Team 4: Story 1: MSU Men's Basketball Attendance Soars While Women's Struggles - What Is Title IX's Role?

Title IX was first implemented to ensure the future of both men’s and women’s collegiate athletics, cementing a system for the receival of equal opportunity and equal federal funding. At Mississippi State University, in men’s and women’s basketball, disparities can be clearly seen.

MSU Athletics attempts to further incentivize students to show out for women’s basketball by offering deals such as free T-shirts to the first 500 attendees, already waiting for them on the backs of the fold-out seats in the student section of Humphrey Coliseum. At the MSU-University of Texas game on Feb. 27, not all 500 of these T-shirts were divvied out - prompting the cheerleaders and Bully, the bulldog mascot, to toss them by the handful to other sections of the arena during timeouts and between quarters.

Spotlights roamed the stands while booming music shook the seats. As the starting lineup of five representing the MSU women’s basketball team make their way to the court, each one is preceded by a promotional video to introduce them and excite the crowd - alternating between shots of the women holding a basketball, side-eyeing the camera and sitting upon a throne with a crown atop their heads. White pom-poms are waiting at every seat in the arena with attendees shaking them in tandem with the Famous Maroon Band’s performances and the songs pouring out of the speakers. Photographers and videographers kneeled and crouched beside the hoops on opposite sides of the court, snapping shots and capturing key moments while other camera-wielding individuals roamed in front of the stands, broadcasting the crowd reactions into the jumbotron overhead.

In the various concession stands surrounding the main coliseum court, there were bottles of “Jerk Sauce” - a partnership between Kyvan Foods, Proof of the Pudding and guard position Jerkaila Jordan - as a “food-centered NIL deal”, according to the Mississippi State Women’s Basketball Instagram account¹. The menus on the TV screens dotting the concessions advertised it on its varieties of sandwich and nacho plates available.

The MSU-Texas women’s basketball game was a constant back-and-forth battle, ending at a 64-68 score with the Longhorns coming out on top.

Conversely, at the MSU-University of Texas men’s basketball game on March 4, the MSU team arrived clad in less fanfare from the team’s side but commands a much more riotous and raucous audience. Same as the women’s team, the men’s starting lineup ran out from the locker room tunnel greeted by sparklers, shooting plumes of fire and smoke machines spouting from the jumbotron.

No pom-poms or T-shirts awaited attendees at their seats and yet the audience was much more alive - even without the incentive of receiving a free perk upon arrival.

The students stayed on their feet the entire game while the rest of the crowd jumped to their feet in solidarity each time the ball soared through the air toward the hoop. They shouted and stomped their feet during every single 3-point line throw from Texas’ players. Unlike the women’s game, the cheerleaders’ chants could not even be deciphered over the roar of the crowd. Whereas there were a handful of attendees sitting in the upper sections of the coliseum at the women’s game out of personal preference - as there were plenty of open seats in the primary coliseum level, closer to the court - the men’s game demanded the nosebleeds be filled. This required the cheerleaders to distribute T-shirts to the crowd via a handheld cannon, which was completely absent from the women’s game.

The “Bunch”² - the beloved banana suit clad boys - starkly stood out behind the scorer’s table. Crowd pleasing songs that famously prompt audience participation such as “Y.M.C.A.” and “Sweet Caroline” blared throughout the coliseum. The preliminary race for the long-awaited, second annual Dachshund Derby commenced during halftime.

A guttural cry of booing flooded the stadium in response to every referee’s call that harmed MSU - especially towards the end of the game.

Instances of NIL could be seen from the men’s basketball athletes as well, such as a commercial on the jumbotron of Josh Hubbard - viewed by many as the star of the 2024-2025 season’s team - acting as a spokesperson for Columbus Orthopaedic Clinic.

Once again, the matchup between the MSU Bulldogs and Texas Longhorns was a fight to the bitter end. The Longhorns prevailed with an extension into overtime and an 82-87 final score.

In many ways, all sports are shows and spectacles. Both men’s and women’s basketball at Mississippi State University are no exception.

Title IX of the Education Amendments, under the Congress-enacted Civil Rights Act, was officially signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon on June 23, 1972. The law’s primary author and sponsor is attributed to be Hawaii Representative Patsy T. Mink who introduced it to Congress before it then traveled through each branch of the government. It bluntly states that “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

Each branch of the United States federal government played a different role in the initial creation and evolution of Title IX.

