By Price Hanna And Charlie Leffler
For years, there has been a great disparity in the equity between men’s and women’s sports. In the past, men’s sports have always dominated when it came to funding, coaching and importance within the university system. However, with the impact of the NCAA Title IX regulations, all of that has changed.
Since Tom Jurich became Athletic Director in October 1997, the University of Louisville has made significant improvements to their women’s sports programs. Yet, according to the annual gender equity survey, which was recently released, U of L ranks low in comparison to other colleges and still has many improvements to make.
The survey comes from data that each school is required to report every year to the NCAA. Under Title IX legislation, schools cannot discriminate based on sex.
Factors such as male to female participation, male to female coaching salaries, male to female scholarships and male to female operating expenses are taken into account.
Louisville’s average rank was 75.8 out of the 115 NCAA Division I-A football institutions that are included in the survey. While all three area schools, Indiana University, the University of Kentucky and U of L, ranked near the bottom third, Louisville ranked the lowest of all the local organizations.
U of L ranked 86th in the operating expense category, spending $11,044,985 more on men’s programs than on women’s programs. IU ranked 93rd, while UK ranked 111th.
In the participation category, U of L was 85th out of 115. Having a difference of -7.8% between men athletes verses women athletes. IU was ranked 59th and UK was 96th.
U of L’s most significant difference was in the form of coaching salaries. Louisville ranked 71st with only 29.64% of the annual $3,188,979 spent on women’s coaches’ salaries.
However, when only the numbers are looked at, the figures are deceiving. The gender equity report produces quantities and rankings, but tells little of how the athletes are treated and the quality of coaching and training they receive. The report does not show what is essential to impact and create championship programs. “A lot of those things are things that aren’t tabulated in a Title IX report,” said associate athletic director Julie Hermann. “In terms of building a program, there’s a whole infrastructure that needs to be in place that will service your student body at as high a levels as possible. That is more of a priority in building championships than whether or not your coaches’ salaries are the same.”
As a result of Title IX, many schools are meeting the specifications which will rank them high, but at the same time they are providing little actual benefit for student athletes themselves. While U of L could easily meet or exceed their present standing among other schools by adding unqualified women to sports, the athletic department knows that such a move would be much more costly in the area of raising the programs to a higher level.
When Jurich arrived at Louisville, he set about to raise the level of experience for the female athlete. “One of the things that Tom (Jurich) and I talked about when I first got here was, let’s build these programs right,” said Hermann. “Part of what’s been impressive about what Tom has done is not only has he fixed a ton but he’s actually done true quality. It’s been quality in things that need to be there that don’t show up on any Title IX report, which many of our coaches will tell you are critical to the mission.”
Another aspect that creates misleading numbers is that the survey only incorporates Division I-A football schools. Women do not participate in NCAA Division I-A football. So, the participation and operating expenses statistics are going to be swayed. It costs much more to operate a 99-man football team than a 10-woman basketball team. While many schools have used rowing as a way to counterbalance the numbers that are created by a football team, U of L did not want to take that route. “We could have 80 women out for rowing and get the numbers,” said Hermann. “But we’re trying to build a program. If you let any Jill Schmo come out for the team, it ruins the building of the program because you want to build with quality. It will look like a club and we don’t want a club. We want a major college varsity competitive team.”
“You always have a heavy infrastructure around football and men’s basketball,” said Hermann. “Academic admissions, tutoring, a level of athletic trainer, a level of sports marketing, a level of fitness people, are all thick around football. We need to do that for all sports.” To build nationally competitive teams throughout the program, such a foundation is a necessity, yet those figures do not show up in the reports. “Do we have the number of proportionality that we want yet? No, we still have a ways to go. But what we’re building is at the quality that you build football and basketball at. That’s more important to me than whether or not we hit the numbers.”
“We could add some crazy, lunatic sport tomorrow and say we got 80 more women,” said Hermann. “But their experience will not look like football or basketball. That, to me is true equity. If you talk to the right back on the field hockey team and you talk to the tight end on the football team and they talk about the experience as being the same… now you’re doing right by the student athletes. And that’s not measured. Our student athletes, if you talk to all 500, they’ll talk about their experience the same way. There’s not any of them that feel like they don’t have a shot to go for their dreams and that’s a big difference than just putting the bodies out there.”
When Jurich came to Louisville, he saw that there was a great equity problem and set about to straighten it out. Not only did he add softball, rowing and women’s golf, he also revamped the field hockey and women’s soccer programs. “Field hockey and soccer were so low they were practically intramural,” said Hermann.
This past year the field hockey team was ranked as high as sixth in the nation and the soccer team won more games than in the past three years combined. Hermann admits that the programs were at such a low state that it would have been easier to scrap them and just create new sports, yet instead Jurich decided it was worth the effort to rebuild them.
“I think Tom Jurich has made U of L the model school for Title IX,” said head soccer coach Karen Ferguson. “He’s given all women’s sports across the board championship opportunities.”
When Ferguson came to U of L, the women’s soccer program had a long history of losing. “I thought it was in bad shape,” said the coach. “Tom saw that and knew that. He asked, ‘what do you need?’ He was able to come up with pretty much all we asked for.” Jurich went to great lengths to make sure the soccer team had what it needed not only to exist, but to excel.
Compared to other schools that rank much higher in the gender equity study, the experience for the student athlete there is far from life at Louisville. Many of the top ranked schools have revised their athletic departments to a point where many of the women’s sports are barely above intramural level just to make the numbers come out right.
Another disparity arises in the number of women qualified to compete at a Division I-A level. Many schools are finding that they have scholarships to offer female athletes but no one to give them to. “The egregious thing that happened is that we waited so long in this country to do right by women’s sports,” said Hermann. “We’re doing it all now at the eleventh hour. And we’re not doing it arithmetically, or geometrically but exponentially. We’ve exploded in opportunities over the last four or five years and there’s more scholarship dollars than there are women prepared to handle a varsity level division I concept.”
“If ten years ago we’d told the fathers of America, ‘Get your daughter ready because she can get her education covered the same way your sons have,’ they would have handled things differently,” said Hermann. Parents would have taken the time to make sure as their daughters grew they had every sports opportunity that young men had, but they did not do that. “Fathers are doing that now, so we’ll see those women in another five or ten years. But we did it so late at the eleventh hour without people realizing that it was actually going to happen, so we don’t have a generation ready to jump in here yet.”
Coaching salaries also create a large gap in equity. At the University of Louisville, John L. Smith stands as one of the best football coaches in the NCAA. Louisville also has one of the best basketball coaches in the NCAA, Rick Pitino. The price of their salaries can be offset by the national recognition that they bring to the university that means better recognition for all sports.
Many outside observers may feel that U of L doesn’t rank very well in these categories. But over the past few years, Louisville has made significant strides, and with Tom Jurich as Athletic Director, U of L will continue to move up in the ranks. From day one, he has been a strong proponent for women’s sports.
“Just doing the numbers,” said Hermann. “That’s not what Title IX was ever supposed to be about. All those X factors are just a few that play into whether or not the experience for the student looks like what it should.”
“Five years from now, we will not only have the quality that we need, but we will also have the numbers,” said Hermann. “We’re doing the right things, but we need time to do it right without rushing things.”
Tom Jurich was unavailable for comment.
