USA TODAY International Edition
Disparities persist for female athletes
Despite equity law, women’s teams get 71 cents for every dollar men’s do
Led by a two- time national player of the year and firmly entrenched at the top of the rankings, the Oregon women were college basketball’s version of rock stars during the 2018- 19 and 2019- 20 seasons.
The Ducks had Sabrina Ionescu, a Kobe Bryant protégé who now appears in State Farm commercials. Fans packed arenas at home and on the road, hoping to see records fall. Oregon’s No. 1 ranking at the beginning of the 201920 season was the first in school history, for either the men’s or women’s basketball team.
Yet as the less successful Oregon men’s team took charter flights to a majority of its away games those two seasons, Ionescu and her teammates mostly flew commercial.
“I think that we’ve just gotten used to kind of playing with less: not as cool of jerseys or less jerseys or less food, worse travel, worse hotels,” said Oregon junior Sedona Prince, who was a redshirt freshman in the 2019- 20 season after transferring from Texas.
Prince has become a leader in the fight to address inequities after her video about the differences in the weight rooms at last year’s men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments went viral on social media.
“I think it’s sad,” she said, “because we’ve kind of gotten used to being screwed over.”
The Oregon women aren’t alone.
Despite the progress ushered in by the landmark Title IX law, colleges and universities consistently devote fewer resources to women’s sports than men’s, based on the results of a first- of- its- kind data analysis by USA TODAY in collaboration with the Knight- Newhouse Data project at Syracuse University.
The analysis uses NCAA revenue and expense reports for the 2018- 19 and 201920 seasons to compare what 107 public schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision – the highest level in Division I – spent on travel, equipment and recruiting for similar men’s and women’s teams.
For every dollar schools spent on men, the analysis found, they spent just 71 cents on women in those categories. Over two seasons, that added up to $ 125 million more for men than women in basketball, baseball and softball, golf, soccer, swimming and diving, and tennis.
USA TODAY focused solely on sports with comparable men’s and women’s squads. Had the analysis covered all teams, including football, the overall disparity would be greater: Altogether, schools spent just over twice as much on men than women on travel, equipment and recruiting combined – $ 1.16 billion compared with $ 576 million.
The spending chasm underscores the broad failures of top U. S. colleges and universities to fully comply with Title IX. The law, which turns 50 this summer, requires schools receiving public funds to ensure gender equity across a range of areas, but it is probably best known for its mandate to provide women equal athletic opportunities.
Yet, five decades later, schools are still falling short.
Colleges and universities spent millions more on men’s teams in every category across four of the six comparable sports. Only soccer and swimming spent roughly equal amounts. On travel alone, schools collectively spent 40%, or $ 77 million, more on their men’s teams. On equipment, they spent nearly 40% more, or $ 26 million. And on recruiting, schools spent 51%, or $ 22 million, more for men’s teams.
“Title IX provided opportunities for girls and women to have the same opportunities as our male counterparts. We’re here 50 years later, but we still are not treated in the same manner,” said Dawn Staley, women’s basketball coach at the University of South Carolina.
Nowhere were the disparities more glaring than basketball, for which coaches and athletic departments spent 63 cents on women for every dollar on men. Among the findings:
● Of the 107 schools, all but two – the University of Hawaii and the University of Toledo – spent more on travel for men’s basketball teams, including 19 that spent at least $ 1 million above what they spent on women’s teams.
● Schools collectively shelled out $ 8.7 million – or 39% – more on equipment for men’s basketball than women’s. Louisville, for example, spent 13 times more on the male players – $ 327,000 compared with $ 24,000 for the women. That included a single purchase at a local sporting goods store for $ 9,705 worth of clothing. They spent more than $ 2,500 on socks alone.
● On recruiting, schools spent a total of $ 19 million – or 72% – more to lure top talent to their men’s basketball programs. Indiana University spent $ 1.2 million for its men’s basketball team, nearly six times more than the $ 216,513 spent by the women’s team. The men’s expenditures, according to detailed records obtained by USA TODAY, included more than $ 650,000 for charter flights and $ 12,000 for car services for recruits. There were no similarly labeled charges for the women’s team.
“The saddest part of all of this is that Title IX has been the law for 50 years, and while enormous progress has been made, the vast majority of schools in this country – colleges and universities in this country – are violating Title IX by treating their male athletes, as a whole, way better than their female athletes, as a whole,” said Arthur Bryant, an attorney who has been litigating Title IX cases for decades. “That’s a straight- out violation of Title IX, and it needs to stop.”
USA TODAY interviewed 21 current and former coaches, athletes and athletic directors from 10 schools, as well as eight Title IX experts, for this story. The media organization also filed public records requests for detailed expense reports from more than a dozen schools and pored through hundreds of pages of purchases to get a better picture of how they spent money.
Some colleges and universities declined to comment on the spending gaps. Those that did offered several explanations for the disparities, including that the spending imbalances reflected the wishes of the women’s team. Others blamed the situation in part on restricted donor funds that pour money into men’s athletics but not women’s.
