Title IX's impact felt in football
By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Sports Columnist
The late Congresswoman Patsy Mink often remarked on the irony that the Title IX legislation she helped write and shepherd into existence had its biggest impact in areas largely unimagined at its birth in 1972.
How legislation primarily envisioned to prohibit sex discrimination and open academic opportunities had become better known for how it reshaped athletics was something neither planned nor foreseen. Title IX's role as a revolutionary force of change in college sports was barely dreamed of.
Even now, 30 years after President Richard Nixon signed it into law, a lot of the ripples of change it has brought have been overlooked.
We know what it has meant for its beneficiaries — girls and women. It has afforded two generations of females overdue opportunities and experiences their grandmothers could scarcely have pictured.
But what about other sports it has buffeted and how it has helped contribute to changing the face of college football?
We see the effects of Title IX there, too. Almost every Saturday in the upsets and the comparative parity that has emerged.
That teams such as Kansas State, Oregon, Washington State, North Carolina State and Iowa State have staked out places in the Top 25 in recent years is no fluke. That Nebraska, Alabama, Southern California, Texas, Oklahoma, etc. no longer have such unobstructed paths to the top is not a coincidence, either.
One of the things that the advent of Title IX has brought about is a reallocation of scholarships that some would call robbing Peter to pay Pauline.
But football is also an illustration of the positive changes that can occur. At the beginning of the 1970s, when the beginnings of Title IX were finding their way onto paper, football scholarships were virtually unlimited in number, especially at the marquee schools.
It wasn't unheard of for big-name programs to have jerseys numbered 109, 111, etc. Some schools brought in upwards of 40 recruits a season and had rosters of 150 players or more. Schools would often recruit players not so much for their own needs but merely to deny them to a conference opponent.
With a scholarship cap at 85, that's no longer possible. The lineman who might have been fifth string at Powerhouse U. finds an opportunity at State. The quarterback who might have been buried in the depth chart at one school thrives in a starting role at another.
Witness that several of this year's top quarterbacks found opportunities at Washington State, Iowa State, North Carolina State, Marshall and Louisville and what they have helped those schools accomplish.
Title IX was never envisioned as an instrument of parity for college football, but there are some schools that don't mind a bit.
