Let's Row Together
Title IX, its accomplishments and those who use it to fight for equality, still. Locker Room Talk, its people, upcoming events, and words from its pages. And Fenway Park.
Title IX contains 37 words; not one of them is “sports” or “athletics.”
“No person in the United State shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
Those who shepherded Title IX through Congress grossly underestimated the impact it would have on girls’ and women’s sports. A Congressional staffer who worked long and hard on the bill admitted to me that “five or six of us realized that Title IX would cover athletics as well [but] we never considered its effect. I thought maybe on field days, there would be more activities for girls.”
Well, after its 52 years of existence, Title IX is largely responsible for the colossal changes that we see when we watch girls and women compete at all levels of sports. Women’s college basketball might be today’s icon for the law’s generational progress, but no sport that girls and women play in 2024 bears even the slightest resemblance to my 1970s competitive sports experiences.
For that, I’m grateful.
Title IX is rightly credited, but too often we praise the law but overlook the tenacious courage of these girls and women who decide to fight in court against their schools, and at times their coaches, to demand the rights and opportunities Title IX promises.
Female athletes are still waging these court fights today.
“No one goes to college planning to sue their school,” said Arthur Bryant, an attorney who has represented athletes as Title IX plaintiffs since the mid-1980s. “The lesson of Title IX’s enforcement in 50 years, sadly, is if women want equality, they have to sue. No one else is going to do it.” (San Diego State athletes band together in Title IX fight: 'If women want equality, they have to sue,’ ESPN)
Brown University’s gymnastics team (1992), and San Diego State’s rowing team, (2019)
Just shy of 50 years after Title IX became law, San Diego State cut its women’s Division 1 rowing team. Rowers, who were joined in solidarity by several female track & field athletes, sued the university for violating Title IX. Thirty years earlier, in 1992, Brown University women gymnasts had gone to court citing Title IX violations. After their case led to the nation’s first Title IX appellate court ruling, the plaintiffs signed a settlement agreement in 1998. But in 2020, Brown violated the agreement, and after court rulings, the university restored the women’s teams.
In the current San Diego State case, the plaintiffs allege that the university “deprived its female athletes of more than $5.36 million in financial aid between 2010 and 2020.” “This is the first case in the country in which women have sued a university for damages for depriving them of equal financial aid, and the first case in the country in which a judge has allowed them to do it,” said lead plaintiffs’ attorney Bryant, who was co-counsel in Brown University Title IX case. By putting a financial cost as a penalty for Title IX violations, Bryant hopes to encourage more schools to comply with the law’s regulations.
Title IX requires colleges to adhere to three basic requirements with its athletics: equal financial aid, equal opportunities and equal benefits. Equality is determined by percentages; for example, if 55% of a university’s athletes are women, then 55% of its athletic scholarships go to women. Similarly, if 55% of its students are women, then 55% of its sports team roster spots should be held by women.
Yet, a high number of colleges and universities do not meet these thresholds. At the start of this decade, Department of Education data showed 31% of NCAA Division 1 colleges were not compliant with financial aid and 90% did not meet the participation requirements.
More than fifty years later, and attitudes, as an ingredient of college policies, haven’t yet caught up with the law.
So, here’s why I’m writing about Title IX court cases this week.
On Wednesday, I had lunch with Jennifer Todd.
Jennifer, pictured above, is a vice-president with the NBA Boston Celtics. Her Celtics’ colleague Megan Klein arranged this lunch after she and I were reacquainted at a Boston restaurant that was transformed for an afternoon into a women’s sports bar for the NCAA basketball final. A few years ago, I described my equal access case against Major League Baseball to her Boston University sports journalism class, and Megan then asked me to do a podcast. With my book, Locker Room Talk, coming out soon, she thought Jennifer and I should meet.
Let’s put it this way: Jennifer and I were fist-bumping from the start. Plaintiff to Plaintiff, as women who’d had our day in court fighting for equality in sports.
Words weren’t needed; our experiences bonded us instantly. It didn’t matter that hers was fought with Title IX, and mine with the Fourteenth Amendment.
Jennifer was one of the gymnast plaintiffs in Cohen v. Brown University (1992), which the First Circuit Court called a “landmark Title IX case.” By the time that case was resolved, her class was attending its first Brown reunion. Jennifer’s fight was about rectifying inequalities so future athletes would not endure what her generation did.
Another fist-bump for taking on a court fight for those who come next.
I confess to my prior ignorance about her lawsuit at Brown. These cases don’t receive the attention they deserve. But meeting Jennifer spiked my curiosity, so back home, I dug into her case. This is how I came upon the rowers at San Diego State.
A lesson: Be as curious as these Title IX plaintiffs are courageous.
While it’s wonderful to celebrate Title IX’s accomplishments, never forget that the law’s power resides in its foundational proposition that no one should be denied equal opportunity “on the basis of one’s sex.”
LOCKER ROOM TALK updates
So, Jennifer and Megan and I are talking about the kind of an event we’ll do together in Boston in the fall of 2024, when Locker Room Talk is published.
