How Does Title IX Affect College Athletes Achieve Equality?

Before Title IX was created, fewer than 32,000 women took part in college athletics while over 170,000 men played college sports. Only 2% of college athletic budgets went to women’s sports so something has to be done to improve this. When Title IX was created, it was only intended for academic purposes because females had a much harder time receiving scholarships than men. This was at a time when women and men didn’t have equal rights, and at the time Title IX was a great thing. Title IX made sure women were getting equal opportunity to get into college and receive scholarships. Although it was intended for mainly academics, it had a bigger impact on athletics as universities tried to overcome inequality on their own. Three years after Title IX was put into place, the Title IX Regulations were put into place.
The Regulations enforced how universities must apply Title IX to their athletic programs with the following regulations: the number of scholarships granted to men and women must be proportionate and women must be given equal athletic opportunity as men.
Four years after the Regulations were implemented and they were revised into three rules, called Interpretations: universities must ensure equal financial aid to women and men in proportion to the number of each sex who take part in athletics, men and women must have equal athletic opportunity, and universities must offer sports programs that that meet the students interests and abilities (digitalcommons.law.byu.edu). Title IX and the regulations added on did its job to help women’s sports, but the repercussions were overlooked and disregarded. Many men’s sports are suffering from Title IX today, from a bill that was originally intended to increase female participation in sports and ban any discrimination based on gender in a time of gender inequality. 40 years later, the same bill is in place. Today women have all of the opportunities that men do, and possibly even more at college with Title IX still in
place. Title IX requires the same amount of scholarships to men as they do women, but what is over looked is the fact that there are many more players on a football team than any other female sport offered. In order to be compliant to Title IX without cutting football (which generates the most revenue) universities have to cut men’s teams that don’t bring in as much revenue. In a study done, it showed that males had much higher participation in sports at all levels, proving Title IX is unfair in the sense that males are being punished for being in more sports. Until it is revised, Title IX will never be equal and men’s sports will keep getting cut due to a declining economy and an increased push for equality of women.