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That's the last time I'm going to tell my office that who ever calls and wants me to speak, say yes, they can pick any topic they would like, tell them to make up the title and let me know what it is before I speak. I went out to dinner with _____________, I spent an hour and a half with her, I said, "Gee, what am I speaking about." I appreciate the introduction Laurie but the fact of the matter is most of these introductions are fairly boring. They don't give any insight into the real nature of the person speaking to you.
I was at Springfield College this afternoon, I spoke in a room in which they conduct services. It had lilies, it was all set up, the only thing it didn't have was a cross. there were stained glass windows in the back. It was kind of impressive but it made me very nervous. It felt like I was speaking in church. And the reason it made that impression upon me was I had always thought that I was not allowed to pursue only one thing, that I really wanted to do badly, which I'll tell you about in a second. But it reminded me that I was, there was another thing I wasn't allowed to do. When I was a youngster, I grew up a practicing Catholic and of course we went to church all the time and the one thing I wanted to do that nobody ever let me do, was to become an altar boy, or an altar person. I thought it was just so neat that you could get to move around during mass, that you could get to light the candles and put them out and invariably the altar boys, because they wore these long gowns, were able to wear sneakers to church. Which was one of the things I was really interested in. That was one, at least activity, I never saw that as a career, I never wanted to be a priest. But the other thing I wanted to be, the dream I had but I never got to be was to be a pitcher for the New York Yankees. When I tell people this, I speak all over the country and I make it a point of explaining what I wanted to be and after every speech, usually a 50 year old woman will come up to me and in a very soft voice say, "You know I wanted to be a short stop for the Chicago Cubs." Or, "I wanted to be a second baseman for the Cincinnati Reds." That there's harbored dream that they never uttered before, and I feel very empowered when I tell groups.
The fact of the matter is, I was so serious about this dream that I considered no other profession from the age 5 to the age of 11 years old. As a matter of fact, everyday after school I would throw 500 pitches against the side of my parents garage. Every single day. By the time I was eleven, I had developed a rising fastball, I had curve that would break off the table, and for those of you who have gray hair or no hair, is there not one man in this audience? There's one right there, two.
From the age of five to eleven I was going to be this combination of Bob Turley, Don Larsen and Whitey Ford. At the age of eleven I was fully prepared. In fact there wasn't anything else I could do. At the age of eleven I was ready to go through the first rite of passage for any future major league baseball player and that was to play Little League Baseball. And I grew up on a street with 15 boys, one other girl and all my friends, but all of the kids went down to the _______________ Little League in Stanford, Connecticut and we tried out for Little League. I was drafted number one. As if that wasn't exciting enough, on the same date that we were drafted we were assigned to teams. This was really important. The colors of my team were navy blue and white. Yankee colors. This was an omen. I was going to be ___________. On the same day we were assigned teams, we were lined up to get our uniforms, and you know how important uniforms are to little kids. Really important. We were trembling with excitement. How many of you remember walking around the house in your first pair of baseball spikes, or ice skates? I was really excited about these uniforms especially because our hats were navy blue hats just like the New York Yankees and they were real baseball hats. They were wool. They did not have plastic in the back. You had to know the size of your head. This was a professional, big league hat. I knew that I was on my way to the big leagues. While I was standing there, I was fourth in line, and this very tall father comes to stand beside me, and he had in his hands a rule book about this size, and he opens that little book to page 14 and in the center of the page are four words that would change my life forever. And those words were, "No girls allowed". I wasn't allowed to play with my friends. Even though I was a tough tom boy. I cried for three months. I can remember -- you know every day after school my friends would go to practice and I would go to the park with them but I had to shag balls and pick up bats, but I could not play the game with my friends. I remember that I didn't get angry about this whole thing. Kids get disappointed, they cry, they don't feel sorry for themselves, but they don't get angry, but I got angry about ten years ago. I can remember the moment that I got angry. I was watching television, I was watching the All Star Game. American League versus the National League and the pitcher on the mound was a guy named Ron Guidry, pitcher for the New York Yankees, _____________________. And I'm sitting down very calmly watching this All Star Game, Guidry is on the mound and the announcer says, Boy, isn't this amazing, this guy can throw 95 miles per hour and you know what, he's only 5'10", 170 pounds soaking wet. I realized at that moment that I had rationalized that it was okay for me not to play major league baseball because I might not be big enough. You know how your sport heros are always bigger than life? Let me tell you those two parameters 170 lbs. 5'10", I have exceeded those parameters. (Laughter) So, it just wiped out my rationalization. (Then I got) really madder. And the second time I was really mad, is when I saw a League of Their Own and realized that other women got the chance to play. I'd also rationalized, 'Well, no other women got the chance to play, maybe it's okay if I didn't."
I'm sure, because of that experience, that I ended up where I am today as Executive Director of the Women's Sports Foundation, an organization that exists to make sure that girls have a chance to play. It's because I really do believe that no child, no boy, no girl, should ever be told that they cannot pursue their dreams. It's the worst thing we can say to children. They don't have a right to achieve them. They have to do that with hard work or skills and talent. But to say to somebody, "You don't even get the chance to try." Nothing could be worse. As most of you can probably remember the various crises in your life today, I can still relive how I felt when I was 11 years old and told, even though I was the very best player, you cannot because you are a girl. And that's probably why (speaking out) whether it's spoiled football coaches or homophobia or equal opportunity, this is so meaningful. Because I suspect that most of the people sitting in this room have experienced the joy of sport, that you have some passion for this thing called sport. And you know, some how, it's much more important than what people really say it is. A lot of people would make you think that sport isn't important to girls, that it's some poor fun, kind of throw away activity that girls kind of dabble at. As a matter of fact, I was talking to a group of 9th grade boys, a few weeks ago and we were talking about women's issues in sports. They were of one mind. Absolutely one mind. They said, "Well, boys are serious about playing sports, girls are not serious about playing sports. They could take it or leave it. This is really important to us. This is part of our psyche." I said, "Now, what makes you think that girls feel differently about sports than you do?" And one boy stood up and said, "Well, I give you exactly the example." My girlfriend is a soccer player. She invited me down to practice just the other day and I went down to practice, fifteen minutes before the start of practice, and I'm standing on the side line watching her stretch and warm up and kick the ball around with her teammates, and as soon as she saw me, she came over to me on sideline, she introduced me to her friend, she left her team mates. I would never do that! I would never do that. If I was getting ready for my practice. Sport is too important." I said, "Well, (__________) is she a bad player?" He said, "No. She's All State. She's probably going to be on the Olympic Team." I said, "She's really that good?" "Oh, man I would never play against here." I asked, "Is she serious about her sport?" "Well, no, not like boys." But, culturally, boys and society in general doesn't, we just don't allow women to have different standards, different expressions about sport. This young man could not understand that women from the age of one are brought up to be caretakers, to be sensitive about others feelings, to take care of others. And that the act of taking care of her boyfriend and introducing to her friend, had nothing to do with what happens when she turns around and starts playing soccer. And then I questioned him. I questioned all of the boys who finally said, "Maybe it's not very healthy that you could not suffer through the razing that you would get if you ever went over to see your girlfriend and left your team to be nice to somebody." They sat still for a while and then they said, "You know it's true. We would never be able to do that without criticism."
