Competitive Cheer is not a sport

7/22/2010: Update, NY Times story here.

According to the Judge. Rachel Bachman has more here. UO’s team is a remnant of some bizarre Kilkenny scheme to kick those sweaty wrestlers off campus and replace them with baseball, then trick the NCAA into thinking we were achieving Title IX compliance. Their website is here, they carefully avoid the word cheer. Good luck with all that:

A federal judge’s ruling earlier today in a Title IX lawsuit against Quinnipiac University has focused considerable attention on the question of whether cheerleading should be considered a sport. District Judge Stefan Underhill said the private Connecticut university violated Title IX by shortchanging female students of athletic opportunities. One way the university did this, Judge Underhill said, was by counting members of a newly created competitive cheer team as athletes for purposes of complying with the federal gender-equity law.

In the RG Renee Baumgartner is pretending the ruling doesn’t matter. And why not? If it does go to court, UO’s academic side will pay the athletic department’s legal bills, as usual. Go Ducks.