I got a kick out of this quote from Adam Erickson’s mom, who played soccer for some dominant North Carolina teams in the early ’80s:
Kathy Erickson said she’s “so grateful” that punter Drew Butler and kicker Blair Walsh mentored Erickson while they were at Georgia.
“I can tell him all day about Division I athletics, but to live it and learn it and go through it with those guys was great,” she said.
Not exactly something you would have heard thirty or forty years ago, it’s what equal opportunity sounds like. Title IX ain’t perfect by a long shot, but it’s gotten more than a few big things right.
Get The Picture 
Yeah,sure.
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When I enrolled at UGA I’m September 1972 there were no women’s varsity teams, not one. There was a club basketball team. The women bought their own uniforms, coached themselves, scheduled their own games, drove themselves to out of town games and paid their own expenses out of town, and played their home games on a court in the basement of the women’s P.E. Building that did not even have a scoreboard.
I had a good friend who was an All-State basketball player in high school. She loved basketball and wanted to continue playing when she went to UGA. The burdens of having to play under those cirumstances while being a student were too great and she only played on the club team one year.
College athletics, at its foundation, is a college student activity. UGA was typical in not providing opportunity to half its students to benefit from an activity in the same manner as the men. That was wrong.
Title IX passed in 1972. If it bad not women student – athletes still would not have opportunity. Thank goodness it passed.
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If your gonna make an omelet you have to break a few eggs. I’m sure all the those on the HS girls rowing team and equestrian team appreciate the opportunity to continue competing in college. 😉
http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2012/06/23/title-ix-men
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It’s all about baselines, isn’t it? If your baseline is men get all the goodies, then yes, anything women get means fewer goodies for the men. Also, I assume you are a passionate opponent of an indoor practice facility for football, because it just eats you up to think of all the money that white elephant it will divert from men’s non-revenue sports.
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It’s really all about whose ox is getting gored isn’t it? Definitely about revenue sports versus non-revenue sports. You know what they say about “assume” 😉 I keed, I keed. I’m fine with an IPF. Here’s the rub for me. Do not put it at the soccer/softball field. Do not move Foley field to build it there. Do not make it the swiss army knife IPF for every sport. And do put it where the practice field is facing S. Lumpkin. We don’t lose a practice field we gain a covered practice field. You can put one there of 100,000 sq feet for 1.45 million. Here is what Spurrier had to say about IPF. ——–>
” The new indoor place that we’re going to build almost everyone has one and we’re getting in line. I think we practiced indoors two to three days last year. That’s all. The weather here is so good. But it’s good to have one. It’s good to have one in the winter time. And really you have one because everyone else has one.” Recruiting. Is. The. Lifeblood. Of. College. Football.
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14.5 whoops.
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When I enrolled in the University in the Fall of 1972 the school had a men’s wrestling team and a men’s gymnastics team. I had friends from my high school who were on both of those teams and on scholarships. Both of my friends lost those scholarships because this ill-conceived statute directly and proximately lead to the elimination of those teams and therefore the scholarships. This centralized/authoritarian mandate of “fairness’ lead to our Alma Mater having an intercollegiate Equestrian team and no men’s wrestling team. WTF.
Any reasonable advocate of gender equity would recognize at least two important matters that the wizards of wise in Washington seemed to have missed. First,the inequities were in tax payer dollars funding men’s and women’s sports unequally. The elephant in the room that the nerds from Georgetown et al missed is that tax payer money does not fund men’s football,men’s basketball or women’s gymnastics at the University of Georgia, they fund themselves and therefore should not have counted in the numbers game they used to cut men’s sports. There is no female equivalent to football and it skews the numbers to the detriment of young male athletes. It is a flawed law that has needed amending for 40 years. Second ,the law does not recognize when polled 90% of male high school athletes say they would play intercollegiate sports if given the talent and opportunity but when the same question is asked of females the number is only 50%. The differential in the groups wants and desires has never been factored into this god awful law. It is a very flawed law kept in place by an alliance of disinterested bureaucrats and women’s rights advocates that think it’s about time they get to discriminate against men.
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I agree. I follow only two sport seasons passionately, college football and college lacrosse. Title IX has completely screwed the advance of men’s college lacrosse for the major universities.
Lacrosse has grown in popularity to encompass the entire nation at the youth – HS level. Where I live in Colorado, it is far more popular than football with the youth leagues actually having tryouts, and the football youth leagues struggling to find players to field teams.
From a recruiting standpoint, Long Island and the Baltimore area are arguably no longer the de facto hotbeds, and D1 All-american players are coming from Texas and California. There is a surplus of D1 capable players, who are either riding the pine at Syracuse or Johns Hopkins, or are competing in the MCLA league (club lax like at UGA) and paying their own way to play like I had to at UGA.
Meanwhile, women’s lacrosse is growing unbounded. The freaking Florida Gators women’s team, which was established in 2006, even made the final four in 2012.
This needs to change.
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I understand the fact UGA stopped wrestling and gymnastics. I regret we lost those sports.