So this thing called "sport" really invokes tremendous passions in people, tremendous senses of opinion - Who's better? Who's worse? Who's right is it to play? But one of the things we should never ever doubt is that it's much more than fun and games. And for women it becomes a particularly important activity at this point in time in our society. It's interesting, I was reading with interest Linda Bunker's recent study. Linda Bunker is Pastor at the University of Virginia and she did a study of women executives in Fortune 500 companies. And lo and behold she found that 80% of these women self-identified themselves as tom-boys. And said that they were absolutely (______________). You say to yourself, "You know, when you get into organizations like universities and you get into businesses like IBM, Xerox, and Gillette, and Rebok, and Nike, hey, these organizations are nothing more than exact replicas of male sports camps or at least sports teams. And many women don't realize the knowledge we give up, the advantage we give up when we don't train our children in the rules of that business organization. That's the difference between being successful in organization and just never making it to the next step. I know I speak to executive women's groups a lot and they chuckle a little but this is the absolute truth. If you ever go into an organization, and I know you have, there's no organization that is not going to ____________, if you ever go into an organization and in every organization there is one male that you would characterize as, at best, 'deadwood'. This is the guy who we don't understand his function in the organization. I don't care whether it's in a Department of English or an administrative system, or IBM, or Xerox, you look at this guy and in a time of budget cuts you can't imagine why this guy isn't out of here. And yet, he'd protected. Absolutely protected. And if you were to say anything about this person, such as "he be let go" or something like that, you immediately are characterized as 'disloyal'. Can you imagine all of sudden your stature in the organization is reduced. And you say to yourself, "What is going on here? Whoever taught anybody to protect incompetence like that?" And the guy kind of wakes up. "Rah, rah and he supports everybody, he doesn't make waves, he kind of just sits there." And yet if you look at a Little League Team, I was observing this, I have a 9 year old nephew, and I went to a team practice. This was the first practice of the year and the coach sits everybody down on the bench and his first lecture is about this deadwood situation. And it goes something like this: He says, only 9 guys can get out there and be starters, play on this field. Some of us are going to have to sit on the bench. Every kid who sits on the bench is playing an important role on this team. Every kid who sits on the bench has an obligation to support those people who are out there and we have an obligation to support them. All of a sudden you see that the scene is set for the rest of these children's lives in terms of support of deadwood.
And so you say to yourself, "How do organizations exist?" Do they just have to perpetuate this deadwood situation? And you realize that there is an appropriate way to get rid of deadwood and it's not firing. It's traded. You have to trade the player to another team. The knowledge, that little piece of knowledge suggesting that if I want to get rid of this guy I have to find a better job for him or another job for him, and engineer a trade where he can keep his self-esteem and keep his sense of worth and sense of self, that that's the way that whole system works. And if you don't have experience in teams you never learn it.
I can remember when I was in third grade learning probably the most valuable administrative lesson of my life. I can remember it as if it were that time when I was 11 years old and wasn't allowed to play baseball, but I came home from school and I was crying so hard that I wasn't able to talk. Have you ever seen little kids in that state? Red face, face sticky with tears, nose running, gasping for breath, the whole bit. I was absolutely in that state. And my mother happened to be standing in the driveway. I was distressed. I walk in the driveway and she looks at me and she says, "My God, are you hurt?" Of course, I couldn't speak. She looked at me again and says, "Were you in another fight?" I was quite the little tom boy when I was young. I shook my head. She just was calmly waiting for me to recover. She put me in her lap. She puts her arms around me. And she says, "Donna, Donna, calm down, calm down." Finally I took a deep breath. She saw that I could respond. And she said, "What's wrong?" I said, "Mom, mom, we're losing." And she said, "What are we losing, dear?" I said, "Mom, every day I go to school and every day at 12 o'clock I play sports. The boys play kick ball. I want to play with them but nobody will let me. The girls play dodge ball, I play with them and every day my team has been losing." She could see that I was really steamed, but she was a smart mother. Her next question is, "Why are you losing?" I think about it and I finally turn to her and say, "Mom, we're losing because girls don't know how to pick teams." And it was true. I grew up on a street, 15 boys and 1 other girl and I knew, the first time I got to be captain that if I ever had first dibs and I did not pick the very best player, even if that player were my enemy, if I had a fight with that kid ten minutes before, if I didn't pick that very best player I would never get to be captain again. Something you learn right off the bat.
I went to school, put a man in the audience, this is how women use their first four draft choices. At the risk of being effective here. Draft choice number one is, best friend; draft choice number two is who we would like to be best friends with; draft choice number three is the most popular girl in the draft pool (most popular girl in class); and then we do something that men simply can not begin to understand; we give up our fourth draft pick. And we do it in this way: we turn to our best friend and say, "Who would you like on this team?" I didn't realize until I was at the University of Texas, I had 50 employees, 80% of whom were women, and I realized that I did not validate women without __________________. They hired people they liked, they promoted people they liked, they gave raises to people they liked, but necessarily the people who were better at what they did. And when we don't teach our daughters these lessons, when we don't expose them to sport, we put them at an competitive disadvantage in the work place. A work place which has become increasingly more difficult, a world in which if you don't have two incomes in your family, then you're family doesn't survive. We are no longer at a place where we can only afford to train our sons for careers after sport. We don't want our daughters to live a lesser life.
