This is the final post in a series entitled “Women’s Sports Without Illusions” that critically examines the nearly four decades of the women’s sports movement, including Title IX, cultural and social developments, the growth of professional and international women’s sports and current challenges and issues.

All posts in this series can be found here.

I’ve been promising the last two weeks to explain what the above racquet is all about as I’ve made a racket about why and how the women’s sports movement lost its way.

The racquet was inspired by one of the creators of that movement who continues to inspire me and many other women today.

I bought it just days after she beat a self-styled male chauvinist pig in one of the greatest sporting spectacles of my lifetime.

It’s a Wilson Billie Jean King Cup racquet, a fabled relic of its day, wooden with a small head and long handle, frayed strings and a crack along the insignia. It’s completely unusable now, of course; when I last took it out a few years ago to see how it felt making contact with a ball, it shimmied like our family’s old 1969 Buick Riviera when I was learning how to drive.

I keep this racquet on the wall above my writing desk, as much a symbol of what King’s example has meant to me as her feat that night in Houston — and in everything else she has done — has meant to literally hundreds of thousands of women.

I had never been so fired up in my life, or since. Finally, I didn’t feel so all alone as a “tomboy.” The word didn’t sting so much any more. Here was a woman who did so much more than beat an old man on a tennis court in the Astrodome. She gave us the heretical idea that we might actually be able to do something in sports after we had grown into women.

I’ve lost so many things in so many moves in all the years since: gloves, cleats, my red, white and blue ABA basketball, a childhood’s collection of baseball cards. But somehow I’ve managed to hang on to the racquet, without really trying. There’s something metaphorical in all that.

In many ways, this racquet also symbolizes what I think the women’s sports movement has become today: Tough but brittle, successful but chastened, worn down but not without the goods, once refreshed, to spark future generations of females all around the world to get in the game, and to stay.

During this series I’ve explained how the noble intentions to live up to Title IX have been accompanied by hard-edged gender identity politics with little sympathy for displaced male athletes, rants against football and sexual expression, and desperate pleas that girls need to be “saved” by sports. Not only do these leaders ignore the notion that women may just choose not to play, they define equality in sports as based on participation numbers and percentages, and think this can be achieved only by their eternal vigilance in the court system.

Reviving the joy of play

The activists claim they’re only trying to make sure Title IX is being enforced, but as I have written in this series, what some truly crave goes far beyond what the law requires, and has ever been about. For them, this isn’t about sports, but to overthrow a dastardly “patriarchy” that haunts their dreams.

Their attempts to impress these notions upon young women hasn’t been as persuasive as it might have been, and I think I know why.

There's crying in basketball.

For years, the Women’s Sports Foundation (that King created), National Women’s Law Center and other advocacy groups serve up a battery of data and studies to illustrate not only how beneficial sports have been to girls and women who participate, but how they must be encouraged for females who have not. Or to underscore the legal rights for females to have equal access as boys to get in the game.

Learning how to compete and cooperate, staying fit and feeling healthy, getting good grades and avoiding teen pregnancy and boosting self-esteem are good things. If young women derive these benefits from sports, fine. If not, that should be fine too. Title IX is the law of the land and should not be repealed. It must be reformed to reflect the times and stop causing harm to men’s teams.

But what’s missing the most from this advocacy is the reason why we flock to sports in the first place.

Instead of being badgered to play for social and career imperatives, or for scholarship offers or fame and fortune on ESPN, both girls and boys need to be reintroduced to the idea of the pure joy of play, perhaps a quaint and even naïve notion in today’s society. It’s the subject of one of my favorite sports books, and it has informed me as I wrote this series.

I’m learning in middle age that extrinsic motivations simply will not work. Corporations keep pushing them on their employees, hoping the offer of a little beer money bonus will prompt more productivity and keep their docile little worker bees in line.

I may be getting older, but I’m no less rebellious about this kind of conformity, and I hate to think that we need to make sports yet another activity marked by duty and obligation, rather than fun and play. And most of all, a passion inspired by people such as Billie Jean King.