“I think that’s one of the hardest parts of college athletics as a whole,” said Josh Heird, the interim athletic director at the University of Louisville. “Over the years,
football, men’s basketball tend to garner more support. There’s just more donors that want to be associated with those programs.”
But experts said those excuses don’t erase the mandate of Title IX.
“As far as Title IX is concerned, as far as gender equity is concerned, it doesn’t matter the source of the funds or the benefits,” said Sarah Axelson of the Women’s Sports Foundation. “As soon as a school allows for that benefit to be passed along to its student athletes, it is required to make sure that it provides an equitable experience.”
Part of the problem, several women’s coaches told USA TODAY, is that they often don’t even know about the inequities. Or, if they do, they don’t realize the extent of them because no one is telling them. When the full scope of the imbalances are brought to light, it is hurtful and exhausting, some said – just one more way in which women are told they don’t matter.
“It’s really demeaning,” said UCLA coach Cori Close, who is also president of the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. “Just think about how women already feel like less than and then add that this is a sport with predominantly women of color.” Compliance with Title IX is generally based on a school’s entire athletic department rather than specific teams, and the U. S. Department of Education requires that spending on similar teams be equitable rather than equal. That means the dollars spent don’t have to be exactly the same, so long as the experience and treatment of the athletes is comparable.
But because schools typically devote
an inordinate amount of resources to football, they then need to find other places to spend on female athletes to close the equity gap. If similar men’s teams are still receiving more resources, that can reflect a difference in treatment. And that, experts said, could suggest problems in complying with Title IX.
“The red flags that you always look for is to compare the operating budgets of same sports to same sports,” said Donna Lopiano, who was the first director of women’s athletics at the University of Texas before serving as the CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation from 1992 to 2007.
“When you see these big disparities,” Lopiano said, “they are red flags.”
Disparities are not as blatant as they were in decades past. Coaches are not washing the uniforms of their players as Pat Summitt, who eventually became the first women’s basketball coach to make $ 1 million a year, did early in her career at the University of Tennessee. Female athletes are not banished to basements to practice or using metal lockers with no doors.
But college athletics, for almost the entirety of its first century of existence, meant men’s sports. The law might dictate that women be treated equitably, but systemic discrimination remains baked into the structure.
“They’ve had 50 years to figure it out,” said Nicole LaVoi, director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota. “So there’s no, ‘ Well just give us time. We’ll figure it out.’ No, they’ve had 50 years. And so many schools are still struggling with this.”
Nobody is looking at the numbers
Enacted on June 23, 1972, Title IX prohibits sex- based discrimination by any “education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” The law was initially meant to open the doors of higher education to women, particularly in graduate schools.
But resistance from athletic departments prompted the bill’s authors to ensure the same rules applied to athletics. Over the next three years, what was then known as the Department of Health, Education and Welfare drafted regulations that required schools to provide equal opportunities for women athletes.
Title IX proved to be a watershed. Within two years, the number of high school girls playing sports soared from fewer than 300,000 to 1.3 million, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. The number of women playing sports in college went from 32,000 before Title IX to a little more than 224,000 in 2019- 20.
But while women take advantage of the opportunities, schools lag behind in ensuring that they are equitable.
“The vision, perhaps naively, was that people would recognize both the right of girls and young women to have athletic opportunities and the value to them to having those opportunities,” said Jeff Orleans, who helped write the Title IX regulations in the 1970s as an attorney for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and now specializes in higher education law.
“And that, over time, people would grow into compliance and grow into a culture of equality.”
But last year’s NCAA basketball tournament exposed how far colleges and universities are from that culture of equality.
Images showing the small rack of dumbbells provided to the women’s teams at the March Madness tournament in Texas compared to the sprawling weight room at the men’s event in Indianapolis shined a light on the disparities that players and coaches last year said was typical of the treatment they endure.
Although anger was directed at the NCAA, such problems exist at campuses across the nation, including Oregon, USA TODAY’s data analysis found.
The Ducks spent nearly $ 50,000 more on equipment for its men’s basketball team than the women in 2018- 19 and 2019- 20.
Oregon also spent over $ 132,000 more on recruitment for men’s basketball compared to women and $ 702,300 more on travel.
When presented the numbers by USA TODAY, Ducks women’s basketball coach Kelly Graves said he thought the men’s and women’s programs were being treated equitably and was surprised at some of the spending gaps.
He’s not alone. Most women’s coaches told USA TODAY that they don’t see the budgets for the men’s team, nor do they specifically track what the men’s team is doing or getting. It’s often only by happenstance, they said, that they learn of disparities in treatment.
The Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act requires schools to submit annual reports detailing the number of men’s and women’s teams they field, as well as the staffing and spending for each. In theory, that could be a tipoff to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights that schools might not be complying with Title IX.
But the DOE is largely reactive. It acts primarily upon complaints rather than policing schools to ensure they’re meeting their obligations to the law. Even when violations are found, the agency gives schools multiple chances to reme
dy their failings, and has never stripped anyone of all federal funding.
