Since 1972 when it was first implemented, Title IX has been a point of controversy, because of its strict boundaries on equality and financing of collegiate sports. Title IX is a part of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 that states in a very elastic clause, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” This law has led to a greater emphasis on social equality sacrificing many civil rights, as this demanding law has had many detrimental outcomes. Observing the effect that Title IX has on men’s collegiate sports and women’s sports as a whole and the new equality based on finances, we can see the negative effects of Title IX, because there were many detrimental effects of the law’s pursuit for equality.

In order to make men’s and women’s sports equal, Title IX imposed many strict financial restrictions that were supposed to strengthen women’s sports but ended up destroying many men’s sports programs.  “James Madison University's eliminating seven male sports-teams last fall, occasionally make headlines,” describes Carrie Lukas, describing an example of a great affect that this legislation has had on collegiate sports (Lukas). In my college search, I experienced the effects of Title IX first hand. I was on my high school’s rowing team and aspiring to be a collegiate rower, but from Title IX’s restrictions on many men’s programs, there are very little varsity rowing programs. These new restrictions have made almost all the men’s rowing programs at any school with a football team be forced off campus, meaning that they are not allowed to use the college’s money and facilities. Smaller sport programs like rowing are being taken off campus all across the country, because so many other of the men’s sports require so much money like football and basketball. Over half of women that row in high school row on a varsity rowing team in college, but that number is much different for men, as far under ten percent of men who row in high school earn a scholarship to row at the next level. Many other men’s sports programs are being forced from varsity programs to club teams, which do not receive the benefit of the school’s money. Title IX is forcing money into the women’s teams, but the law is causing adverse effect on the other side of the funding, because many men’s sports are being destroyed to because the schools do not have enough funding. The funding should be made more flexible to be proportional to the amount of money that a team brings, because obviously a football team is going to make the school much more money with ticket sales and concessions than a women’s volleyball team. Many schools consider these football teams a large investment, as they higher coaches for millions of dollars in order to make money off of the football teams. This large amount that many Division I schools spend on football teams has led to many other smaller sports programs being pushed off campus because there is not enough funding left over to sustain those sports since they have to equal out the enormous amount of money they spend on football also on women’s programs.  

Making an effort for equality in collegiate programs, Title IX creates inequality in many smaller sports, since the sports are being hurt by the huge production that collegiate football programs have become.  In "Title IX: Creating Unequal Equality through Application of the Proportionality Standard in Collegiate Athletics,” Brenda Ambrosius focuses clearly on the detrimental effects of the law on Men’s athletics from a legal and very objective standpoint. She is a woman herself and shows little bias in this paper, as she derives her authority from a legal standpoint displaying the inequality from a neutral perspective. She also relates this gender issue to racial issues, where “it has recently been argued that forcing racial integration is equally as unconstitutional as racial segregation” (486 Ambrosius). Arguing the similarity between the unconstitutional similarity between Title IX and racial integration, Ambrosius writes, “The current Title IX compliance system causes a disparate impact on men’s athletics—similar to the disparate impact laws involving racial classifications—and therefore should trigger an equal protection cause of action” (486 Ambrosius). In this article Ambrosius also emphasizes how many male athletics programs are being shut down throughout the country, focusing on a personal approach to these programs being shut down. In the spotlight of this legislation is the new movements of funding towards women’s sports; however, this movement of the funding distracts most people from the large problem of men’s sports shutting down. This result of many men’s programs being shut down is a direct result of Title IX showing that its pursuit for equality has actually led to many more problems in the world of collegiate sports. 

With this legislation meant to grow and benefit women’s sports, there was obviously a huge effect that Title IX has on women’s sports, but it has also adversely effected many facets of women’s athletics.  In “How Title IX Hurts Female Athletes,” Linda Flanagan and Susan Greenburg describe in depth how the Title IX has negatively affected women’s athletics although it is meant to benefit them. The authors describe how this greater attention being brought to female sports has caused women to begin to specialize in those sports at younger ages, as it is more competitive. Linda Flanagan and Susan Greenburg describe this phenomenon: “Young athletes bent on specialization continue to suffer from preventable overuse injuries, like stress fractures and stress reactions, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. `More than 50 percent of what we see in sports medicine are overuse injuries, which are entirely preventable,’ said Dr. Joel Brenner, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness” (Flanagan and Greenburg). An increase rate of injury sounds like a natural side effect with more women playing sports, but the increase in specialization is causing a much greater rate of injuries to women. An example of an injury that has become increasingly prevalent among women is the torn anterior cruciate ligament, or A.C.L..  As Dr. William Levine, the director of sports medicine at Columbia University and the head physician for its varsity teams, explains, women are five times more likely than men to tear their A.C.L., because “they become more "quadricep-dependent" than males, and that thick slug of muscle in the middle of the thigh then works against the A.C.L., sometimes causing tears. "Female athletes jump and land in a more erect posture, which puts increased stress on their A.C.L," he says” (Flanagan and Greenburg). Although these new opportunities for women are seemingly only beneficial, they have led to many negative outcomes for women pursuing the new, ample scholarships.