What a fabulous opportunity to have our histories with gender discrimination and sports become a launch pad for vigorous conversations about girls, women and sports today … a time when gender equity in sports, despite recent surges in women’s sports, has many miles to travel before plaintiffs will have to argue for it.
In my Web search for info about Jennifer’s case, I stumbled on this 2022 New York Times headline, below, as another reminder of schools’ stubborn habit of acting in ways that treat girls inequitably and think they can get away with it.
Last bit of news, for now: This morning I received an email from a librarian at the Selby Library in Sarasota, Florida. She is eager to host a book event that I’d do with former MLB pitcher, Tommy John (yes, the elbow surgery guy), who lives nearby.
A while back I had the idea of reconnecting with John, who was the player rep for the Los Angeles Dodgers at the 1977 World Series. Before the Series began, I spoke with him about needing access to the players. After we talked, he’d held a team meeting where a majority of players decided I had the right to interview them in the locker room, alongside the male writers. When Major League Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn heard this, he banned me from all of the baseball teams’ locker rooms – forever. The Dodgers’ decision to back me, followed by Kuhn’s edict against me, landed me in federal court, and Locker Room Talk tells this story.
Tommy John and I have appeared periodically on radio talk shows through the years, so after I reconnected with him through Facebook messenger, he gave me his phone number and we talked. He agreed to do a book event with me in Florida. Now, I’ll call John again, and I’m hopeful we’ll find a date that works for all of us.
Floridians, stay tuned!
Just one more note about that 1977 World Series: the New York Yankees public relations person, Mickey Morabito, did everything he could to try to convince the commissioner NOT to take away my access, which he and the Yankees had given me (for the first time) at the very end of that season. In Locker Room Talk, I describe for the first time Mickey’s valiant attempts to prevent Kuhn from banning me. Earlier this week, I spoke with Mickey by phone, and we’re working on finding a way to do a book event in Los Angeles in October.
If you want to pre-order Locker Room Talk: A Woman’s Struggle to Get Inside at a sharply discounted price, then click on Rutgers University Press web page for my book. When you order, use this code RUSA30 for a 30% discount and free shipping of the book in July – before its publishing date.
On Wednesday night I was back in Fenway Park. The Red Sox were in Cleveland, where they won 8-0. A fellow Wellesley College alumna had invited me to join the Cambridge Club for an event in a private room overlooking the empty ballpark.
Here’s what I wrote on my Facebook page about my Fenway Park night:
Felt like I was back home!
Red Sox on the road so I breathed in the beauty of Fenway Park as a guest of the Cambridge Club, there to learn which Red Sox players were born and died in Cambridge. Four of them are in the Hall of Fame.
I was asked to talk a bit about my time as a baseball reporter with Sports Illustrated and my book, Locker Room Talk. I told stories of how the Red Sox treated two women writers who came to the ballpark to write stories in 1959 and 1972.
I assure you they were not welcomed by the men.
A great night!!!! FYI: the World Series trophy behind me is from 2013.
This season, it’s unlikely that the Red Sox will bring home a World Series trophy. But the park is as resplendent as I remember it being the first time I walked into it with my mom in the 1950s. I share this memory in Locker Room Talk.
“At the time I was born [1951] the notion that I, or any girl, could grow up to cover Major League Baseball for the world’s leading sports magazine was so laughably absurd as to be out of the realm of possibility. My mom’s pedigree as a lifelong fan gave me a running start, but the odds that my life would turn out as it did were slim to none on the day her Fenway Park seat mate - her father – wrote his letter welcoming me into the family.
“Seven years later my mom took me to my first baseball Major League game at Fenway Park, of course. She squeezed my hand tightly as we fell in with the crowd of people moving slowly through the short passageway taking us into the ballpark. From the cave-like interior of this old ballpark, we emerged into the bright afternoon sun. I pulled on my mom’s hand to signal I wanted to stop. Turning my head slowly, I took in the full measure of this compact, pentagonal ballpark, then let my eyes settle on its pristinely mowed, shimmering grass and finely combed dirt infield. As we resumed walking to our grandstand seats near third base, the towering left field wall with its embedded scoreboard grew larger and larger. I’d seen this so-called ‘Green Monster’ on TV but being this close to it was magical.
“ … When my mom and I reached our seats that afternoon in Fenway Park, I walked a few steps more so I could lean over the low wall to try to touch the field. I couldn’t reach it, but I wanted to try. Years later with Sports Illustrated, whenever I walked onto that field, I paused and reached down to touch the grass, a motion that rekindled my joyful memories of that first game.
Baseball hooked me that day. It never let go.”
Wow, John. Wish I'd known you'd covered the Brown case when it originated in 1992. Meeting Jennifer was such a thrill for me, and as you can imagine our experiences provided an instant sense that we'd known each other in our earlier lives. Hoping she and I can settle on a date and time for us to do an event together. I am already imagining some of the stories she and I will tell. All best, Melissa
And if you think I remember all of those names – there are 17 in total – well, I don't. BUT I can get you the notes of the speaker, Bill Nowlin, whose class at Lesley I taught several years ago. He is a neighbor in Cambridge and I'd be happy to ask him for his written notes, if you'd like them. Quite interesting talk he gave.