So, there are very important reasons in terms of career that we want to women to play. There are also some health reasons that most Americans don't realize in terms of making sure our daughters embrace a life of exercise and participation. And we have to remember that the reason why sport is so embraced by America and fitness is kind of a so-so love affair is because fitness can get very boring. You do the same thing over and over again, if you keep on focusing on pain, it won't take you long to figure out the maybe I need something to change pace. And what competition in sport does for us is it really makes fitness and exercise enjoyable. It makes it social, it makes it challenging, it makes it competitive, it just puts a whole different face on fitness. But there's not that much difference between fitness and sport when you look at it from that perspective. But we know that girls who participate in as little as 4 hours of physical activity a week, that's less time than a girl sports team spends in practice, we know that she reduces her life long risk of breast cancer by 50%. We know that one out of every 8 women in our society is at risk for breast cancer in her life time. Those are tremendous lowering of odds. It's something we need to tell our daughters.
We know that women who participate in sport reduce the risk of heart disease. They reduce the risk of osteoporosis. Most people don't realize that osteoporosis is a woman's disease in this country. It's a $15 billion a year health problem. Of all the people with osteoporosis 80% are women, and one out of every 2 women over the age of 60 in America has osteoporosis, one of every two. Those are our mothers, our grandmothers. We know generations of women who were told you cannot play sports. Generations of women who were never encouraged to be physically fit and if that's what we have in mind for our daughter's, if we want to repeat that generation of women with that kind of health problem then we can continue to fight.
We also know that high school girls who play sports are less likely to experience an unwanted pregnancy, they are less likely to do drugs, they are more likely to graduate from high school, they are more likely to get better grades. And psychologically from just the perspective of a parent who worries about a kid existing in a much more violent and abusive society than we may have known when we were growing up, I want my kid to be woke up, I at least want her not to be a victim. And we know that girls who play sports have higher levels of confidence, they have high levels of self esteem, they have stronger self images. And if that isn't enough, for most parents absolutely demand that their daughters get an equal shot.
But what's the situation out there? You have these football coaches, now I get into part 2. At least that was a lead in. I just wanted to make sure I was done.
Several months ago the American Football Coaches Association, an esteemed group (Laughter), by any standard, the Board of Trustees voted unanimous to ask Congress to re-visit Title IX. Title IX as most of you know was enacted in 1972. It just said that, "in any federally funded secondary or post secondary school, college, university, high school, you cannot discriminate on the basis of sex in the provision of occasional programs and activities, and race is included. Very simple rule. Well, the American Football Coaches Association has taken issue with that rule. They believe that football players should be specially treated, I keep reminding them that they are. Kind of treat them like kings, but they think they should be even more specially treated in that they should be designated as a separate sex in this society. This is for Title IX purposes, there should be men, there should women and that there should be football players. In that football players should be treated differently or at least separately than either these men and these women.
I got to ask them the question, why? And the first answer I got was, "Everybody knows that football is the goose that laid the golden egg." What golden egg was this? Did I miss it? They say, "We make all the money that funds all the other men's and women's sports in athletic programs across this country." And you have to know that that is the biggest piece mythology since -- give me a minute.
______________________ (Laughter)
It has to be Greek, something Greek.
Don't make me lose my train of thought. (Laughter)
Anyway. To give you, this is an absolute, not only is it a myth, it's a lie. 87% of all the NCAA institutions, football does not even pay for itself much less anyone else. Even in Division I school, 67% of all Division I Football Programs do not make a profit. And even when you look at Division IA, which is 100 or so big time school, Big Ten, the PAC Ten, the SEC's, 35% of those schools are running average annual deficits in football alone of $1.2 million a year.
The real situation probably looks something like this.
End Side A Tape 1
...and a football helmet. B Formation, a flying flock of fat, golden geese. The goose is dive bombing critter, smoke coming out his tail, obviously not long for this world. On the ground are two huntresses. Now you may dress them either in volley ball players, basketball players or lacrosse, crew, doesn't matter. Two huntresses with double-barrelled shotguns pointing up at the flying flock of fat, golden, football leagues. There is a bubble next to the two huntresses, because they are talking to each other, and in the bubble is this conversation, "Don't they know that we're only shooting blanks?" The moral of the story is that if football dies, it will die because of financial excesses, and not because of anything that is associated with gender equity. It's all red in over-spending and living a life that is far in excess of what higher education can support. If football is anything, it's a fat goose that is eating the feed that we use to support all the other men's and women's revenue producing sports. Football brings in money but it spends more than it brings in. And these are big, big, signs.
It's really important for us to keep in perspective what this thing called football is. Gender equity is not a choice between football and your daughter. It can't be. We should never be forced to choose between our sons and our daughters. And Title IX isn't something, and gender equity isn't something that is an attack on football. If you want football to make money, you want basketball to make money, you want everybody to bring in as many revenues as we possibly can make. What we don't want is any economic justification of a system that discriminates against women. There can be no economic justification of discrimination. Would we ever consider it in the case of race?
