As we continue our reading on Title IX we come to a journal article titled, “The Athletic Director's Dilemma: $$$ and Women's Sports.” This article discusses different aspects of being a college athletic director and some issues athletic directors face. In this article Kennedy introduces the Kennedy Index; which is a formula used to measure the rankings of colleges and conferences in compliance with Title IX. It’s actually a very interesting process that produced some figures I did not expect.
Basically in a nutshell this article talks about how the big time schools with the big time revenue don’t really rank to high when it comes to compliance with Title IX; in fact the big time conferences like the SEC and the Big 12 rank in the bottom 10. The six BCS conferences are ranked extremely high in revenue among all collegiate conferences; most due to their basketball and football programs. Some BCS schools argue that the revenue from their big time basketball and football programs help them support other athletic teams; which can be a questionable statement because Ivy League schools have a greater number of male and female teams on average, with thirty per school (Kennedy, 2006). I consider those big time schools to be cash cows when it comes to their basketball and football programs. The amount of expense these conferences have makes it extremely difficult to comply with Title IX, when you have coaches making 30 to 40 million dollars (ex. Charlie Wies) its hard to but money back into other smaller sports programs.
I think that the BCS conferences should put forth more effort in attempting to be in compliance with Title IX, it is no reason Ivey League schools should have the highest number of female and male teams. As women sport progresses over the years hopefully the playing field between men and women will even out, until then women sport has to continue to make strides onward and upward.
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I thought this article produced some new ways of assessing the effectiveness of Title IX, which was one reason I decided to include the Kennedy article in our assigned readings. Like you, I was under the impression that the big conferences were the ones that had the best chance of being in compliance with Title IX.
You mentioned the issue of salaries that coaches receive. I had no idea that Charlie Weis made that much money, but I do seem to recall that he got something like a 10-year contract. To me, that was ridiculous, especially after the way that Notre Dame dealt with Tyrone Willingham. That was unconscionable, and then to sign such a high contract with Weis... There is another aspect of these high contracts that has always seemed fiscally irresponsible to me, and that is what happens when a coach is fired and still has to be paid several million dollars. Then there has to be a new contract with a new coach, in addition to paying the remainder that was owed to the former coach. The unfortunate thing is that men's Olympic sports may be cut while such wasteful practices are allowed to continue!
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