Mizzou & Title IX

A lot of sports fans blame Title IX for all kinds of perceived evils in college sports. Today's Vox has a good article, well worth the read: Examining equality in women's sports at Mizzou:

When female athletes aren’t given equal practice times, it’s difficult to expect women’s teams to gain recognition. “My freshman and sophomore year, I would run into people on campus who didn’t know that Mizzou had a women’s soccer team,” Collins says. “I found it extremely offensive. Why wouldn’t we have a women’s soccer team?”

An uninformed response is unsurprising when the successes of female athletes are largely overlooked on the walls highlighting men’s accomplishments at the training complex.

“You can barely tell that soccer and softball won Big 12s,” Mims says. “You’re walking into a male-dominated place. It’s like walking into a stranger’s house and seeing thousands of pictures of one child and realizing the parents actually have five. And that reflects into your personal life. When you step outside of athletics, you still feel the cloud hanging over your head that says ‘I’m not as important.’ That should not be happening in a place that’s supposed to be our home.” To make the complex more “all-sport friendly,” renovations will be completed in 2011.

■ Other related links:

• Athletics and Title IX (equity.missouri.edu)
  
  
• Title IX - the text of the law
  
  
• TitleIX.info