Powerful Title IX report reveals reporting loopholes and roster manipulation in women’s college sports

A powerful new report by USA Today highlights how top U.S. colleges and universities are still falling short of complying with Title IX, the landmark law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or education program that receives funding from the federal government.

Most notable among the findings in USA Today’s comprehensive data analysis, which centered on 107 public schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision during the 2018-19 school year, was widespread use of roster manipulation as well as remarkable disparities in spending on travel, equipment and recruiting for women’s teams vs. their male counterparts.

Passed 50 years ago this June as part of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the pivotal 37-word sentence reads: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

For those charged with implementing Title IX, it became obvious that one clear way to close the gender gap at the collegiate level was to require schools to provide equitable opportunities for women and men to play sports. However, USA Today found that schools have been abusing the accepted rules in ways that allow them “to comply with the letter of the law while violating its spirit.”

According to the report, the schools collectively added more than 3,600 additional participation “opportunities” for female athletes during the 2018-19 academic year despite not adding one new women’s team to any athletic program. Schools accomplished this by counting participants in ways that inflate women’s rosters:

On the money front, the USA Today analysis found