XPost: or.politics   
   From: RLK@komkast.net   
      
   Trump Has a Funny Way of Protecting Women’s Sports   
      
   College programs are about to start paying athletes big money. Under new   
   federal policy, women will see very little of it.   
      
   Adjucated Rapist and child abuser Trump has loudly portrayed himself as the   
   protector of female athletes. So why is his administration preventing them   
   from getting paid as much as their male counterparts?   
   The Department of Education announced recently that Title IX, the federal   
   law that requires colleges to provide equal per-player funding for men’s   
   and women’s sports, does not apply to name, image, and likeness payments   
   paid directly to athletes from colleges and universities. That policy,   
   which reverses a position adopted by the Biden administration, will cut   
   collegiate women athletes off from a huge new source of funding set to come   
   into play this year: Next month, a federal judge is expected to approve a   
   $2.8 billion class-action settlement that, after years of litigation, will   
   finally allow athletes to be receive name, image, and likeness payments   
   from their school rather than through outside NIL collectives, the college-   
   sports version of a super PAC.   
   The schools that choose to opt in to the settlement are expected to have a   
   salary cap of up to $20.5 million each to distribute to players. Under the   
   guidance released during the final days of the Biden administration, they   
   would have had to distribute that money between male and female athletes in   
   proportion to their participation rates. Now, under Trump, that money is   
   all but guaranteed to flow overwhelmingly to male athletes, mostly football   
   and basketball players. For example, the University of Georgia plans to   
   give 75 percent of its revenue-sharing to the football team, 15 percent to   
   men’s basketball, 5 percent to women’s basketball, and the remaining 5   
   percent to all other sports. Other big-time sports schools are expected to   
   follow a similar formula.   
   Marc Novicoff: The logical end point of college sports   
   “Without a credible legal justification, the Biden Administration claimed   
   that NIL agreements between schools and student athletes are akin to   
   financial aid and must, therefore, be proportionately distributed between   
   male and female athletes under Title IX,” Craig Trainor, the acting   
   assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education, said   
   in a statement. “The claim that Title IX forces schools and colleges to   
   distribute student-athlete revenues proportionately based on gender equity   
   considerations is sweeping and would require clear legal authority to   
   support it.”   
   Indeed, to Trump, “protecting women’s sports” begins and ends with one   
   idea: barring transgender women from competing. During his presidential   
   campaign, Trump courted NFL- and college-football fans with a blitz of ads   
   attacking Kamala Harris for her positions on trans rights. Shortly after   
   taking office, he followed through on his campaign promises by signing an   
   executive order banning trans women and girls from competing in sports. The   
   White House touted the order as “ensuring equal opportunities for women in   
   sports.”   
   In reality, the order looks like a classic Trump blend of maximum culture-   
   war posturing for minimum tangible benefit. NCAA President Charlie Baker   
   testified before Congress in December that out of the 510,000 athletes   
   competing in college sports, fewer than 10 were trans. (Baker did not   
   indicate whether they were men or women.) Even at the youth-sports level,   
   experts estimate that the number of trans athletes is fewer than 100   
   nationwide.   
   By comparison, the Trump administration’s recent NIL guidance could affect   
   thousands of college women, deepening an already glaring disparity. With   
   some exceptions—such as the Louisiana State University gymnast Olivia   
   Dunne, a social-media sensation who makes an estimated $4 million a   
   year—female college athletes have had a difficult time keeping pace with   
   their male counterparts in the new era of NIL money. NIL collectives are   
   typically financed by wealthy boosters and donors who care primarily about   
   men’s basketball and football. Even though the economic value of women’s   
   sports has grown dramatically in recent years, women still don’t get the   
   same attention or brand opportunities as men. Women’s sports still receive   
   only about 15 percent of total sports-media coverage.   
   Women are concerned that they won’t have much of a voice as revenues in   
   their sports grow. In January, a group of more than 100 female Division I   
   athletes sent letters to the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference   
   commissioners requesting a meeting and expressing their concerns about a   
   variety of issues, most notably the disparity in NIL money between male and   
   female athletes. So far, the commissioners have not agreed to a meeting.   
   Jemele Hill: The one downside of gender equality in sports   
   “My first impression is that Title IX is being used to an extent to feed   
   the culture and political ideological differences in our country,” Ajhanai   
   Keaton, an assistant sports-management professor at the University of   
   Massachusetts at Amherst’s Isenberg School of Management, told me. “If it   
   is an educational enterprise, there shouldn’t be any question that money   
   should be split evenly between the genders in sports.”   
   Some would argue that women being unable to keep pace with men in NIL money   
   is just the free market at work, given the indisputable popularity of   
   football and men’s basketball. On its face, a school like Georgia giving   
   the majority of its revenue-sharing to the football team makes sense,   
   because football accounted for about three-quarters of the Bulldogs’ $203   
   million in revenue last year, the fifth-most among major college football   
   programs. But the tendency of the free market to reinforce existing   
   inequalities is exactly why laws like Title IX exist.   
   Even before the rise of NIL money, college sports were failing to live up   
   to the law’s mandate. According to a report released by the Government   
   Accountability Office last year, women account for 56 percent of   
   undergraduates but only 42 percent of student athletes. And in 2022, a USA   
   Today report on Division I sports concluded that for every $1 schools spent   
   on travel, equipment, and recruiting for men’s teams, they spent just 71   
   cents on women’s teams.   
   In the pandemic season of 2021, men’s and women’s basketball players played   
   their March Madness tournament in separate, isolated “bubbles.” The men’s   
   players were given an enormous, well-stocked gym befitting top athletes,   
   while the women were given only a few yoga mats and a tiny rack for   
   dumbbells. After the obvious disparities were blasted on social media, the   
   NCAA commissioned an outside firm to conduct a gender-equity review. The   
   unfairness turned out to extend to the meal plan. “The portions originally   
      
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