Column 02
Sports Illustrated Online – Friday, May 4, 2007
Title IX an out-of-control monster
By Michael Phillips
Title IX was a landmark piece of legislation that gave women the right to compete in high-level collegiate athletics. Now it has turned into a buzzword that can be thrown at any problem, even non-existent ones.
The NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics has called for a ban on allowing men to practice with women’s basketball teams.
A majority of Division-I programs currently have a group of men that help out during women’s basketball practices. They keep players fresh by reducing their workload, as well as imitating the size and strength of opponents.
“I think it’s something that has been very beneficial,” Kansas coach Bonnie Henrickson said. “I would be awfully disappointed if we lost the opportunity to work with these young men.”
But the NCAA says that these opportunities should be going to women, not men. The Committee has pulled out the “Title IX” card, but it’s so far away from the action that it can’t realize the ban wouldn’t help female players — it would hurt them.
The Jayhawks go up against players like Oklahoma’s Courtney Paris. She’s a towering 6-foot-4, and in 2006 became the first freshman to lead the nation in rebounding.
Stunningly, Henrickson can’t just grab an athletic 6-foot-4 woman off Wescoe Beach and bring her to practice. All the women who are physically capable of playing Division-I basketball are already doing so. So she invites men like senior Steven Wallace to come imitate Big 12 competition.
Wallace spent a year and a half practicing with the Jayhawks. Kansas has a practice squad of twelve players, most of whom are former high school players. They took turns coming to the team’s six weekly practices, running and sweating with the team for two hours. This “valuable opportunity” must have paid well, right?
“We didn’t get anything,” he said. “They did our laundry. That was the biggest perk.”
Well, sign me up.
Another benefit is that players like Wallace can be coached to resemble a different opponent each week. If a forward at Baylor always dribbles to her right, one of the practice players can spend the week dribbling to the right.
“Over the course of the year you can have them simulate other people’s styles, because they’re not working on their own,” Henrickson said.
Wallace added that it opened his eyes to just how athletic the players were.
“You try to guard a player like Shaq Mosley, and she’s quicker than any of the guys that play at the Rec Center,” he said. “And she can shoot the ball.”
The reaction from other schools has been the same — they oppose the ban, and are unsure of how something like this even got started in the first place.
“It’s absolutely absurd,” new Duke coach and former Michigan State coach Joanne McCallie was quoted as saying. “It’s got nothing to do with equity and everything to do with politics.”
The Women’s Basketball Coaches Association is working to keep male practice players, and claims “overwhelming support” from its members.
Last week the NCAA released the results of the first comprehensive survey on the issue, which showed that 205 coaches used male practice players in 2006. The others were probably busy climbing a ladder to get their basketball out of a peach basket.
Title IX changed women’s sports. Equality is no longer just in numbers. It means that women can compete at the highest possible level, and should have the tools at their disposal to make that possible.
Anything less would be unfair.