Second in the series
All this talk about transgender athletes taking over girls and women sports is just plain foolish and distracting.
“There’s nothing about the attack on transgender athletes that I think lives up to that rhetoric of sport being a safe place for everyone,” states Prof. Ellen Staurowsky. “I find this really inhumane.”
The retired Ithaca (N.Y.) College sport science professor is a former college athlete, coach and athletic director who later became a college professor and internationally renowned expert on gender equity, Title IX, pay equity and social justice issues in sport. She also co-authored several reports over the years addressing college football and basketball player value, especially Black athletes, and was a witness in behalf of the plaintiffs in the O’Bannon v NCAA case, that eventually set the stage for today’s NIL.
The House v NCAA settlement, a nearly $3 billion antitrust agreement that set up a 10-year payment plan for schools to share its revenues up to $20.5 million per year directly with athletes, begins its second year this sports season. Meanwhile, the NCAA still is fighting change to the archaic amateurism system that college sports leaders keep hanging on.
Staurowsky offered her “foundational criticism” of the House settlement: “Any settlement that did not include a mechanism for a permanent structural change in the governance of college sport was a critical missed opportunity. The attorneys for the plaintiffs claim that they are the advocates for the athletes, but they actually significantly also gave up some of their own opportunities to advocate” especially for college athletes to finally be considered as school employees, stressed the professor.
She also is critical of the Protect College Sports Act introduced in the U.S. Senate: the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference presidents and chancellors released a joint statement July 31 in support of the bill, which is supposed to protect both the schools and the players, but leans more into limiting gains the players have won from the House suit.
The Senate put the bill on its upcoming calendar after its summer break, but among its opponents are the Congressional Black Caucus and AFL-CIO.
“We are at war right now with Iran. Our economy is in the dumpster. Congress should not be intervening in this in one way, shape or form, and that’s also part of the problematic here,” continues Staurowsky. “The vast majority of Americans had no idea that the Power Five conferences and then the Power Four conferences have been investing a huge amount of money lobbying Congress. The major power brokers were already lobbying Congress even as those historic cases that were offering some favorable remedy on behalf of athletes.”
And what about Title IX, the landmark law signed by President Richard Nixon in 1972 that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or education program that receives federal funding, and created a balance between men’s and women’s sports?
“When you look at that bill, 110 pages of it,” reiterated Staurowsky of the current Senate bill, “there is not one word about Title IX in that Protect College Sports Act. What we have in front of us is disastrous, and what they’re really doing is just closing down every possible avenue available for athletes to make progress.”
Furthermore, it is part and parcel with the current administration’s overall plans to roll back any progress that isn’t in their favor, outlined in the Project 2025 playbook designed by The Heritage Foundation, a nearly 1,000-page document that looked at changing Title IX and its funding, demonize LGBTQ+ people, and according to the National Women’s Law Center, get rid of “transgender ideology.”
“Any discussion about transgender athletes was logically going to extend into an undermining of women’s rights in general,” surmised Staurowsky. “That is the playbook, and that’s exactly and precisely what is happening.
Are you surprised? We asked. “The older I get, the less I want to be right,” she answered. “There’s just something so false about it that it’s disturbing to me.”
Next: Over 100 women’s college basketball players are starting a union.
Charles Hallman welcomes reader responses at challman@spokesman-recorder.com.
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