Feb. 9 is the official National Girls and Women in Sports Day, but UB's decision to stretch the message of the day over an entire week shows just how far women's sports have come since Title IX. At the same time, with the arrival of high-profile consultant Gene Corrigan and the expected hiring of a new athletic director, UB needs to be aware how far women's sports programs have to go. Whoever ends up running UB's athletic department should emphasize women's sports, placing them in the primary spotlight they have long deserved.
This is not to say UB has not done a good job improving its women's sports programs; in fact it has put forth an excellent effort in trying to raise its women's teams profiles. The team attained total compliance with Title IX under the leadership of Nan Harvey, a difficult and commendable feat. But elevating women's sports, particularly in an environment obviously dominated by men as participants and consumers, remains a constant uphill battle.
Title IX guarantees that there is equality in male and female NCAA sports participants and in how much is spent in scholarships, but this does not necessarily result in equality in other efforts to promote or encourage sports. While UB has been good in promoting the men's and women's basketball teams relatively equally, one only has to look at the millions spent on the football team to see the disparity between the promotion of men's sports as a whole and women's sports as a whole. The football team has no equal on the women's side in terms of money spent to promote the team. It might seem unusual for UB to spend as much to promote women's crew or volleyball, which combined have about as many players as the football team. But the university could go a long way toward establishing a public presence for those teams.
Establishing a successful football team has been believed to be a route to more revenue for all other UB sports. But that has largely failed; UB still loses money, and prestige, as a result of its losing football team. Instead of making football the silver bullet, UB should invest more heavily in women's sports.
The potential for UB's growth in women's sports by far outpaces that of men's sports. There is already incredible competition among men's teams, with established national and regional powers. It is very difficult and expensive for an upstart men's program like UB to build significant success, especially in football. There exists a much larger opening on the national level for UB to take advantage of in women's sports. While there are powerhouses like North Carolina or Connecticut in soccer and basketball, they are fewer in number and they are less entrenched in their leading roles. Because of this, the chances for UB to recruit well and burst onto the national scene are much greater than in men's sports. In fact the women's athletic program has produced UB's only MAC championship team, the 2000 women's soccer team.
A change in mindset, elevating women's sports to a premier position in the athletic department would create a progressive new image for UB athletics. As of right now, the athletic department's advertising of women's teams with male counterparts almost reduces the women's games to an under card to the men's game primetime billing. It might be a matter of sheer economics, as men's sports historically provide a bigger draw, but pulling the women's program from the matinee to the main attraction would go a long way toward helping women's sports and, in the long run, UB.
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
