In September 2008, the Women’s Sports Foundation released a report entitled, Who’s Playing College Sports: Money, Race, and Gender. The report was authored by Dr. John Cheslock of the University of Arizona.
The report provides a description of men’s and women’s college sports participation patterns. It looks at the role of Title IX, athletic expenditure growth, changes in high school sports participation, rising health care costs, increased international students, college recruitment practices, and diversity within sports programs.
The key findings from the report are listed (verbatim):
• All available data on intercollegiate athletic participation produce the same conclusion: Both men’s and women’s participation levels have increased over the last 25 years.
• Higher education institutions have responded to Title IX by increasing women’s participation rather than by decreasing men’s participation.
• Expenditures on intercollegiate athletics, especially for men’s basketball and football in Division I of the NCAA, have grown at unsustainable rates.
• A variety of factors beyond Title IX and rapid athletic expenditure growth help explain why participation in certain sports (such as lacrosse and soccer) has grown steadily while participation in other sports (such as tennis, gymnastics and wrestling) has waned.
• While the early growth in women’s athletics favored those sports with the highest levels of racial and ethnic diversity, recent growth has favored women’s sports with less diversity. This latter shift has occurred because almost all NCAA schools already sponsor most of the sports with high participation by female athletes of color.
For most people involved in sports at some level (youth sports, high school sports, recreation programs, club sports, sports fan, coach, athletic director, booster, etc.) at least one of the above findings has to be a shocker or at least create a level of discomfort. A copy of this and other research can be found by visiting the WSF website.