the school to provide a nondiscriminatory environment for its students. At the end of the day, student athletes are students. Private dollars can support private sports if they want to, but if they put them towards the schools, schools have to ensure that they aren't used to promote inequality. Schools don't get to tell their female students, "Too bad. You don't get equal treatment from us because society values boys' sports more." (It is beyond Title IX's scope to ensure equal treatment among men's sports. But schools can, and I argue should, voluntarily apply the same principle to ensure that boys' football does not receive equal treatment over others boys sports.)

Getting the facts right

This is my somewhat belated follow-up to this post about the UA water polo team and the misrepresentation of Title IX in the media.

In a follow-up to his initial reporting of University of Arizona administrators deciding to add water polo to their list of varsity sports for women, Arizona Star columnist Greg Hansen wrote another column criticizing the decision. This one too was riddled with inaccuracies and something that was supposed to resemble support for Title IX but begins by Hansen noting that the decision to add water polo is an example of "Title IX run amok."
Why? Because high schools in Arizona don't have water polo. But lots of high schools in CA do and CA isn't that far away. Plus Hansen fails to research whether there are water polo club teams in the state. He also fails to acknowledge that adding water polo at UA could actually create more opportunities for high school girls. His earlier article complained that water polo could not be revenue-generating. Know what generates a lot of revenue (and publicity)? The only summer water polo camp in the state which is what UA will establish if they are savvy enough to see the opportunity here.

Hansen does get some things right, though: water polo was added to account for "football-bloated male participation numbers." But then he attempts to make an economic argument:

"No women's sport comes close to football's numbers in participation and, more importantly, in revenue. Indeed, football pays for women's sports on almost every college campus in America, yet, because of Title IX ratios, men's sports are inherently penalized because football is so big."

It takes a smidge of research (which Hansen--or his editors--apparently did not have the time to do) to find out that football programs on most college campuses DO NOT PAY for women's sports. 78% of them cannot even pay for themselves!

And unfortunately the people who commented on the article also took up the "but football pays for everything; without football where would athletic departments be?" type arguments. I don't know, maybe we should ask Boston University who cut their football team years ago. Hasn't seemed to affect their perennially strong men's hockey team or the school's reputation as an excellent educational institution.

It is certainly possible that UA is one of the schools with a football program that actually makes more money than it spends. On the one hand, the university reports football revenue outpaces expenses by $6 million. But on the other hand, expense figures such as these could exclude capital costs including the bond debt on the football stadium. (It is also worth pointing out that while UA may, coincidentally spend $6 million on women's sports, it is not exactly a convincing argument from an equity standpoint to say that "football pays for women's sports" given that the $6 million spent on women's sports amounts to less than 16% of all athletic department spending overall. Nor it is an accurate one, given that women's teams themselves offset $2 million in costs with the revenue they bring in from ticket sales and camps.)

But what is truly disappointing about the article is the praise Hansen seems to heap on Title IX because, for example, it has sent Arizona softball players across the country to coveted coaching positions or made college soccer more mainstream. He even says "Thank you, Title IX" which rings a little hollow when just paragraphs before he instructed us "Title IX activists" to "accept that it works, has worked, and stop digging for more."

I cannot bear to end on such a sour note so in an attempt to make some lemonade I have to say that the blatant inaccuracies and false praise for Title IX only make this activist want to dig all the harder.

On Zimbalist's The Bottom Line

Andrew Zimbalist is my favorite economist, and not just because he's one of Northampton's own. I ordered his new book, The Bottom Line: Observations on Sport and Business, from publisher Temple University Press. To my delight, it arrived in yesterday's mail, and thus is my Title IX topic of the day.

The Bottom Line is a collection of essays that Zimbalist has published in various publications like Sports Business Journal and the New York Times since 1998. So the book is a handy resource because it gathers these pieces all in one place. (But if you are looking for deeper treatment of economic issues in sport, and something not written for a generalist, newspaper-reading audience, you might try one of his other books.)

The collected essays address a wide range of topics on the economics of sport including stadium finance, antitrust and labor issues, the media and steroid regulation. But it's his essays on college sports and gender equity (Part V) that are of particular interest to me. In these essays Zimbalist makes a very clear, economic argument that Title IX is not victimizing men's sports (as per, e.g., yesterday's column on SI.com). First, he quantifies the steady increase in the number of male college athletes in the Title IX era. (p. 248) Second, he points out that while certain men's sports like wrestling and gymnastics have lost participants, most of this dropoff occurred between 1982 and 1992, the years when there was little or no enforcement of Title IX. (p. 266) Third, and throughout various essays, he makes a compelling case that economics is what drives athletic cuts, not gender equity. Helpfully, he itemizes expenditures of the major men's sports, like coaches' salaries, scholarships, travel, that could be redirected to other sports as an alternative to cuts. (p. 248-49, 267-68) And as a corollary to this point, he gives plenty of evidence to dispel the myth that football is a moneymaker and thus warrants special treatment under Title IX. (p. 230-32, 247-48).

So here's my bottom line. Zimbalist gathers the up the numbers and conveys them clearly, providing a much-needed balance to the public perception of the economic effects of Title IX.