But that passion has stir inside the girl, and it has to stir deeply. Nothing else is possible without it.

Imagine

When I stepped inside the lines, the rest of the world melted away.

Like opening a book, taking the field and the court was for me an act of the imagination, as well as a means of escape. The world of adults — their rules and demands — could be blown off, at least to some degree.

I could hear coaches and parents cheering, and sometimes yelling, and occasionally I let an umpire have it. I could talk back to a grown-up and get away with it, although I came close on one occasion to getting tossed for my big mouth.

At the age of 12!

I’ve often wondered whether I’d be sore today if had I had more talent and ambition than the limited options offered to me at the time, slow-pitch softball and six-on-six basketball. I participated in what I could, and did the best that I could. Playing for the Atlanta Braves, or being the female Pete Maravich, all the way down to my gray socks, were fanciful notions better left for the dream world inside the lines.

This used to be my playground.

I didn’t have a point of reference for any of this. When Donna Lopiano repeats her oft-told story of being crushed as a young girl to learn why she’d never have a chance to pitch for the New York Yankees, I can relate to that. Although I have always hated the Yankees, and always will.

She ended up being a Softball Hall of Famer, playing for the famous Raybestos Brakettes. I gather this might not have been as satisfying for reasons I came to realize about my own experience: Softball was and is a fine sport, but it just isn’t baseball. If your heart is set on playing baseball, the so-called “female” alternative is really no alternative at all.

(Even more intriguingly, Lopiano never fielded a softball team when she was women’s athletics director at Texas; it was added only after she had become the CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation and her old school was hit with a Title IX suit.)

What I can’t relate to is how Lopiano and other women’s sports advocates have allowed those stymied dreams to animate their activism beyond the simple notion of working to tear down the barriers of participation and competition for girls and women. That certainly was difficult and painful enough to do, and they should be tremendously proud of what they’ve done on behalf of hundreds of thousands of young women.

But to parlay that activism into an angry grievance against the so-called “male sports culture” smacks of an embittered sense of vengeance that’s just unbecoming. Even when it attempts to call out the unbecoming behavior of male athletes. The women’s sports movement was not supposed to have been about reflecting matriarchal attitudes.

Even after I became aware of how truly limited my sports options were because of my gender, I never believed that rectifying that meant others had to pay a price. I didn’t envy or hate boys because football and baseball were all-male pursuits, with their standalone cultures. If anything, I grew to love those sports even more, curiously attracted to the reality that they would always remain mysterious to me.

For me, it was all about getting in the game, and staying there, first as a kid on the sandlots of suburban Atlanta, and later as an adult privileged to write about sports from all over the country and the world for my hometown newspaper.

It ranged from collecting names and times of competitors at a youth track meet to watching Brazil win the World Cup in person. In between were lots of high school and college football and basketball, soccer and Olympic sports and quite a bit of women’s sports.

It was a theatre of dreams that will never die.

Billie Jean showed that it wasn’t a place just for boys.

When I stepped inside the lines, I could dream.

And be.

What’s Next: On Saturday I’ll post a collection of all the individual posts in this series with a few final thoughts, and explain why I wasn’t able to get to everything I intended. It’s been a thrill to do this, and an honor to have some really thought-provoking comments from readers.

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Women’s Sports Without Illusions: The Series.

This is the seventh in a series entitled “Women’s Sports Without Illusions” that critically examines the nearly four decades of the women’s sports movement, including Title IX, cultural and social developments, the growth of professional and international women’s sports and current challenges and issues.

All posts in this series can be found here.

Yesterday I mapped out a few ideas on how Title IX compliance might be changed to reflect the progress of women’s college athletics today, mindful that none of these will probably go anywhere. Instead of boosting participation numbers to match proportionality, I argue that issues over funding, facilities and related matters be made the focal point of new sports regulations.

Today I’ll explain why what we have now is what we’re stuck with, probably for at least another 30 years.

