Competitive cheer is not a sport

Or so a Federal judge just ruled in a current lawsuit against Quinnipiac university today.

http://www.projo.com/highschool/content/cheerleading_not_a_sport_07-22-10_OVJ9R6Q_v2.12e5a9c.html

Quinnipiac tried to replace Women's Volleyball with the much cheaper cheer team. The NCAA didn't blink, but now a player sued and the ultimate custodian of Title IX rights has decided cheer is not a sport for title IX purposes and forced the NCAA's hand. The NCAA doesn't even recognize cheer as an emerging sport. One of the Government's unofficial policies on whether to prosecute Title IX cases is that schools don't (yet) have to fully comply, (none that I know of currently do) , but they have to show progress each review and there can be NO backsliding.

Judge Stefan Underhill wrote:

“Competitive cheer may, some time in the future, qualify as a sport under Title IX,” Underhill wrote. “Today, however, the activity is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation opportunities for students.”

Quinnipiac has 60 days to come up with a plan to keep the Volleyball team.

When the U of O decided to revive baseball, it formed a cheer team for women to offset the Title IX considerations.
It will be interesting to see what happens next. The U of O may have to budget for a real Women's sport.

U of O and Quinnipiac are two of the founding members of the National Competitive Stunts and Tumbling Association (NCSTA) The current members include the head coaches and administrators from Oregon, Maryland, Baylor, Quinnipiac, Fairmont State, Azusa Pacific and Fort Valley State, in addition to the club team head coach at Ohio State. 

Title IX is another case of well intended actions with unfortunate consequences. Many schools are now 60% female student populations. And it is a fact of life that women are not interested in sports to the same extent men are. But men's programs are frequently cut to satisfy the Title IX ratio requirements. Add that at the BCS schools, football pays the bills for basically every other sport, and male athletes end up with greatly reduced opportunities unless they are a football player.

Judges, our new overlords for all things.

up7587 wrote:Title IX is another case of well intended actions with unfortunate consequences. Many schools are now 60% female student populations. And it is a fact of life that women are not interested in sports to the same extent men are. But men's programs are frequently cut to satisfy the Title IX ratio requirements. Add that at the BCS schools, football pays the bills for basically every other sport, and male athletes end up with greatly reduced opportunities unless they are a football player.

Judges, our new overlords for all things.

You just bit all the hooks that male and football dominated athletic departments set for you and swallowed them whole. In another recent ruling, a court decided that schools can't use rigged polls to show lack of interest, BTW. They have to show they gave equal opportunities.


1) show me the data that says women, given equal opportunities, aren't as interested in sports (there is none).

2) Show me the data that the huge football revenues fund anything but football. You won't find that either, because there is no supporting data. the BCS schools won't release it.

What data there is shows that most football programs in the NCAA break even or lose money. the Indy Star filed freedom of information requests for all public institutions a couple of years ago and the returns indicated that while huge amounts of money change hands, most or all of it goes for football and related facilities. Stadiums don't come cheap.
The U of O, and OSU for instance, lost money on football last year despite state laws that prohibit the schools from running a deficit.
The US government public database that keeps track of gender equity spending and revenue also doesn't show any cross benefit from football.

3) Show me how title IX has anything to do with any school cutting male sports. The U of O added baseball under these same rules, didn't it?

Nothing in title IX mandates reduced opportunities for male athletes. if that's how schools want to trim their budgets for anything but football, that is their business. But it has nothing to do with Title IX.

Title IX doesn't even say schools can't discriminate, only that they lose federal subsidies if they do. The judge was just following the laws on subsidies to education and sports.

I remember when I almost got kicked off the team because there weren't enough girls. That was fun.

Football revenues? As in making money? If you want an athletics program that's strong in a lot of sports a good way to start is to not have a football team as a money drain.

Geezaldinho wrote:You just bit all the hooks that male and football dominated athletic departments set for you and swallowed them whole. In another recent ruling, a court decided that schools can't use rigged polls to show lack of interest, BTW. They have to show they gave equal opportunities.


1) show me the data that says women, given equal opportunities, aren't as interested in sports (there is none).

Really? You need data for this? What is the ratio of male to female in the student body attending MBB games? 80-20? 90-10? The women are equally interested, but just don't watch? How about WSOC? What's the student gender ratio watching those games? What's the ratio of men to women wasting hours on this and other forums discussing sports? Please.

Geezaldinho wrote:2) Show me the data that the huge football revenues fund anything but football. You won't find that either, because there is no supporting data. the BCS schools won't release it.

Is there any other sport that generates enough revenue to fund itself? Some sports, XC and Golf, e.g., generate no revenue at all.

Geezaldinho wrote:3) Show me how title IX has anything to do with any school cutting male sports. The U of O added baseball under these same rules, didn't it?

Does THIS help you? James Madison is not a football power. And UO cut wrestling before adding baseball.

Wow, are you confused...

The U of O cited budget, lack of competitiveness, and reduced interest as their reasons for discontinuing wrestling. I defy you to show me where they cited Title IX or gender quotas as a reason. They also cited, by the way, that they didn't have a facility for practices, as the Football team wanted to use the Mishovski center more often.


You claimed that Football funded other programs. I still say you can't show that is so. If you can, there is a Pulitzer in it for you, so get cracking.

Lastly, you seem to be confused between watching a sport and playing it at a competitive levels with equal opportunities. Here I'll just say you have no data because other than women's soccer at UP, you can't even show me a program in the country where women are treated equally to their male counterparts.