Just engage in a fantasy, okay? 1967. And you are an investigator from the office of Civil Rights. You walk on to the campus of the University of Texas and there's the head football coach of the University of Texas and an all white football team of 150 men. You are an investigator. You go over to Coach ________ and you say, "Coach, this is 1967, we have the Civil Rights Act you know, and you can't discriminate on the basis of race. How can you have a 150 all white ball players? That's not in this day and age." Darryl turns to the Office of Civil Rights investigator and says, "Well son, you know, economically this here sport supports every sport at the University of Texas. Economically I can't afford to have an African American team. My alumni, they have made it clear to me they are not buying a season ticket, they are not making a contribution, not coming to a game if there any African Americans on this team." Now, can you imagine, the Office of Civil Rights instigator saying, "Oh, I understand. You are perfectly right." Can you imagine that kind of response in a hundred years, and yet that's the exactly the same argument that was being made by football. That because we make money that we should not come under a Federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. But there are other reasons. This society is very disappointing. We've got to be a very questioning public when it comes to the other, more subtle ways that football, that kind of establishment in men's sports is trying to keep the woman out. What is really happening out there, is, they are not saying, "I don't mind, it's poorly written." They are not saying that Title IX somehow is unclear. They are saying they don't agree with Title IX. And they say it in these ways. You hear this, what everybody knows that women are not as interesting in sport as men. Uh! And I say to people, how do you know that? And they say, well look at high school sports? High school sports are only 33% of all participants are women. See they are not interested. But high school sports is just like college sports. Those numbers represent opportunities, not interest. The schools are only willing to support 33% of participation spots for women. I mean, can you imagine a situation where a school hires a good coach and says, okay, we're going to have a team and nobody comes out. I mean, you couldn't imagine that on the college level, and you couldn't imagine it on a high school level either. And the worst situation is that nobody ever asked the question of, where we're saying girls aren't as interested, has there ever been a test for interest for boys? Has anybody ever qualified opportunities for boys on the basis of interest? No. The question is never raised. No matter how bad a boys team is, it's not the kids fault, it's not their interest, it's not their ability, it's the coaches fault. Fire the coach. You're responsible as a teacher for making sure my son has a good experience. But now, when it comes to girls, well obviously if they are not coming out, nothing to do with the quality of the coach, it has nothing to do with the fact that he scheduled practice time at 6:00 am, it has nothing to do with the fact that there again, a gym that's two miles off campus, it must be the fault of the girls. So beware of the double standard when it comes to questioning among girls participating in sports.
The other thing you should realize as a member of the public is that interest is not even the right question. Let me give you an idea of question of participation and let you see this participation problem in a different light. There are only 200,000 boys, men participating in college sports, NCAA sports. There are less than 100,000 women participating in NCAA sports. The level underneath them, the feeder system for college sports is huge. There are 2,000,000 girls playing in unlimited high school sport program. That's all the opportunities they'll give them. There are 3.4 million boys participating in a high school program. That's all the opportunities that are available for boys. And then, apart from that, there are a whole slew of Olympic sports where kids can participate outside of school. There are plenty of kids, millions of kids, who are out there waiting for the chance to get an athletic scholarship or to play at the college level. Schools cannot begin, colleges can not begin to meet the needs or the interests of either boys or girls. With those kinds of numbers you can not do it. Economically it is impossible. So that the only obligation a school is under is the obligation to make sure that if it does provide opportunities it provides opportunities in a non-discriminatory way. And the way the Federal government has said it should be provided is that if you have a 50-50 female-male ratio, student body, you should have a 50-50 male-female ratio in the athletic environment.
Now, the football coaches are alleging that this proportionality test is a quota. This is the new, negative popular con that Newt Congress would like us to gasp about. Quota. Ah. And the interesting part of that line is that that proportionality test is not a quota. It does not sit alone. If a school does meet that test it has two other chances to fill the requirements of compliance in terms of Title IX. If I don't meet proportionality I can answer in the affirmative this question: That I'm already meeting all the needs and interests of the women who are participating in sports. Now, of the 30 schools that have been sued, you know over Title IX, not one of them have been able to meet that test. It was pretty obvious that the girls who were suing were the ones who want to play and the school won't let them. There's another chance, if you don't meet proportionality, if you're not able to give the right answer to the question you've already fully met the interest and abilities of your women students, you are not able to do those two things, you have a third even easier test. All you have to do is show that consistently over time you have been expanding opportunities for women to play. That you are on your way to being in compliance. And none of those 30 schools, none of those 30 schools had been able to show that. As a matter of fact, none of them had added a sport team in the last 10 years, all of them that had been sued have participation numbers anywhere from 22% to 38% women. They didn't have an absolute leg to stand on and here Brown University, we've been reading about it, is saying, "We do better than any other program in the country for women." We're out of compliance, everybody else is out of compliance but we do better than the other schools that are out of compliance. The truth were it to be known about Brown is very interesting. 1990 Brown spends $250,000 buying out it's football coaching staff. It sends the athletic program in debt by doing this. They are $80,000 down. Brown's response to this is to cut two men's and two women's sports to save $77,000. The women sue. The women, the volleyball players sue Brown. This is not fair, we only have 34% out of 38% of all the opportunities you can't cut us. Brown proceeds to spend $500,000 taking these kids to court. And it pleads that economically it can't afford to give opportunity, it pleads that we're giving more opportunity to women than all the other schools in the country. And of course, all the other schools in the country are not doing very well either. And it also pleads that these women are guilty, this is a novel argument on the part of Brown, it pleads that these women are guilty of not fulfilling unfilled participation spots. This is a really novel mathematical concept. Let me tell you how it goes. This is what Brown says to the judge. I happened to be in the court room, I was studying. (Laughter) The baseball team has 40 men on it, the softball team has 22 women, it's obvious that the women have 18 unfilled participation spots, the difference between 40 and 22, and they are not filling it. So really there are 40 participants in softball not 22. The judge laughed. Of course, I was there as an expert witness to just point out some minor differences between the two sports, you know, like in baseball you need about 8 to 10 pitchers, in softball you only need 2 good ones; just little things. These are the novel, the really novel ways that schools are saying our daughters are not as important as our sons. There are even more novel things being brought up today and have been brought up historically. For instance, in the early 1900s when women were starting to get opportunities to play sports, in the Olympic Games, they were representing the United States, there were colleges and universities in 1900s like the University of Texas, and like many around here, who gave letter awards in sports. Boy, all of the data started to come out about you know how women's ovaries were in danger. How their reproductive systems where it didn't really go out of whack and they were not going to be able to bear children, if they exerted themselves too much. There was a tremendous to do about women on bicycles. Damaging, you know, the areas in which one begins reproduction. (Laughter) And just to point out, nobody ever said anything about how damaging bicycles could be to boys! I mean, they have a real problem. Nobody thinks twice, nobody thinks twice about the fact that women were not allowed to run a race over 200 meters in the Olympic games until the 1950's. They were not allowed to run the marathon until 1984. This is not ancient history.
