Opinion: Tennessee benefitted from Title IX, but did they learn from it?
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Last month, legendary Tennessee head women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt passed away after a bout with dementia.
But just a week later, the university settled a lawsuit alleging Title IX violations against the university’s football program.
For someone as celebrated as Summitt, it seems the reason for the success of her program wasn’t cherished by the football program.
As controversial as Title IX is, Tennessee would not have won eight women’s basketball national championships without it. By guaranteeing women would have equal athletic scholarship opportunities as men, women’s sports were guaranteed to take off.
Prior to Title IX’s influence, women’s basketball was a curiosity where players didn’t play on a full court. Schools like Immaculata dominated the sport.
Why wouldn’t they? As a women’s college, the Mighty Macs had no male athletic programs to fund and could put what resources they had into their basketball program.
But after Title IX took effect 40 years ago, larger schools were forced to channel money into their women’s basketball programs, effectively meaning the Immaculatas and West Chesters, and eventually even the Old Dominions and Louisiana Techs of the sport would be out-priced by the likes of the Lady Vols and Connecticut Huskies.
It also would mean at smaller schools, men’s sports — many with fan followings — would be cut for women’s sports. Providence College, for instance, now has only seven men’s sports, but it has 10 women’s sports.
The Friars dropped their baseball program in 1999 after winning the Big East baseball tournament. This concluded a decade in which the Friars produced three major leaguers, including Boston Red Sox’s Lou Merloni.
Today, the Friars’ softball team has no Rhode Island natives on their team. However, there are six Californians and one native of Nevada on the roster.
Naturally, this leads one to ask if the athletic program is best served providing opportunities for athletes from the West for a sport still trying to find its niche in New England rather than a popular one for native sons in baseball-mad New England.
Title IX supporters will argue with a different administrative vision and successful fundraising at Providence, the baseball program didn’t need to be sacrificed.
But it isn’t a coincidence Big East football died when former Providence athletic director John Marinatto took over as the conference’s commissioner, either.
It’s different in Knoxville. Tennessee prides itself on historically winning more Southeastern Conference championships in all sports than any other member, and Summitt was a driven woman. With their revenues and fan following, the domination of the Lady Vols in women’s hoops was only natural. Tennessee would not have to sacrifice their male programs to succeed in women’s athletics.
Instead, female athletes would thrive at Tennessee because of the opportunities provided by Title IX.
But what would Summitt say about a lawsuit in which the University of Tennessee was sued for damages under Title IX for “deliberate indifference and clearly unreasonable acts and omissions that created a hostile environment to female students before a sexual assault on a student by a fellow student by conduct and policies making a student more vulnerable to sexual assault itself and deliberate indifference and a clearly unreasonable response after a sexual assault that causes a student to endure additional harassment”?
Summitt is a woman who, when seeing the men’s basketball program goofing off at a practice, took the reins of the team away from Bruce Pearl and ran his players until they vomited.
If Summitt was willing to do that, what would she say about the affidavit stating head coach Butch Jones told wide receiver Drae Bowles he “betrayed the team” when Bowles helped a woman who had allegedly been raped by two Vols football players, only to be beat up for his actions?
Would she have stood with 16 other coaches of the athletic department in a Feb. 23 press conference defending the culture at Tennessee that really came off more as a cheerleading session for the university, complete with Jones saying, “Tennessee is a great place and a special place?”
Athletic director Dave Hart didn’t even attend the event, citing “scheduling difficulties.”
Shouldn’t a press conference as important as one defining the culture of the athletic department be scheduled for a time Hart could attend? Why weren’t these “scheduling difficulties” defined?
We’ll never know what stand, if any, Summitt would have taken. All we know is the university settled the Title IX lawsuit brought forth by six plaintiffs.
So much for Jones’ statement that the judicial process will show “I did all I could to assist the former student in question.”
Guess we’ll have to wait for the criminal trials. Maybe.
But what we do know is that a university that benefitted so much from Title IX seemed to learn little from it. To the tune of $2.48 million.
