Title IX and Cheerleading

An interesting legal decision regarding Title IX came down this week. Title IX is the civil rights legislation that governs women’s collegiate sports, and is widely credited with dramatically expanding athletic opportunities for women in college. Basically, the legislation says that you cannot discriminate against woman’s sports in favor of men’s sports.

This is the sticky point. How can you tell if women’s sports are being discriminated against? The most commonly used test is called the proportionality test. What this means is that the percentage of women on the school’s sports teams should equal the percentage of women enrolled in the school. If your student body is 55% women, 55% of the athletes at the school must also be women. If not, you are guilty of discrimination: you better hand out more scholarships to girls, and by the way, you can pay the lawyers on your way out of court.

Since they have to pass the proportionality test, colleges play games with their sports programs, either adding women’s sports or dropping men’s sports. This brings us to the current case.

Quinnipiac University in Connecticut wanted to drop their women’s volleyball team. To make up for the number of slots lost, they claimed that cheerleading counted as a varsity sport. Making the substitution, the proportion of woman athletes was within 4% of the percentage of woman in the student body, which the University claimed was close enough. These claims were not unique to Quinnipiac. Other colleges have made the same assumptions.

Anyway, the volleyball team sued the school (with the help of the ACLU), and the judge ruled that cheerleading was not a sport. In a world where synchronized swimming is an Olympic event, how the hell do you rule out cheerleading as a sport?

What are the criteria to determine if an activity is a sport? I think we can all agree that it should be an organized physical activity, with coaches and competitions. Cheerleading seems to fit the bill in all of those particulars. Just go to YouTube, and you will find videos of astonishing athleticism and teamwork, taken at cheerleading competitions. If Quinnipiac decided that cheerleading was more cost effective (11 slots for volleyball vs. 30 slots for cheerleading), or more popular, than volleyball, what right has a court to interfere with that decision? After all, we live in a world where synchronized swimming is an Olympic event.

Apparently, the judge’s decision turned on the fact that the cheerleading team competed against several different types of other cheerleading teams. They competed against other colleges, but also against club teams not affiliated with any school. Also, the rules were different for different competitions.

Another part of the judge’s ruling dealt with how the school counted team membership. The college had women’s teams for cross-country, indoor track, and outdoor track. They counted the athletes who participated in all three sports three times. The judge cried foul on that practice. Interestingly, the school dropped men’s outdoor track last year. How much do you want to bet they will drop the women’s track team next year? After all, you don’t get any credit for it. Now, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Ultimately, Title IX has become a form of affirmative action for women’s athletics. However, unlike affirmative action in college admissions, in the case of sports, quotas are not only encouraged, but required to meet the dictates of the law. Although it has unquestionably opened up more opportunities for women, it also leads to gaming the system and restricted opportunities for men. These are the results we would expect from any quota system.