Has this all been a waste of time, then? I don’t think so. The public’s view of what Title IX is has been defined by just one narrow band of interest groups that nonetheless dominates, in large part because there’s not much in the way of any alternative being presented.

Why the 3-part test won’t go

It’s politics. The Women’s Sports Foundation and National Women’s Law Center have made Title IX their highest priority, and it shows. Ever since the mid-1990s, with the Cohen vs. Brown decision and a policy clarification that made proportionality the de facto standard for sports compliance, the Title IX establishment has scored victory after victory, in courts of law and public opinion.

Rather uncritical mainstream media coverage hasn’t hurt with the latter, even though some reporters do a good job explaining the concerns of those advocating on behalf of displaced male athletes. But critics like the College Sports Council have struggled to get any kind of sustained traction for their views, outside of “he said, she said” stories purporting to demonstrate “balance” on a hot topic. And they simply don’t have the law on their side, as it is being interpreted by the federal courts. At times, the CSC can sound as shrill as the women’s groups it opposes, and that’s saying something. We have two entrenched positions that are ironclad. This will not spur meaningful change.

There’s also no willpower in Washington to change any of this. Title IX has become something of a third-rail issue, and frankly, it wasn’t a terribly high priority in Congress even before the current economic crisis. Bush’s education secretary didn’t act on his own Title IX commission’s recommendations, some of which tried to stake out at least a few new ideas worth pondering. They’ve been shelved, probably permanently.

It’s legal. There’s quite a bit of case law and legal precedent for maintaining the status quo. A new set of regulations would take years to craft into a workable set of options for colleges to follow, as guided by the courts. The Supreme Court declined to take up Cohen v. Brown in 1997 because there had been no disagreement at two lower court levels. There has been little since about anything significant regarding the 3-part test.

Football and proportionality

Because the 3-part test is here to stay, here’s another vexing issue that has been around for years: Should football be counted in the proportionality equation?

I’ve long said no — and so have others — because football is a different animal, both in having no female equivalent and with the specialized nature of the sport prompting large rosters. I say this realizing that this suggestion now is basically a non-starter.

Here’s a little history lesson: Two years after Title IX was passed, there was an effort in Congress to exempt revenue-producing sports. However, the Tower Amendment failed, leading to legislation that created the sports regulations we have now, including the 3-part test. I don’t see how any renewed effort to take football out of Title IX compliance will fly.

And given the current problems in college football, it’s implausible that any position to keep that sport away from the gender equity fray can be taken seriously. Even if it makes sense. If you make it a men vs. women thing, which the women’s advocates will do, it will be very easy to pinpoint where the more troubling issues lie.

Currently the Football Bowl Subdivision (formerly I-A) scholarship limit is 85; it used to be 120 before Title IX compliance began in earnest. I’ve thought for a while about cutting the number, perhaps to 70, and then taking football out of the picture.

But I hate the idea of more men being turned away. Even if you agree that football is bloated, there are real human beings who did nothing to hold back women athletes but who are paying the price for what happened before they were born.

I also loathe roster management, although keeping down costs is a persistent issue in football. Here’s another doozy from Ball State, which spent $88,000 to lodge football players before home games. The NCAA could put some teeth in curtailing this, but it hasn’t for years. Serious college football reform efforts would need to include much more than any impact on women’s sports, but those are about as likely to take place as scotching the 3-part test.

Title IX advocates insist there’s still a lot of fat remaining that needs to be cut. Especially below the BCS level schools do lose money on football, sometimes a lot of money.

The political reality is the women’s advocates won’t budge in having football tied to proportionality, and they’d raise holy hell if anybody tried to cut it out. Without football in the mix, most schools would comply with Title IX, and men’s and women’s non-revenue teams might get more proper attention.

These changes alone still won’t yield the money that would conceivably be redistributed to the women’s side. And scaling back football, even to a modest degree, has never encouraged a young woman to try out for a team.

