WSJ legal blog reports the US 2nd circuit court has ruled that cheerleading is not a sport. My recollection is Kilkenny claimed it was, to argue for Title IX gender equity after he ditched wrestling to start a money losing UO baseball team. The solution is simple: ditch baseball.
My recollection is different. Wrestling was swapped out for baseball–no gender inequity. But the issue was floated as a smokescreen to deflect from non-transparency in general in the athletic department as they went about this change. Local sportswriters and baseball romantics jumped on board. “Competitive Cheer”, aka dancing girls, was a hopeful part of Title lX to assuage older, rich white guys with issues.
I could be wrong, though.
I assumed that the market for wrestling uniforms (grey singlets) looked unprofitable, while the potential market for “competitive cheer” was over the top. No?
Just … no.
Ditch baseball? That’s not going to happen, nor should it. But the “competitive cheer” should be replaced with a real sport like gymnastics or rowing.
When I first heard of UO’s “competitive cheerleading” program qualifying as a competitive sport several years ago, I thought: WTF? What are they smoking over there in the CAS Center? What a joke… Makes UO, and especially the Athletic Dept, look stupid… Something I’d expect from some podunk third-rate for-profit school, not a public state tax supported AAU research university. Thanks to the US 2nd circuit court for putting some sanity back into this madness.
Baseball doesn’t even cover its variable costs, much less repayments for the money Kilkenny and Frohnmayer borrowed from the foundation for “PK Park”. And the players are notoriously uninterested academically.
But there’s big business in baseball apparel.
In April Maryland, one of the “pioneers” of competitive cheer as a “Sport” announced it would be dropping it altogether as part of its reorganization and slimming down of the Maryland AD. I think that leaves 4 schools with it as a program. Really? Embarassing. Let’s find a “real” sport that offers competition and equity. On the other hand, I have had a number of these women in my classes over the last two to three years and all of them have been impressive academically!