In the article Are We There Yet? (2009) By R. Vivian Acosta and Linda Jean Carpenter great points were made about Title IX. The article depicted the college sports scene for women’s athletics at a typical University, what Title IX gave to women’s athletics, and where we are today and the progress that still needs to be made.
The article did a great job portraying the lack of support, funding, and realization of women’s athletics pre 1972. How funding was self-supported, teams were coached by full time teachers or staff members, that seasons were short, and how athletic departments were split by having a separate Athletic Director who managed the women’s programs.
Title IX brought drastic change for the world of college athletics. It helped put more of an emphasis on women’s sports and giving women an equal opportunity to compete as men. It also merged men’s and women’s athletics in an organizational standpoint, putting the Men’s Athletic Director in charge of both men’s and women’s sports. It helped with equal funding of women’s sports, covering things such as travel expense and coaches stipends.
Yet a lot of good has been made through Title IX in regards to women’s athletics there is still progress to be made as stated within the article. I was drawn to a few of the key issues that remained:
· Coaching compensation relates to the job being done, not to the sex of the athletes being coached, the sex of the coach, or the sport being coached.
· Women coaches of men’s teams are accepted and supported for their coaching skills, without regard to their sex.
The first issue is an interesting point but sadly is one I do not see change in the foreseeable future. There will always be a dividing line in the amount a coach makes coaching women’s sports than men’s. I think the main focus should be on fairness amongst women’s coaches not biased upon sex rather based on skill, experience, and success. For example take BGSU’s very own Women’s Basketball Coach Curt Miller. His success is outstanding within our program but he won’t make as much as say the head football coach even though he has had far more success. I think if anything a program should compare salaries based on level of importance to the institution. As an example BGSU’s foremost men’s sport is football, and women’s sport is basketball. So in retrospect salaries should be made comparable to the relevance and appeal within a program.
I find it hard to imagine a woman ever coaching a men’s team in Division I athletics. Mainly due to the fact that there is such a high level of respect demanded in working with male college athletes. If the coach is a woman there will always be that underlying lack of a basic respect, especially in the game of football.
I think it is great what Title IX has done for women’s progression in college athletics and I do believe that women’s athletics will continue to advance in a natural evolution. With more and more coverage of women’s athletics on television following of various sports and teams will increase and will result in a continual advancement of women’s athletics.
~Tony Fritsch
I thought Are We There Yet? (2009) was a great article kind of leading into the discussion of Title IX. Title IX’s main goal has been to equalize female and male sports. From when this article was written in 2009 it had been 37 years since the creation of Title IX and it still has yet to do what it sought out to do upon its creation. There is still much discrimination towards women and sports today some 40 years later. One might ask will we ever get to the point where they’re equalized.
ReplyDeleteLike Tony said, with the creation of Title IX it brought much change to the world of college athletes. Still today we are seeing effects, such as men’s sports being discontinued so that women’s sports can reach a closer to the men’s amount of funding.
Lastly it is really eye opening how weird would it be to see a female coaching a male sport? But it’s totally normal for a male to coach a women’s sport. I think that this just has to do with routine and tradition in a sense. Meaning that males have always been the more superior and better leaders, even through the creation of Title IX and numerous documents trying to give more power to women. Today there are some women in politics and such making names for themselves so maybe society is evolving and eventually we will see an evolution in women’s sports… maybe.
-Alyssa Robinson
Are We There Yet? (2009) did an outstanding job at discussing Title IX and how its helped women's athletics for the last 30 plus years. Tony, you brought up great points about the article about the progress of Title IX that still remain. One of the points about Women coaching in men sports and how its very unlikely, this is an issue that people don't normally bring up because I think some believe it's not a serious issue. I believe at some point in the next 50 years you'll see a breakthrough in women coaching men sports because it's only a matter of time before someone will take a chance on a women because her credentials will match even succeed that of the men applicants. I can only see it happening in a sport like basketball, baseball or soccer. Football will be the only sport for which it will be nearly impossible for a female to represent a football team.
ReplyDelete-Dane Windisch
I feel that Title IX was a great breakthrough in the development of sport in general and in promoting a type of equal opportunity that we as Americans deserve. I thought Tony gave some great insight on what Title IX could do better but I feel as regards to the pay and female coaches in other sports aspect I think it won't change. However I also think that there it is more because of the fact that women sports and other non traditional sports do not bring as much money as say football and men's basketball. Therefore it wouldn't be fair to take away funding from those sports when most of the money brought into the athletic department is from those sports. Also as to a woman coaching football I feel that not enough women pursue a career in football to come up with the credentials it would take to coach at the highest level of that sport. However at the junior high level I don't think there would be any shame in hiring a women to experiment and see how she does. Then from there she could progress in her career and possibly work her way up to the highest levels. Also I do not think that a women should have to deal with the pressure it would take for her to be the first woman football coach. Because at the first sign of things going sour the outbreak would be strong. And it would take a strong person in general to have to deal with the fallout in that circumstance. That being said I think more women coaches should be considered for coaching jobs in men's sports.
ReplyDelete~Max Householder