Some other suggestions for reform

Sportswriter Beau Dure doesn’t think that football “should be given a pass.” But he suggests adding a fourth prong of compliance for schools that already provide a healthy roster of sports for women:

“If you’ve got fully funded women’s basketball, field hockey, golf, lacrosse, soccer, softball, tennis and volleyball, do you really have to add women’s-only rowing and equestrian just for equity’s sake? Or cut a men’s program for fear of following Brown as a loser in court?

“If I have a bias in all this, it’s as a fan of soccer and Olympic sports. They’re threatened — across the board. Women’s basketball has grown by leaps and bounds — at Duke, I attended games that drew a couple hundred fans; today, they draw several thousand. Great. Let’s invest elsewhere.”

What an amazingly sane idea.

Little room for optimism

However, the last thing the powerful women’s interests groups want is for colleges to actually reach compliance; it would endanger their advocacy. Besides, there’s fertile new ground for litigation at the scholastic level, and the National Women’s Law Center’s most recent publicity stunt is a declaration of these intentions. Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of high school districts across the country face lawsuits and some very painful prospects at a time when many of them are laying off teachers, gutting academic programs and closing schoools.

More disturbingly, so-called Title IX legal experts are getting all dreamy about the future of the law, interpreting the current status as only just the beginning of where they want to go next. Says former NWLC attorney Deborah Brake in her recent book on Title IX:

“Degendering sports is an important part of securing sex equality in sports.”

Protect your privates, fellas. Here we go again. More on that later in the week.

Coming Wednesday: Do girls and women really need sports? Yes, this is another heretical question I’m asking here. But you may not be aware of the soul-crushing reasons women’s advocates have cited to virtually beg females to get in the game.

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Women’s Sports Without Illusions: The Series.

This is the sixth in a series entitled “Women’s Sports Without Illusions” that critically examines the nearly four decades of the women’s sports movement, including Title IX, cultural and social developments, the growth of professional and international women’s sports and current challenges and issues.

All posts in this series can be found here.

Since I’ve been saying for quite a while that the 3-part test for Title IX sports compliance is flawed, I thought I ought to propose how the law might be improved. I’m not alone in suggesting at least an evaluation of where we are after more than 30 years, but you probably won’t hear much about all that this week, with Thursday’s 39th anniversary of the passage of Title IX approaching. The Sisterhood chanting has already begun. It will be largely uncritical.

The College Sports Council, which has called for changes to Title IX for a number of years, wants to reinstate the interest survey (boosted by the Bush administration in 2005 but booted by the Obama administration in 2009). This is a non-starter for the Title IX diehards, who claim that women are as interested in sports as men. While I generally agree with the CSC on Title IX issues, it offers few other ideas on reforming the law.

I may under the biggest illusion of all in believing that the 3-part test can be replaced with new regulations to fit the times. But I’ll throw out a few ideas that are by no means anything more than that.

But first, here are the three options for Title IX sports compliance that were adopted in 1979:

– The percentage of female and male athletes is substantially proportionate to the percentage of female and male undergraduates, respectively.

– Demonstrate a history of continuing and expanding opportunities for the underrepresented sex (women in virtually every instance).

– “Fully and effectively” accommodate the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex (again, this is almost always females).

Why the 3-part test must go

It’s antiquated. When the HEW policy interpretation cited above went into effect, women were in the distinct minority in college athletic programs, and far below parity in higher education overall. The latter is hardly the case today, with women comprising in many cases 55-60 percent of a college’s undergraduate enrollment.

With regards to the first test, while women are not at 50 percent in most cases in athletic departments, they are surpassing that in some instances, even at programs with large football programs. Example in my backyard: The University of Georgia, where 52 percent of the athletes are women. But because the female undergraduate enrollment is 58 percent, a school with one of the most successful women’s athletics programs in the nation is vulnerable to Title IX litigation.

