Advocates call for Congress to hold NCAA legally subject to Title IX
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The NCAA continues to face increasing pressure to equal the playing fields between men and women’s college sports.
The discussion erupted after viral videos from last year’s March Madness tournament showed stark differences between men and women’s training rooms.
While the NCAA has said this year was significantly better, many advocates are calling for Congress to hold the NCAA legally subject to Title IX.
“Legally, that’s what we need,” Jayma Meyer, a Clinical Sports Law Professor at Indiana University who also does Title IX litigation, explains. “The NCAA says over and over again that they abide by the spirit of Title IX. Well, let’s hold them to the law now, not just the spirit.”
The NCAA says they made many improvements with this year’s March Madness tournament, including hotel stays, locker room updates, and most notably adding 68 teams to the women’s tournament.
“Rather than comparing, you know, the food and the lounges and the weight rooms, I think we need to really be questioning, do we… are we doing the right thing generally, for men and women?,” Meyer said.
Meyer tells I-Team 8 the NCAA is currently not subject to Title IX, a decision made at the Supreme Court in 1999.
“The men have a contract with CBS Turner and it’s over a $1 billion annual contract.
The Women’s Basketball Championship is bundled in with 28 other championships with ESPN.
In total, the NCAA for that bundle, NCAA receives 34 million dollars, that’s just, you know, a gigantic, proportional difference,” Meyer said.
Among other things, a report done by USA Today says colleges and universities are spending millions more on men’s sports team.
For example, the study shows schools collectively spent 40% or $77 million more on travel for their men’s teams in comparable sports.
“I would want us not to be talking about it, I would want to just be equal,” Meyer said. “I would want us though, to be focusing more on what is best for sport in the United States, not just for women’s sports.”