That said, denying over 50% of the student population opportunity to preserve more men’s opportunities isn’t fair, either. The athletic board could have preserved men’s gymnastics and wrestling and provided women opportunity but elected not to in order to put more money into football.
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And when people don’t do things that we think they should, there ought to be a law.
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No that is NOT what they did. They decided we don’t want to use a rule of reason but instead decided they had to approach it on a raw numbers basis . That translated into just cutting men’s programs and having women’s volley ball but no men’s. The AD used simple math like a bludgeon as opposed to a scalpel. They decided to have roughly the same number of female scholarships as male. Again the obvious problem is that there is no female sports equivalent to the 85 scholarships in football so enter the total BS that women’s softball has 12 free rides and men’s baseball has what 11.7. Why ,because they add BS women’s sports trying to catch up to a raw number that includes the football team.. We are screwing young male athletes in order to be “fair”…….fair to who? I submit that football should not count at all because if some young lady can throw a 35 yard down and out on a rope to the far hash Coach Richt would be all over that recruit(no not literally) . They have equality of opportunity just not ability, sue God not the University.Don’t you believe a lot of young men would love to play soccer for UGA ? Sorry,not on scholarship…. wouldn’t be fair. Title IX is the victory of “Rule Writers”,”Rule Followers/educators” and bureaucrats over the rule of reason. You are not being more fair to women by being more unfair to men. In my limited experience of dealing with Title IX administrators and advocates they’ve all been women who drive Subaru wagons and wear sensible shoes. Draw your own conclusions.
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Why not reduce the number of football scholarships to fund other men’s sports?
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Because it would be WRONG that’s why..Cut football scholarships ….sheet man…. that is violating one of the Commandments isn’t it? Cut men’s football scholarships Hell, if I wanted to watch GA. Southern football I’d watch Ga. Southern football. Reduce Football scholarships and the next thing you know cats would be marrying dogs (I believe they already can in California) Reduce football scholarships….really….next thing outa your mouth better not be ,” Well maybe you can have too much beer” cause if it is I’m going to start reading Jeff Schultz.
Just found the Commandment, its the 13th ,you know the one on the third tablet that Moses dropped in History of the World ,Part One. It’s been reconstructed and it says “Thou Shall Not F— With Georgia Football” Cut Scholarships, Bluto’s been huffin glue again…what’s wrong wiff you
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Seems to me all this boils down to is a matter of preferences.
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I disagree its about complying with a law that was poorly conceived, written and implemented . Football should not even count for Title IX purposes it is self supporting( ie does not require tax payer money)
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Football may be self-supporting in Athens, but there are plenty of places where it’s not.
As far as not requiring taxpayer money, last time I checked, those contributions to the Hartman Fund are tax-deductible and the athletic department is treated as a non-profit. To whom do you think the tax burdens for the missing revenue get shifted?
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off subject and certainly I’m not a taxspert but I think Hartman Fund contributions ceased being tax-deductible a long time ago. More on point ,assuming a one for one set off between deductions and dollars not received by the University is questionable at best and more likely just wrong, More importantly there is no taxpayer burdens to run the Football program that is what self supporting means therefore Title IX considerations should not be applied to Football because it does not spend taxpayer money, to the contrary it (Football) contributes to non revenue producing sports like Women’s softball. I hereby accuse you of suggesting that we kill the goose that lays the golden egg and I really am going to work now,
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Why would the University of Georgia need an equestrian team period, Title IX or otherwise? A complete and total waste of money.
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Vet School. Large Animal Practice. We (UGa Vet School) do a pretty good job there. Think about it. The horse people appreciate the attention.
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Never considered that aspect.
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Why is Equestrian listed under women’s athletics on the Dawgs website? I really don’t know. Could a man compete on this team? Do men compete on this team?Logic tells me its on the women’s side so the school can show it expends an exorbitant amount of money on a women’s sport to satisfy the Title IX ledger.
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Women’s basketball is great. It was fun to watch in high school back when was a half court game. And fun today to watch the SEC women.
~~~
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My older sister was a “star” guard on the old 3 & 3 teams. After the women’s game, the gymnasium empted. One reason was that women’s BBall was much more dramatic and fun to watch when it was on a divided court.
My Granddaughter has now taken up HS BBall with Grandpa cheering her on.
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I absolutely agree.
The half-court, divided game was the best. I loved watching it. Perfect lead-in to the men’s games, which were pretty intense themselves in South Georgia when I was coming up.
But the girls games in those days were consistently more exciting. There was something about that divided court game.
~~~
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you guys must be older than dirt to remember 3&3 did they wears skirts or shorts?
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Shorts, lol. And they looked GOOD.
~~~
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Older than dirt? Gee it was the 60’s and maybe the early 70’s? You know the older than dirt crowd whose music you envy and cars you drool over?
lol!
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They wore short shorts and it was when women were REAL, not plastic whippersnapper.
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Students pay a hefty activity fee, so I think a wide variety of sports should be available to them. UGA is something like 70% female, so simple math dictates women have the majority of options.
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Arguing against title 9 is like arguing against gay marriage. No. Wait.
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