The imaginative reasons why women can't play. One of the most recent ones, I wonder if you'd recognize this as one of the new barriers for women in sports, S.I. ran like a 7 or 8 page article, Sports Illustrated, on anterior cruciate ligament tears in women basketball players, and gave you a real impression that women structurally are not really built for sports, especially for basketball. There are 3 times as many anterior cruciate ligament tears and the pictures, photos and everything else, "Women have Wide Hips,the Q-angle- that is really dangerous for women, right? People write me, haven't you heard you have wide hips. They are wrong. They are absolutely wrong. I know for a fact the University of Texas, where the only study I know has been done on anterior cruciate tears and the causative factors, and at the University of Texas they looked at some 8 odd injuries that occurred in a period of 36 years. And it was interesting. See those hips? Half of the players didn't have hips like that. Half of the players look like Cheryl Swoops, you know, very narrow, male-like hips, minor little cue angles. You know. Sports Illustrated doesn't even allow that there are tremendous differences in the skeletal builds of women, what they did find out was that the only common thing that they could find out of all of these injuries, and they looked at the shoes they wore, the biomechanics of the injury, the floors that were on, the structural build, all of the testing that we had done on all of the athletes in terms of quadriceps strength as compared to hamstring, the whole ball of wax. I mean they went through this with fine toothed comb. And the only thing that they suggested as a causative factor was that most of these young students had not had the opportunity to ever engage in building up a strength base. They were not permitted in weight rooms that were reserved just for football players, they were thrown into Division I, Top Ten basketball competitions, high powered weight training programs, and their suggestion was that the most causative factor was fatigue over time. And that until women got the same opportunities all the time as men did as if they were trying to leap this huge experience gap, that they were going to have more injuries. That makes sense. Didn't Sports Illustrated ever suggest that? No. Now Sports Illustrated does not have a great reputation with covering women's sports, so the very fact that they wrote an article on women sports should be looked at with a little question. There's another study you should be aware of. There was a study last year, in 52 issues of Sports Illustrated. And they looked at just the cover of Sports Illustrated. And they found out of these 52 weeks of Sports Illustrated there were only 6 women portrayed on the cover. The first one was, swim suit issue was one, Nancy Kerrigan debacle was another, Mary Pierce and her abusive father, tennis player and her abusive father, the two women, the two wives of baseball players who were killed in that boating accident, and the last one was the stabbing of Monica Seles. Not exactly a -- a magazine that reinforces your confidence about the achievements of today's women.
You have to really look with question upon these people who are creating barriers to women participating in sport. And other woman who is really popular is the tension that you better watch out for your daughter. You know a lot of these women teams are filled with lesbians. You know there is this homophobia about, you know your daughter might get attacked in the locker room. (Laughter) And it's much more likely for a female athlete to be harassed, to have an affair with a male coach than it ever is to ever have an affair with a female coach and a female player. I mean when you talk about something that is absolutely hidden under the table, that is denied by most colleges and universities, that is a serious problem in women sports, we should look more at relationships between male coaches and their female athletes than we should ever look at the issue of same sex partners.
This is a true story. I was at the University of Texas and after I left about two years ago, there was a series of articles in the Austin American Statesman about the Texas women's basketball team. Now, mind you, the Texas Women's Basketball Team is a top Ten team in the nation, and with attendance for about 4 or 5 years it out drew men's basketball at the University of Texas, it averaged 6,000 season ticket holders a year, the women's basketball team had no problem making money. Their average attendance was over 8,000, this was a successful women's program. It was almost inevitable. That the newspapers would come out with something that would attack a success in women's sport. There was a series of articles on the Texas Women's Basketball program about being friendly, of players who were lesbians, who had a sexual preference that was other than heterosexual. When I got a copy of the paper, I was just starting at the University of Texas, I went ballistic. Went absolutely ballistic. This means 2 guys that wrote this article, while people that I had known for the last 15 years. I had been in Texas for 17 years. I called one of them, I called my friend Mark. I said, "Mark, I just read three days of articles suggesting that University of Texas, and the university is proud of them in terms of saying we don't discriminate on the basis of sexual preference, or race or anything else, but you just wrote three articles trying to undermine the integrity of that basketball program that is the most respected and successful women's basketball program in the country. Mark, you knew damn well that the men's golf coach at the University of Texas was gay. And he was fired for a relationship with his players. You didn't say just one thing about that golf program. You knew damn well that the head coach of men's track team was gay. And that he had relationships with his players. That was a well known fact. And you didn't write about any sexual preference in mens sports. And that's exactly what happens out there. Homophobia is probably one of the most potent political tools used against women in sports. And we've got to label it for what it is. It is not an equal opportunity political tool because it is not being used against men in mens sports.
You can on and on with what society does when women manage to get a step up in any field, especially those fields which have been previously all male. Look at the military, look at religion, look at sport, where male power has been literalized for many years and the whole notion of women participating in those fields is looked upon with horror by the people who were previously advantaged in ____________________. So you can't expect that it's going to be easy. But you have as educated individuals recognize all of these things for what they are. It's insidious. It's unfair. It is a way to keep our daughters from all of the benefits of sport.
For one thing you can write congress people and you can say, keep Title IX where it is, ________________ making progress. But a lot of us aren't activists. You know a lot of us are, you know, _______ you wouldn't think of speaking out, a lot of us are in positions where we can't speak out, or we'll lose our jobs especially in issues of Title IX, but there are some things we can do to change the world. I would suggest to you that change happens when person and time _____________ and you get a piece of paper and I'll tell you what to do.
Get out a piece of paper and a pencil.
There are seven things, you can do six of them separate. There are seven things I want you to promise me you are going to do.
