By Staff
Coaching Management, 9.7, October 2001, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0907/bbonline.htm
A recent study at Texas A&M University, titled "Internet Coverage of University Softball and Baseball Websites: The Inequity Continues,"reveals that many NCAA Division I athletic department Web sites provide more coverage of men's baseball than women's softball. This type of disparity is illegal under Title IX regulations.
Researchers Mike Sagas, Brian Wigley, George Cunningham, and Frank Ashley monitored the softball and baseball Web pages of 52 universities across the U.S., including those in the Big 12, Pac-10, Big Ten, Western Athletic, Southeast, Atlantic Coast, and Big East conferences from preseason to postseason and discovered that schools devote more emphasis to baseball than softball. For example, baseball pages were far more likely to provide player biographies, updated statistical data, and player photos than softball.
In addition, 93 percent of baseball teams updated team news information compared to only 86 percent for softball. And 89 percent of baseball pages provided updated information following games, while only 79 percent of softball sites did so.
Conference comparisons showed that the Big 12 and the SEC ranked lowest in the amount of softball information posted, with baseball press releases averaging 75 lines and softball releases averaging only 34. Also surprising to researchers was that southern softball teams received less Internet coverage on their schools'Web sites than southern baseball teams despite the fact that 18 of the teams studied finished in the Top 25 as compared to only 13 baseball teams.
According to Sagas, these results indicate inequities between baseball and softball. "The study shows that some women's sports are treated differently than men's sports,"Sagas told the Texas A&M Aggie Daily, "and this could easily be a violation of Title IX and raise some legal questions."
For information on how to evaluate and confront Title IX problems at your institution, please visit our Web site www.AthleticSearch.com and type "Making It Equal" in the search window.