In 1988, on the legislative side, the Senate as well as the House of Representatives clearly defined what qualifies as a “program or activity” under both Title IX and other, similar civil rights laws as it refers to “all operations” which financial assistance is extended to within an educational institution. Instead, it is revised to be “any part” of said institution. This was titled the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987. During the same year, President Ronald Reagan’s attempted veto on this legislation was overridden by Congress by a two-thirds voting majority in the Senate and House of Representatives. Thus, the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 became law.

Although examining the initial signing into law of Title IX, its amendments and its actual content is crucial in understanding it, it is equally important to study Grove City College v. Bell - the first case to reach the Supreme Court of the United States concerning the function of Title IX.

In 1975, the then-United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare - now known as the Department of Health and Human Services - implemented a new regulation for educational institutions to abide by to receive any federal, financial assistance. The institutions would be required to file documentation, ensuring its compliance with Title IX.

Leaping forward several years, in 1984 the judicial branch of the federal government found itself involved with Title IX for the first time as Grove City College v. Bell crosses the justices’ desks.

Grove City College, a coeducational, liberal arts university in Grove City, Pennsylvania, was challenged when it attempted to refuse both state and federal financial assistance. As a private college, the institution primarily thrives off the tuition from its students, donations and fundraisers. However, a substantial portion of Grove City College’s student body received Basic Educational Opportunity Grants, a source of federal financial aid distributed by the Department of Education. Therefore, the U.S. Department of Education claimed that this made Grove City College - the institution as a whole - a recipient of federal financial assistance and, henceforth, would be expected to comply with the requirements of Title IX. Upon Grove City College’s denial, the Department of Education ceased the flow of BEOGs to the university’s students. In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court sided with Grove City College, determining that the financial aid program receiving federal funding was not a “program or activity”. Thus, Grove City College’s students were still able to receive federal financial aid toward their education and, for the first time, Title IX had been interpreted by the Supreme Court - which greatly influenced the enforcement of the civil rights law by determining the range of the law itself and what it can be strictly applied to.

The Office for Civil Rights, under the umbrella of the Department of Education, is the body that oversees and enforces the laws and regulations regarding sex-based discrimination in educational programs and activities which receive any level of federal funding or financial assistance. According to the Department of Education, Title IX is applied to schools - at all education levels - along with other such local and state educational agencies. An estimated 17,600 local school districts and 5,000 postsecondary institutions across all 50 states, the District of Columbia and other territories of the United States have Title IX applied to them.

As the primary enforcer and educator of Title IX, the Office for Civil Rights is responsible for evaluating, investigating and resolving sex-based discrimination complaints and allegations.

To understand Title IX’s impact in MSU athletics, it is important to take a broader look into how it has further developed in the present day and how these changes could manifest at MSU.

Recently, the buzz around Title IX accelerated when President Joe Biden’s administration added the Final Rule to Title IX. Biden’s Final Rule included Title IX protections to those discriminated against based on their gender identity - among other things. However, the Final Rule was struck down in April 2024 because of the case State of Tennessee v. Cardona.

The case deemed Biden’s Final Rule unconstitutional as the court believed that redefining the definition “on the basis of sex” to include gender identity exceeded statutory authority.

The court also believed that Final Rule violated the First Amendment rights of expression. It was argued and held that forcing a teacher to conform to addressing a student by their chosen identity could infringe on their own beliefs if they did not recognize gender identity.

Lastly, they ruled that the Final Rule was arbitrary, meaning that there was not a good enough reason to change Title IX in the first place.

In an already polarized society, both sides seemed even more distant after Trump's executive order,³ titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”, was signed this past February. The executive order banned transgender women athletes from competing in women’s sports. This order alone has already sparked three separate investigations by the U.S. Department of Education.

Two of these investigations are being conducted within educational institutions. Blaire Fleming, a transgender female athlete currently playing for the San Jose State University volleyball team, has found herself at the center of one of these investigations. The lawsuit alleges that many athletes on the opposing team were struck forcefully by volleyballs while also claiming that Fleming received an athletic scholarship over other female athletes on her team.

The second university under the investigative spotlight is the University of Pennsylvania. Lia Thomas, a former member of the Women’s Swimming and Diving team, is being investigated after her teammates alleged that they underwent “psychological services to attempt to re-educate [them] to become comfortable with the idea of undressing in front of a male.”

The third and final investigation involves the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. The case surrounds a women’s high school basketball team forfeiting a game against a transgender woman athlete after repeatedly injuring multiple players. The team tried to act and ban this transgender athlete from competing. However, the MIAA handbook states that “[a] student shall not be excluded from participation on a gender-specific sports team that is consistent with the student’s bona fide gender identity.”

All of these investigations and amendments to Title IX have left open spaces of discourse regarding its implementation into universities and other educational institutions.