Number one, first thing. The next gift that you buy a little girl had better be a sport gift. You can buy them a Spalding basketball, a volley ball, a soccer ball, you can buy them Rebok shoes, any sports gift will do. And if you don't think that's significant, think twice. I have a nephew who is 18 months old and I first saw him when he was one week old. I went over to my brothers house and my new nephew is sitting on his father's lap, with a New York Giants T-shirt on, with a styrofoam New York Giants football. They are both sitting in front of the television set with father going wild over New York Giants on the screen. There is no doubt in my mind that by the age of one, this young boy will know how important sport was to his father. And how he was expected to play. There is no question in my mind that by the age of four his bedroom is going to be a palace of athletics _________. He'll have balls, gloves, he is going to have ice hockey sticks, he's going to do whatever. There is no question in my mind that every time that youngster turns on a television set he is going to see a picture of himself, he's going to have role models from _____________ cheered by 80,000 people at a time. He's going to know how important it is for him to play.
Now what messages are we sending to our daughters? Whose values are set by the age of 6, what messages are we sending? Her first gift is probably a Barbie Doll. You know that Barbie's feet have been permanently deformed, to fit only into high heels. Now Barbie is 30 years old. I know she doesn't look it, but. Even when the first Barbie fitness doll came out, included in the Barbie kit were Rebok shoes and in those Rebok shoes were lifts so that her high heeled feet could fit in the shoes and the shoes would come off. You laugh, but this is really sad. The first flat-footed Barbie didn't come out until this past fall. Barbie the gymnast. It's hard to wear high heels on the balance beam. But it's very important to tell a young girl, in addition to giving her a doll, give her a ball, give her a glove and that sends a message to her that it's okay to play. You know a lot of people don't realize that girls drop out of sport at a rate that is 6 times greater than the boys by the age of 14. You can just see how it happens. Between 11 and 14 invariably a little girl is talking with her friends, here she is at that point in time where she's the most insecure, she's not confident, she worries about what her friends think of her, she's eager to please, and she's sitting and talking with a girlfriend and saying, I play on a soccer team and we won our league, and girlfriend turns to her and says, well, that's nice but I have more dates. Or she's sitting and talking to a boyfriend, and her boyfriend is saying, "I don't know if I like girls who play sports, they have muscles and you know, all those girls who play sports they are lesbians." If we have not built up the other side of them, if don't let her know it's okay to play, and those are the only messages she's getting, then she is going to drop out of sport. And we know that if girl does not participate in sport by the time she's ten years, she's ____________________, we know that specially the young age, she is less likely to achieve success in sport than her male counterpart because girls in her sport two years later on the average than other boys. And if they're entering with less experience, if they are entering with less skill the less likely they experience success, the less likely they are to have fun, if you're not successful, if you don't have fun, you stay playing. The best thing you can do is to make sure that they know, that we think it's important for them to play.
Which brings me to the second thing you can do. What do we do to make sure girls get the same kind of experience and training as boys? How can we make up for our culture that doesn't make it as likely for little girls? You know, that little girls go out in the back yard and play as little boys. Well, here's the second thing you can do. Make sure that any team that you're on or associated with, if you coach you can teach, that once a year you give a mother/daughter clinic for girls age 6 to 8 or 9 and their moms. This was started by a New Jersey Parks and Recreation program. And it started a soccer league for girls and were really burned when girls did come out and play. Fortunately they had a lot of foresight. They didn't say, "Well girls must not be interested." They had to prophecize that girls weren't confident enough to come out, weren't confident enough in their skills. So the following spring they asked the high school team to come out and to run a mother/daughter soccer clinic. And they invited all moms and young students, girls 6 to 8 to come and they had something like 240 girls come out for this clinic, with their moms. And the team did was set up ten stations that were one-on-one drill stations. So they taught mom how to do a kicking drill with her daughter. They taught her how to do a stopping drill, how to do a __________ drill. And that's all they taught this group. They did for a purpose so that mom and her daughter would practice over the summer and more girls would appear confident in coming back and playing a league in the fall. And sure enough it worked. Not only did those little girls come out and play, but mom came out and coached. Mom found out that this __________ better than a 6 year old. Mom found out that it's not hard to play soccer. And mom found out that she's a really good teacher, she's sensitive, she's patient, she's positive and she really liked being with her daughter. You talk about changing the face of sport with one simple act, giving one mother/daughter clinic. The impact of that is something that we don't even know. At least for another five or ten years. So that's the second thing you can do.
The third thing you have to do, is the next time you're going to take little kids to a sports event you take a boy and a girl and you make sure you go to a women's game. Little boys have to start appreciating women's skills and abilities. They don't see it any where. And they are more likely to believe that women aren't very good. In the culture of males the feminine is used to denigrate boys who are not good at something. If a boy doesn't throw well, he throws like a girl. If...
End Side B Tape 1
....and you would be stunned with the language. They are calling each other, faggot, they are calling each other pussy, they don't even know what half of these words mean, but already they are figuring out because they are learning from their friends that it's okay to describe the feminine as being incapable, unskilled, you know something that is negative. If we don't show young boys ______ _______________ they are going to continue along that road. One of the most fun times I ever had the University of Texas was standing watching a woman's basketball game at Texas, and there was this 5 year old boy who was standing next to his father, and he was all excited with the game, he just got a players autograph and he looks up to his father and says, "Dad, when I grow up I want to be a Lady Longhorn." And that kid said that because he was a fan at a woman's basketball game and he saw women who played as well as boys. And he didn't think there was anything wrong with saying, "I want to be like a woman basketball player." Like I wanted to be like _____________ or Whitey Ford, ____ could also be like Jackie ______________ or Cheryl Swoops.
The fourth thing you have to do is the next time you see a little girl playing you have to go up and compliment her. You see a little girl playing Little League Baseball, after the game's over, don't leave, go over there and say, "Hey, I think you're really good." Because they don't get enough of that. And that one word can make a difference especially if it's been a bad day. And that kid is staying in sport ______________. So compliment girls who play sports.