“It’s not the law itself,” said Debbie Yow, who spent almost three decades as an athletic director at Division I schools. “Maybe after all this time, the Office for Civil Rights needs to go back and say we need to do a review.”
Leaving money on the table
The revenue generated by men’s sports is often used to justify the spending disparities. CBS and Turner Broadcasting are scheduled to pay $ 11.4 billion alone for the multimedia and marketing rights to the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament through 2032.
But a growing number of college sports leaders say the argument ignores the fact men’s programs have had a decades- long head start in terms of support and promotion. Or that men’s sports still command most of the spotlight.
By not maximizing their women’s programs, schools are leaving money on the table.
As part of an independent assessment of the disparities at the NCAA basketball tournaments, media expert Ed Desser estimated that broadcast rights for the women’s event could fetch between $ 81 million and $ 112 million a year in 2025. That’s more than twice what ESPN currently pays for a package that lumps the women’s event in with championships for more than two dozen other sports.
“This isn’t about slicing the pie differently, this is about letting women contribute so we can make the pie bigger,” said Close.
Even at some of the most successful women’s programs in the country, schools aren’t investing the way they do with men’s teams.
Take the Louisville Cardinals. The women’s team made this year’s Final Four, its third trip in the past 10 years and fourth since 2009, all under the leadership of head coach Jeff Walz. The Cardinals played for the national title in 2009 and 2013.
Walz, who has coached the team since 2007, said the university provides him the resources his team needs to be successful.
“As long as our needs are being met, our student- athletes’ needs are being met, they have good care, medical care, trainers, all of that, the coaching is what they deserve,” Walz said, “then I’m fine with that.”
And yet, the USA TODAY review found, Louisville doled out nearly $ 2 million more on the men than the women across the three spending categories during the 2018- 19 and 2019- 20 seasons.
Even if coaches and players say they’re getting “enough,” that doesn’t satisfy Title IX compliance, said Neena Chaudhry, general counsel for the National Women’s Law Center. The law recognizes only numbers, not feelings.
“You have to keep in mind that for decades now, women have been socialized, if you will, and taught that they should just accept whatever they get,” Chaudhry said. “You talk to so many women who are just so grateful to play at all. So I think that you can’t analyze those kinds of responses, which I totally understand, apart from the culture in which it all exists.”
Coaches, particularly those of highprofile teams, also share a concern that their younger peers or those at less- successful programs are hesitant to point out inequities or ask for more. That they feel they need to have some clout before they can make the kind of demands that coaches of men’s teams do without a second thought.
In some cases, stereotypical perceptions fuel the imbalances, coaches and athletes told USA TODAY. The idea that male athletes eat more, so schools will spend more to feed them, or that women don’t need charter flights – or larger charter planes – because they’re not as big as their male counterparts.
“I have really tall women on my team, too,” said Graves, whose roster this year included four players 6- foot- 4 or taller.
‘ Hey, this is unfair’
The 16 years Ray Tanner spent as the baseball coach at the University of South Carolina before becoming athletic director in 2012 gave him a unique perspective on spending disparities. Really, though, he looks at the spending in his department as a simple matter of fairness.
“Why would you have disparities when you’re doing the same thing?” Tanner asked. “I believe in equity, I believe in Title IX. But beyond that, I believe in logic. What’s the difference when women go out and play golf and men go out and play golf? There is none.”
South Carolina is an outlier.
It was one of only five schools that spent at least 95 cents on women’s teams for every dollar spent on men’s teams in the comparable sports that USA TODAY examined.
In basketball, the women’s team spent more on equipment than the men – to the tune of $ 45,000. Staley and her staff also spent nearly $ 25,000 more on recruiting than the men’s team, an anomaly even among other high- profile programs.
South Carolina’s approach requires intention. In addition to monitoring and comparing budgets, Tanner said South Carolina brings in Janet Judge, an outside Title IX expert, two or three times a year.
The biggest check, though, comes from the athletes themselves.
“Our student- athletes feel really good about their opportunities,” Tanner said. “They don’t feel they’re different types of athletes, they don’t feel they’re treated differently. That stigma doesn’t exist. And I’m proud of that.”
Female athletes, and the men and women who coach women’s teams, say they have never asked for special treatment. They simply expect things will be fair, just as they expect when they step on the court or the playing field.
But fairness will remain elusive so long as colleges and universities consistently provide their men’s teams with more resources.
“The important point is Title IX does not require schools to spend equal amounts on women and men. It requires them to give women and men equal treatment,” said Bryant, the attorney who has brought Title IX cases.
“But particularly in a capitalist country like America, when you’re spending unequal amounts, you’re usually providing unequal treatment.”
Prince admits she wasn’t that familiar with Title IX before her video went viral. Her generation is the first to grow up with equal opportunities in athletics and education as the norm, and she calls the law that paved the way for that “super cool.”
But she is annoyed that, 50 years later, there is still such a long way to go.
“Honestly, I want us to stop talking about this,” Prince said. “I think that’s when we’ll know that we’ve actually made progress, when inequity isn’t a conversation topic anymore.”