That’s why UGA likely will add another women’s sport in the near future. Like many schools, it is open to a lawsuit for reasons having nothing to do with sports, but rather how many females, most of whom will never suit up, gain admission through a non-athletic component of the university administration.

It punishes male athletes. Title IX absolutists expect athletic departments to keep up with enrollment patterns, but to reasonable people this truly is the warped logic of proportionality. Georgia hasn’t cut men’s teams to move closer toward complying with the first test, thanks to bulging athletic coffers. But it’s the exception and not the rule.

As for the second test, there’s no seeming end to how long women’s teams may be added. There’s one big problem: There aren’t that many more sports to add. The NCAA’s list of Emerging Sports for Women, which is compiled to assist athletic programs with Title IX compliance, currently has only four sports, and one of them, squash, will be dropped in August.

The other three sports don’t figure to attract a groundswell of support; indeed, both equestrian and sand volleyball were issued reprieves by the NCAA last year after failing to add enough varsity programs to “show promise” of being NCAA-sponsored sports. The other is rugby, which currently has only two varsity women’s teams in the entire nation. If the NCAA can’t find any viable new sports to add then perhaps “emerging” is the wrong choice of words.

Lacrosse, now reaching into the Deep South, may be the only women’s sport left with major growth potential. There’s also the controversial subject of competitive cheerleading, which I’ll discuss in a later post this week.

As for the third test, it’s hard to “accommodate the interests and abilities” of the underrepresented sex if you can’t adequately survey what those interests may be. The Title IX establishment doesn’t trust interest surveys, claiming they could get caught in an e-mail spam filter. It’s more likely they fear the answers that women students may provide won’t jibe with their proportionality ideal. A political favor by the Obama White House has made the activists happy (as conservative interests were pleased with the 2005 Bush policy clarification), and that’s all that matters. This prong has been effectively neutered.

What I’d like to see

The battle to get girls and women in the game has been a resounding success. Shifting the Title IX compliance framework away from participation and toward taking care of what’s been built is a possibility worth pondering.

Another example in my backyard: Two years ago, Georgia Tech — which because of its low female enrollment achieved proportionality years ago — opened a beautiful new on-campus softball stadium for its nationally ranked program. Tech has just seven teams for women, and is the only school in the ACC without a women’s soccer program. Without the pressure of having to add teams, Tech is better resourcing what teams it has, which helps with recruiting and enhances the student-athlete experience.

Throughout the country, there are still are plenty of disparities in facilities, funding, equipment, travel and recruiting budgets and related components of operating a college sports team. This is part of Title IX compliance, too, but it’s overshadowed by the furor over the 3-part test. A recent series of stories in the Ball State student newspaper illustrated what work remains to be done, and it is considerable at that school and many others.

Imagine this: Instead of wasting time and money adding teams in obscure sports that struggle to attract participants, schools could use those dollars on better venues, improve coaching salary scales and create an environment for women athletes that’s truly special. New regulations based around these deficiencies would fulfill the spirit of Title IX better than the current numbers game athletics departments have to play to get right with proportionality.

So much of the money that is spent on women’s sports has often come with little of what I call emotional support, and this might be the biggest shortcoming of all. Too many athletics directors simply throw money at women’s teams because they have to under Title IX, and then go off and deal with football boosters or new arena architects. They don’t want to be bothered.

Far too many women’s teams, especially in basketball, could stand to be better marketed and promoted. There’s plenty of TV exposure in hoops thanks to rich conference multi-sport deals, but a more ground-level marketing wouldn’t hurt. If they’re not going to make money, at least they could draw more of a crowd. Too many schools do too little in this regard, and this change has to start at the top.

On the other hand, women’s sports activists who have won resoundingly in the courts for their cause also have won over few people with their us vs. them, to-the-death tactics. It’s hard to give something emotional support when you might be sued by people who have no interest in persuading you to care.

Coming Tuesday: Why all these ideas — or anyone else’s — are likely to go splat. And why unwedding football from proportionality is a longshot.

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Women’s Sports Without Illusions: The Series.