This legislation has increased the number of women in sports and the scholarships available, so many more women have been encouraged to play sports and specialize in a sport for financial reasons, leading to many new problems with women’s athletics. These scholarships have made athletics a much bigger attraction for many young women to specialize in a sport, but they have opened up many large health issues that damage much more than their bank account from specializing in a sport at an early age. These injuries and health problems do not arise from women playing sports at a young age, but rather specializing in one sport leading to injuries from over use of particular muscle groups, joints, or same practice techniques. Hence, many more women have been sustaining these overuse injuries, which are detrimental to women’s health. For girls participating in endurance sports, “female athlete triad” is a very large problem, because the athletes suffer from “eating disorders, bone loss, and the cessation of their menstrual cycles” (Flanagan and Greenburg). This disease can be very problematic, because it is growing to so many female athletes. Flanagan and Greenburg write, “While 1.2 to 4.3 percent of all women athletes have the full `terrible triad,’ as Dr. Levine calls it, 70 percent are thought to have one component of it. Six top sports associations, including the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Sports Medicine, assert that `fifteen to 62 percent of college female athletes report a history of disordered eating’” (Flanagan and Greenburg). Many other serious injuries like concussions have become increasingly problematic in women’s sports, and describing how much more susceptible women are to concussions than men, Flanagan and Greenburg say, “Female soccer players are sidelined for concussions 68 percent more often than their male counterparts” (Flanagan and Greenburg). This new river of funds being poured into has actually led to much less women coaching women’s sports, taking women out of leadership roles in their own athletics. In 1970 “women comprised more than 90 percent of the head coaches of women's college teams,” but “In 2010, the proportion of women coaching women's teams stood at the second lowest in history, 42.6 percent” (Flanagan and Greenburg). Displaying that men have even begun to take over the root of women’s collegiate athletics, Howard Chudacoff states, “By 1985, the vast majority of women’s college athletic programs had been merged with men’s and were run by male athletic directors” (Chudacoff 96). This new influx of funding has actually had a negative effect on women’s sports because the number of men in charge of women’s sports as risen, forcing women out of leadership roles and into much greater causing adverse effects from this legislation advocating for rigid equality. These several unexpected problems that have risen from Title IX depict how this law has become problematic even in the field that it is trying to make equal.

Basing the equality of men’s and women’s sports on strictly numbers and money has proven to be very ineffective, because the culture and all things connected to these sports is not exactly the same as Title IX is trying to make them. Title IX is making movements in the right direction towards making the sports equal; however, the binding and restricting rules that Title IX has imposed create many problems in both men’s and women’s sports. College football is such a large number of fans now with so much money focused into it with so much in return from ticket sells and concessions with no women sport that is as a large of an attraction for fans and all media attention. Therefore, it is hard to allocate the funds equally between the men and women’s sports because there is no substitute for men’s football or basketball, because they have such a large nationwide following. Title IX has not been helping make the following for women’s sports larger, because the media coverage for sports has decreased significantly since Title IX was implemented. In the TED Talk “Female Athlete: Missing in action,” Cheryl Cooky highlights how the disparity between the sports between the male and female sports has been growing because the following ever since Title IX was implemented 45 years ago for women’s sports keeps falling as the popularity of football and other men’s sports has skyrocketed. Men and women’s basketball is one of the best ways to directly evaluate the disparity between the genders, since it is a very popular sport shared by both men and women. However, men’s basketball attracts a much larger fan base and attention, but it is very hard to answer why this the attraction is larger. Brittney Andres tries to answer the question and reason why this gap is so large in her article “Title IX is a Losing Game For Men.” She explains that this could be explained be explained by society’s sexism, but she says there are many more reasons like men’s game being “fast-paced, dramatic, and thus appealing to a television audience” (Andres). She explains that another reason for men’s basketball being more popular is because, “men comprise the bulk of the viewing audience for sports, and may prefer watching male athletes” (Andres). To show that men have a much greater interest in men’s sports, Brittney Andres says, “Recreational sports leagues open to all comers remain overwhelmingly male. Studies repeatedly have found that men watch, read, and talk more about sports than do women — five minutes in any sports bar would have yielded the same conclusion for the price of a beer” (Andres). Men often take more interest in sports, which can account for the larger following of men’s football and basketball. Therefore, trying to make men and women’s sports completely equal is very hard to do, since the culture and the money made from the sports is different in many cases. 

Having made such a nationwide effect on college students, Title IX advocates for such strict equality that it pushes for integration and ignores several civil rights. Outside of equality within collegiate sports, Title IX has made s very large impact in how universities deal with sexual assault cases. In “A Hostile Environment for Student Defendants: Title IX and Sexual Assault on College Campuses,” Stephen Henrick describes how being a defendant under the new regulations has become very hostile. Showing how Title IX set goals very high for equality on college campuses, Henrick states, “The attainment of Title IX’s noble goals cannot come at the expense of the civil rights of innocent people” (Henrick 50). The law tries to protect women’s rights on all bases, but it sets too many restrictions that it can become detrimental to many college students. Pursuing a very hard task, Title IX tries to conquer inequality just by looking at numbers and money, rather than looking at changing the culture on many college campuses that would influence the sports following. Henrick refers to how this culture has made many of the defendants in a state where they are guilty until they can prove their innocence, rather than being innocence until the defendant can be proven guilty. 

This law come out of very good intentions against discrimination and advocating for equality, yet it does not enforce against discrimination and create equality in a correct manner that is conducive to many people and sports programs. This law is in need of revision, because it attempts to create equality yet makes many extra problems to collegiate sports, as many more men’s programs are being forced off campus to comply with the restrictions that Title IX imposes. Handling something that is engrained in Americans’ culture like sports and football with just numbers has led to very bad outcomes because equality among student athletes should not be determined by numbers. This equality was a very lofty goal to set and is very hard to achieve, yet Title IX tries to achieve this equality among men and women college students but falls short in several aspects, since it has driven so many men’s programs off at many different. 