Currently, the NCAA and its power conferences have agreed to a sum of $20.5 million⁴ to be sent in direct payments to athletes via NIL deals. In a memo from the Biden Administration, the opinion was that such payments should be equally distributed among men’s and women’s sports.

Despite this, the consensus is that most - if not all - major athletic departments will allocate the funds to the sports that generate the most revenue. It is estimated⁵ that 90% of proposed settlements will be funneled into men’s basketball and football, while 5% will be reserved for women’s basketball and the other remaining 5% will be spread out among all Olympic sports.

Depending on how this settlement is distributed, there may be a noticeable change in MSU women’s basketball programs. As can be seen throughout the 2024-2025 basketball season, attendance at women’s basketball matches is strikingly lower than the men’s counterpart. If men’s and women’s programs received equal financial support, there would certainly be an increase in recognition for women’s athletics.

It is believed that this may be the result of misperceptions among institutions as what qualifies as “compliance”, in addition to a lackluster set of standards. While many institutions perceive themselves as compliant - if not overachieving - in the field of equity, many are not actually fully compliant at all. This leads to a dissonance between perceptions and reality in the higher offices of educational institutions and their athletic programs.

During the fall 2024 semester, 51.8% of the student body at Mississippi State University was comprised of women. However, only 42.6% of MSU’s student-athlete population are female. This statistic falls outside of the acceptable deviation, according to the proportionality requirement⁶ - leading to the misperception that, while MSU is succeeding in terms of equality and representation, it is still not enough.

This misperception, partnered with the lack of easily applicable standards, results in a nonstandard approach. Some sports fall behind in receiving both resources and opportunities. Others simply struggle to garner or retain interest among female students. According to Title IX, these are issues that should be avoided or remedied. Nevertheless, most educational institutions possess no common groundwork to improve their own set of standards, inevitably leading to every high school, college and university adopting its own direction and policy.

This phenomenon can especially be witnessed in-action at Southeastern Conference schools - where football is king, and its players are campus royalty. Nearly 20% of all athletes at universities across the United States are football players receiving athletic scholarships. For many of those football players, the specific scholarships being offered by a particular school likely played a major role in determining their college choice.

On a national level, schools are attempting to sanction more sports teams to bridge the rift between men’s and women’s athletics caused by the sheer existence of football. At MSU, the women’s soccer team and lack of a men’s soccer team exists for this purpose - as a response to the absence of women-only sports on-offer at the university left behind in football’s wake.

Historically, Title IX has been extraordinarily successful for women in terms of enrollment numbers, setting records and even creating leadership positions. For the equality outlined by Title IX to truly be achieved, athletics must be brought up to that same standard across all facets of college culture.

Studies show that the more resources a university reserves for any given sport, the more interest and participation it will foster. A primary argument against granting women’s sports the same resources as men’s has been an overall lack of participation numbers and, of course, economic gains. If there is any chance of changing this in the future, institutions must stop seeing women’s sports as an obligation and begin seeing it as an investment.

In 2023, it was uncovered that NCAA-partnered schools had spent approximately $4.6 billion on athletic-related scholarships alone. Looking at this number in a general-sense, one would assume that this fund was split evenly into two, $2.3 billion-sized halves, divided equally amongst male and female athletes.

This was not the case.

There was a $1.1 billion gap between what the men and women received.

A large portion of this phenomenon comes down to schools simply taking the extra step and sanctioning athletic opportunities for women. Even with the cases of “extra sports” only for women, every NCAA school would need to add on average, 33.3 recognized roster spots solely reserved for women to make up the difference created by the gender gaps found in the 2022-2023 academic year alone.

The NCAA’s “Title IX at 50” report found that in the 2019-2020 season, there was a 23% total expenditure difference in women’s and men’s sports at the Division 1 level. This was an increase from just five years prior, where the difference had been 20%. It is true that schools are increasing revenue gains and spending more money on women's teams. The men’s teams are also receiving the same treatment and then some, creating a larger gap - even in the Title IX era.

Current trends predict that, within the decade, men’s athletics will create a disparity gap of an estimated 100,000 athletes - a rate of roughly 50 more male athletes than female athletes. While women’s athletic opportunities have drastically improved under Title IX’s jurisdiction, the increases for participation are still consistently less than what is seen in men’s participation. The gap will only grow in the face of unequal efforts to counter it.

Strides are being taken at MSU towards true equality between men’s and women’s athletics. While immediate results are both the desire and the goal, change must start from the ground-up - and the answer may be found within the student body’s participation.

Email the team at edn80@msstate.edu with any questions

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