Would the U.S. men’s soccer team have advanced further in the World Cup if not for Title IX?
Scott Yenor thinks so.
The Heritage Foundation scholar and Boise State University professor recently argued as much in Compact.
He wrote:
Title IX has actively suppressed the growth of men’s sports since the early 1990s, when enforcement of the 1972 law underwent sweeping changes. Since that time, Title IX has been interpreted as a requirement that the proportion of athletes who are female must be equivalent to the number of undergraduates who are female at every school receiving federal funds.
Yenor argues that female soccer teams are allocated for scholarships and there are also more women’s teams at the collegiate levels. The number of men’s soccer teams has remained steady at around 200 since the 1990s.
The scholar also argued:
America’s women’s soccer has a world-class pipeline, but Title IX prevents men’s soccer from building one. Only when America drops its sports sex-quota system will the American men stop being humiliated by Belgium. And America will drop its sports sex-quota system only when it stops using sports as a lever to break down stereotypes and engineer parity and instead allows regulations to acknowledge that the sexes differ in their interest in sports.
But not all agree.
University of Utah law Professor Paul Cassell disagreed with Yenor’s argument.
He points out that the development of talent happens much earlier than college – as evidenced by the lack of collegiate experience among current national team members.
“As the recent pathways for top players joining both the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams demonstrate, NCAA college soccer is fading into obscurity as part of the international talent pipeline.
Read Yenor’s essay here and Cassell’s essay here.
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