In May 1974 a couple of powerful Texans who feared Title IX's impact
on revenue-producing sports-Republican senator John Tower and Texas football
coach and athletic director Darrell Royal, soon-to-be president of the American
Football Coaches Association-planned an assault on the two-year-old law. Royal
and Longhorns NCAA faculty representative J. Neils Thompson helped draft the
Tower Amendment, which would exempt football and men's basketball from Title IX
compliance determinations. Royal feared the law would "eliminate, kill or
seriously weaken the programs we have in existence." Its mandates, Tower
said, would throw "the baby"-costly but profitable football-"out
with the bathwater." For good measure, NCAA executive director Walter
Byers added a formulation as alarmist as it was redundant: "Impending doom
is around the corner.
What accounts for Title IX's invincibility? Gender-equity advocate
Donna Lopiano, who had testified against exempting revenue sports while serving
as the Longhorns' women's athletic director, credits those federal regulations,
now enforced by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. It's no
small irony that Texas hombres hoping to torpedo legislation unwittingly helped
bulletproof it. "I've been an expert witness in 30 lawsuits and rarely had
to offer a debatable opinion," Lopiano says. "I'd depend on my
knowledge of the OCR regulations and the courts' inclination to defer to agency
regs if they exist. By an accident of history, the Bible was written when
Christ was born."
Source: A. Wolff, (2012). Winning at Political Football: The
legislation’s staying power is the direct result of an attempt to dismantle it.
Sports Illustrated, 116 (19), 59-60.
Liguang ‘Larry’ Ding
Kin 577
No comments:
Post a Comment