As to James Madison, c'mon, really? They are coming into compliance with Title IX by cutting women's Sports?

Really? Really? You don't think it has anything to do with a small school trying to compete in the BCS and 27 other sports and and running out of money? they could have satisfied title ix by just going to FCS instead of BCS.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/other/2007-04-19-title-ix-jmu-cover_N.htm

"A program that sponsors football and has a high female population is going to have a difficult time," says Jeff Bourne, JMU's athletics director since 1999.

The three-part test offers different, equally valid ways to comply. Schools must pass one:

•Having numbers of male and female athletes proportionate to enrollment, as JMU soon will.

•Having a continuing history of expanding opportunities for the underrepresented gender, almost always women. JMU added softball in 2002. Adding a team protects a school for perhaps five years.

•Meeting the interests and abilities of the women on campus. Bourne says two thriving women's club teams at JMU want varsity status, demonstrating interest and ability; he declines to name them.

"We did not feel in a position to add" teams to satisfy the second or third tests, Bourne says, because JMU already had 28 teams — 13 men's and 15 women's. Few schools sponsor that many outside of Ohio State and Stanford (which have budgets that dwarf JMU's) and the Ivy League (which offers no athletic scholarships).

They want to be a BCS school and can't afford it, period.

What happened to Football funding other sports?

As to James Madison, c'mon, really? They are coming into compliance with Title IX by cutting women's Sports?

Well, that is what their own press release said. Guess they were lying.

On the rest, I guess I'll just have to remained confused.

You could have pointed out that I used "Lastly" smack in the middle of my rant...

You could also have pointed out I didn't spell "competitive" correctly. ( too late, I fixed it)

Stoney is kicking himself right now :

Here's a link to the NCAA's interpretation of the issue, in which it admits that Cheer isn't yet on its radar as a sport.

http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/public/ncaa/resources/latest+news/2010+news+stories/july+latest+news/competitive+cheerleading+case+could+affect+title+ix+landscape

“The court ruling is not saying that cheerleading can’t be a sport. They’ve just made a determination about whether in the context of that specific case cheerleading was a sport,” said Shearer, an associate athletics director at Elon. “If a school wants competitive cheerleading to be a sport on their campus, and they are willing to do what is outlined in the Office for Civil Rights’ definition of a sport, the road is still open for them to consider counting it as a sport on their campus.”

The NCAA Committee on Women’s Athletics has heard some interest from the competitive-cheer community about being added to the emerging-sports list, but not enough to begin the formal process.

included is a list on the right of the Office of Civil Rights criteria for treating a sport as qualifying under Title IX and you should take special care to read the attached Amicus Brief filed by the Office of Civil Rights. It is a great summary of title IX and how it determines compliance.

http://www.justice.gov/crt/edo/documents/biedigerbrief.pdf

And it appears that Quinnipiac was playing fast and loose with participation numbers, so the court was less inclined to accept Cheer as counting for equal opportunity guidelines.

The Quinnipiac lawsuit also revealed roster-management tactics the school was using to meet gender-equity minimums, including inflating the size of women’s team rosters and minimizing the size of men’s team rosters before filing federal participation documents. The school no longer practices this form of roster management, instead setting “roster targets” based on a number of factors, including NCAA average squad sizes.

Underhill decided setting targets was not itself a Title IX violation, but took issue with the school counting runners who did not have a genuine participation opportunity. In his decision, Underhill wrote that the school’s requirement that female cross country student-athletes participate on both track teams – in addition to the minimal competitive season and coaching staff supported by the school, the lack of financial aid to any track-only competitors and the failure to provide competitors in events that would allow the team to be competitive – nullifies its ability to count redshirted and injured student-athletes as multi-sport participants.

up7587 wrote: ---at the BCS schools, football pays the bills for basically every other sport, and male athletes end up with greatly reduced opportunities unless they are a football player.

The new revenue and expense report put out by the NCAA killed this theory on athletic department funding.

The latest report shows that 57% of BCS schools report a net gain in revenue from Football, and 43% report a median loss of about 2.7 million dollars from Football. that includes all the revenue from alumni and NCAA distributions to schools, both of which can be channelled however the school chooses, And I suspect doesn't include capital costs like stadiums, which schools traditionally report as part of their general funding.

Further, only 14 BCS athletic programs showed a profit last year, the lowest percentage of any of the NCAA groupings.

From the charts in the report, you have a better chance of making money as an FCS school, and an even better chance if you don't have football at all.

It's a fascinating report. Typical of bureaucracies, the results are obfuscated, and some are downright fishy (what are the chances of 124 institutions having exactly the same percentages in funding and expenses several years in a row?)

But coupled with data from other sources, like women's equity groups and the government's equity in athletics database, it adds a lot to the picture. it also gives a pretty stunning breakdown on March Madness distributions for basketball by conference.

if you are a stats geek, it will keep you up all night.

http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/REV_EXP_2010.pdf

I was considering heading to USF for the Pilots game this Thursday, then I got to thinking, do they have competitive cheerleaders? Well, now I know the answer:
I think I've left my heart in San Franciso; I'll be at the game!

Why doesn't she have purple pom-poms? I thought we'd traded for the year...

ShipstadPilot11 wrote:Why doesn't she have purple pom-poms? I thought we'd traded for the year...

I gotta say, she’d look good with any color pompoms, but I’ll make a point of offering her the entire purple and white outfit (long story) if I see her in SF.

DoubleDipper wrote:I gotta say, she’d look good with any color pompoms

Agreed.