Title IX · Episode 4 of 10 · 38 min
How the NCAA Fought Title IX to Protect Football
The fiercest opponent of Title IX was the NCAA, which feared gender equity would bankrupt the football and basketball programs funding everything else. The episode gives that economic argument its due, then follows the failed attempt to exempt revenue sports and the compromise that put the 1975 regulations in place.
Who's who
- Walter ByersNCAA executive director and leading voice against applying Title IX to athletics
- John TowerTexas senator who sponsored the 1974 amendment exempting revenue sports
- Jacob JavitsNew York senator whose compromise amendment replaced Tower's
- Birch Bayh+3 more episodesTitle IX's Senate author who led opposition to the carve-out
- Caspar WeinbergerHEW Secretary whose department drafted the athletics regulations
- Gerald Ford+4 more episodesPresident who signed the regulations in 1975
- Jesse Helms+1 more episodeNorth Carolina senator who pressed a 1975 bill to limit Title IX
Timeline
- May 1974Tower's amendment exempting revenue-producing sports passes the Senate but is deleted in conference
- 1974The Javits Amendment directs HEW to consider the nature of particular sports
- May 27, 1975Ford signs HEW's final Title IX regulations
- July 21, 1975The regulations take effect after Congress declines to disapprove them
- 1976The NCAA sues HEW in NCAA v. Califano
- July 21, 1978The three-year compliance grace period for athletics expires
Still debated
Opponents predicted ruin for college sports, yet football revenue boomed, though cuts to men's minor sports keep the question open. Historians also disagree whether the academic-freedom arguments were principle or self-interest.
← PreviousHow Title IX Passed in 1972 — 37 Words, Almost UnnoticedNext →The Three-Prong Test and the Schools That Cheated It
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