The fifth thing you can do is to speak up when ever you hear people say something wrong about a preconception about women in sport. Hear them talking about the SAR requirement, the Q angles, tell them forget it gang, that's not right. You hear somebody talking about girls aren't as interesting in sport as boys, research shows that 85% of boys and 85% at the ages 6 to 9 believe that sport is equally as important and do their parents. They have the same interests. We just do a really good job with girls in killing that interest because we don't give them opportunities or we negatively talk about their sport participation.
The sixth thing that you can do, is to support companies that support women's sports. And I'm serious about this. You are an awesome economic force. You don't realize that women have out spent men in the marketplace in athletic shoes and apparel since 1991. We spend over $21 billion a year on sporting goods and apparel. Women have out participated men since 1991. More women than men play sports and do fitness in this country. And that is absolute fact. If you don't like an ad, that portrays a woman as a sex object, as a waif, some skinny little model, as some incompetent person, then don't buy from that company and support the companies that portray women in strong athletic roles and there are lots of those ads going on. Look at Rebok ads. Look at Nike ads. You look at Revlon ads. If you notice a lot of the personal product companies are showing mom with her kids, or showing mom as an athletic, or showing women in roles that you've never seen them advertising before. And that's because they recognize the economic power of women and that women who are not respected are not going to be ____________ in their companies. So the great new game out there and you can make that happen.
Number seven. It is really important to change media coverage of women's sports. We've got to start using our connections to get increased coverage of women because that influences what people think of the abilities of women. And there are easy ways to do that. The best one I ever heard about was a personal experience. At the University of Texas, the first year I came a sorority president came up to me and said, "We're very proud for them. Our sorority has adopted the women's basketball team and it is our goal that by the end of the season women's basketball team scores are going to be reported on every radio and television station in Austin." I kind of laughed at them. I'd been working at this for twenty years and they are going to do it in one season. This is pretty good. I got to see this. And they did it in three weeks. And you know how they did it. It was fascinating to me. They as a sorority went to every single game. After every game every sorority sister went back to the house and they had five telephone numbers to call. This is how the conversation went. There were three radio stations and two television stations. The conversation went like this. "Hello, do you have the score of the Texas Arkansas basketball game?" And somebody on the other end would say, "They're not playing tonight. (thinking it was the men's team)" And they would be politely informed, "Oh, yes, yes, yes, I know that the Texas women's basketball team played Arkansas tonight." And they would say, "Oh, oh, the women's basketball team. Em, no we don't have the score." And they would just say, "Oh, well, thank you." And they'd hang up. They didn't attack. They didn't make them defensive. That's all they did. And within three weeks every station carried women's sports. We could be a little creative but I think even better than that, is we probably know a lot of people who know who the station manager is. And we know a lot of dads __________________ who could really make things happen. There is a network out there, and let us not forget this, that one of the reasons why women are getting opportunity to play because this is the first generation of dads and moms who have grown up through the Civil Rights movement, they have grown up believing that their daughters could be doctors, lawyers, or college athletes. And they are not going to be denied. The best feminist to me is a dad with a daughter. He's probably her coach. So it's a new time.
Let me close by thanking you for doing those things and by telling you my favorite true story.
I was at the University of Texas, this is what I think it's all about. At the University of Texas my basketball coach said, "Would you come over and meet one of my top basketball recruits." I said, "You bet." This is the best basketball player in Texas. She was 6'2" power forward, great kid and she brought her little sister with her. Her little sister stood about this high and she was 6 years old. I tried to start up a conversation with this little kid, who's hanging on to her sister's leg. This is a really, really tall leg. And I said to her sister, "Do you play sports?" And the little kid says, "Yep." Doesn't even look at me. I said, "Well, what sport do you play?" And she said, "Track." This was going to be a tough conversation. I said, "Well, what event - do you run or do you throw? What event in track do you do?" She says, "800." 800. Now I don't know track, but I know enough about track that only masochists run the 800. Is this right? You live in fear for track person, you live in fear of the coach who says, "I know the event for you, the 800." But I wasn't about to doubt this young lady. I wasn't about to say anything negative and I said, "Wow! That's terrific." Did I believe her? I don't know. I got her sister over in the corner before I left and I said, "Does you little sister really run the 800?" And she said, "Yes." I said, "Well how did she get to that?" Very simple, I have a twin brother, he and I run track in the off season, every Saturday morning we practice on a club team and my mother works on Saturdays, and we bring our little sister. We've always invited her to run with us. And she's the rabbit on our team. We send her out, she starts before we do and she has a one lap start, 440 track or 400 track, one lap start and she has been running the 800 ever since we've been taking her to practice. The real moral of the story was, the kids starting to walk away and she turned to me and she said, "That's not really the reason why she runs the 800, the reason is, because nobody ever told her she couldn't."
Questions real quick.
Not audible.
Well, what's happening in Congress? There are two committees that are running hearings. One is the Second Committee on Commerce and I'm not worried about that one. The Senate is pretty good and there's a Republican that's really high up on that committee, Senator Stevens who has come out already in total support of Title IX. So they are probably going to announce when _______________. The other one is in the House. The House is going bananas. One of the guys who has taken the American Football Coaches Association to heart is Representative (Haster) and Haster is a former football coach wrestler, and Haster's committee, the House Committee on Post-Secondary Education has scheduled hearings for May 9th. But it seems like Haster's committee doesn't want to touch this with a 10 foot pole. The minorities on the committee, the Democrats, have been assured that it's going to be a big hearing, it's going to be bi-partisan, there are going to be at least 4 parents of speakers, and that they want to hear both sides, pro and con. I think it's obvious that they have to satisfy Haster in terms of having the hearings but that they are not anxious to anger women's vote. And they are probably going to make sure that the other side of Title IX is going to heard. And I think the name of the game here is just to make sure that the Congress doesn't do anything. I mean, there has been no effort to amend Title IX. There has been no legislation offered. And that's fine if it stays exactly like it is. We'll continue to make the progress, because there has been tremendous progress. In the last three or four years. Schools have gotten the message. You don't comply with the law you'll lose a $1 million getting sued, you better do something now and be able to show the court that you gradually expanded opportunities over time and be able to meet the test of the law.
The daughters of the first women to benefit from Title IX should be added to the coaching concave.
That's why all the law suits.
See, you should ask, why ___________ twenty years to have all these law suits and the plaintiffs are batting 1,000. Right? Very simple. It took 20 years for mom and dad who lived through the women's movement to get married, to have kids, for the kids to grow up to be 19 years old. And that's exactly what's happened. It's a whole different culture now. Just think of the difference in mom's. In 1970 only one out of every 27 high school girls played varsity sports. That number today is 1 in 3. So mom isn't going to -- is going to be like dad now. Mom is going to be the one pushing her daughter to play sports. And you're not going to pull the wool over moms eyes very easily in terms of opportunities.
Question: inaudible.
The question is, that's lots of middle school girls seem to be dropping out of athletics.
And it's absolutely right. The drop out age is right in middle school. The foundation among others, is next year, next fall, going to release a video tape for junior high school boys and girls. Junior high and high school boys and girls, in fact I just saw the first copy that came off the press. And it's going to address women's participation issues in sport from all the things that boys do to turn girls off of sport, the importance of sport for girls, real motivational piece for girls to continue playing sports or to start playing sports. And it's all by champion athletes. Peekaboo Street, Donna DeVerona, Nancy Hogshead, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, all of the champion athletes are talking about the importance of sport. That is going to be available, a little discussion of curriculum - it's a 15 minute video tape and it's designed for when it rains outside or can't get in the gym. Pop it in the video machine, and there's fifteen frequent questions and you start discussing this with little boys as well as girls. Absolutely critical to get both. And if you hand me your name and address I'd be happy to send that flyer to you when it's available. It'll probably be real cheap. It's done through ___________ Rebok. It's really a good piece.
Question: inaudible
Well, you know it's just very difficult. The media is as much a bastion of white males as sport has been previously. It's 92% to 95% white male. The older media has come from a culture which does not value women. The younger guys are doing pretty well, but they are not in positions of power in terms of deciding who covers what, and how they are covered. A lot of the public think that the determination of what gets in the newspaper is dependent on an objective criteria. That is not true. Research shows that what gets in the newspaper is dependent on the interest of the Sport Editor, period. That's it. There is no objective criteria. So, as these younger people move up you're going to see better coverage. You are just going to see better coverage because girls are going to play a more important role for them. They are going to grow up with their daughter's playing soccer, and being athletes and they are going to expect better coverage.
The other reason you are going to see a change in the media is sheer economics. I shared some of the economic data with you about the force of active women, you are going to see them cover more and more women's events even though, as little as two years ago, ESPN went on record as saying, "we're not going to change our program mix. We appeal to the blue collar, beer drinking, male sports fan, and that's who we are going to stay with, because if ain't broke, don't fix it." And, what's happened, is that sports people, sports business people did not realize is that sports is just like any other product cycle. If you think that your product was going to stay unchanged in terms of demand, indefinitely, you are really dumb. Every product has a life cycle. And it goes something like this. Public demand, public demand, and all of sudden you saturate it, your product sales, and it starts to flatten out, and because of competition it starts to take a dive. I don't care whether it's television programming, the basketball shoes, you cannot put all your eggs in one basket. As you bought products going like this, and the research and development pipeline would have to be developing new products and that's what athletics has not done. They put all their eggs into football, they put all their eggs into mens basketball, and as those have flattened out, and earnings have been capped, they are not ready. They are not ready with women's basketball, they are not ready with men's baseball, they haven't developed other sports. And yet Texas can make $1 million at the gate with women's basketball. So ESPN and the newspapers are going through this cycle right now. They are having to expand their coverage of women in an effort to diversify their audience base, make their subscriber base bigger, you are going to see some big changes over the next couple of years, big changes.
Question: inaudible
I think media coverage is important because of the role models that represent them in public and little girls in particular. But, I really thing that if you look at America II, who would ever think? That __________ would get the coverage that they did. All they did was they figured an angle. All women's team. The Colorado Silver Bullets. You strike the public imagination. Media coverage is an issue of creativity and can I find the button to create public demand? It has nothing to do with media public demand, it's creating public demand. And if you can figure out what that little angle is. My suggestion in terms of sowing the seeds for increased media coverage is you make sure it will do a lot for the little kids in your community. That you become something that little kids want to come to. Through your camps, through clinics, that you create a family environment and you fill that unmet need that exists right now, because men's sports are pricing itself out of the family market, it is banking everything on a value of winning. You have to diversify the sport problems. You don't sell women, I don't think. You sell 150% effort, you sell for kids can speak the English language when they are interviewed, you sell community service, you sell honesty, you sell role models, if you sell all those thing, you make yourself appealing to the wide variety of constituencies and they are going to come out and watch you, they are going to come out and support you and eventually they are going to find somebody who's father is a writer, a sports editor, and it will play. That's all that happened for Texas basketball. We never said no. For any community request, for a speaker, for a clinic. We did everything for everybody including the sports editor when his daughter would play basketball right down the line. And eventually you get a critical mass of public support and they can't not cover you.
Question: inaudible
There's been a lot of talk about the absence of women in coaching ranks. Although women have had tremendously increased __________ participation opportunities those kinds of percentage increases have not been matched in coaching opportunities for women. Less than 50% of all coaches of women's teams are women, less than 1% of all coaches of men's teams are women. In the ideal world you would suspect that coaches would be 50-50 male female. In a gender neutral world you would expect that. And that exists now in women's sports. Where the real discrimination is occurring is that women are not being let into men's sports. It's the highest paying jobs. The publicly visible jobs. The most respected jobs and women are literally being discriminated against. That's where the barrier has to be broken. The reason why women aren't getting into those jobs is that the people who are hiring are still predominantly male. And the hiring process for men _____________ -_______________ and the process of hiring is BYO. __________ comfortable with, and they feel comfortable with people who look more like me, and who I can identify with, and that's why we're seeing some miserable records in terms of hiring ___________ be it _______________. They are all in that same boat. I think things are getting better. That's where the new round of law suits are really heating up now. Women taking their institutions to court because of unfair salary discrimination, employment discrimination, that's going to heat up over the next three, four years.