Once upon a time, there were some folks that thought that women couldn't and shouldn't play sports. Thankfully, over time, enlightened thinking has prevailed as women have proven that they not only have the same love of sport, but can compete every bit as hard and as passionately as the boys do. Title IX guaranteed, among other things, that women's athletics would be given equal opportunities in competitive sports and that those sports would be funded. It offered equality and that benefits everybody. Unfortunately, the NCAA doesn't seem to believe that equality
runs both ways.
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Eric Butler is a football player for the University of Kansas. He's also a father. After the birth of his daughter, Butler and his wife Chantel enrolled in local schools and split time raising their child. Under NCAA rules, athletes have four years of athletic eligibility that can be spread over five years. Injured players and freshmen are routinely redshirted for a year which allows them to still compete for four full years. In Butler's case, his eligibility clock began ticking in 2001 when he enrolled ad DeVry University, a school without an athletics program whatsoever. He eventually transferred to a smaller college and played a year of football before transferring to KU where he played one more season. Officially, he's only played two complete seasons and yet the NCAA has told him that he has used up all of his eligibility to play.
One amendment to Title IX is the "pregnancy exception" which gives a school the discretion to extend a female athlete's eligibility period due to pregnancies. Eric Butler and his attorneys contend that the "pregnancy exception" should be extended to fathers who are at home caring for their children as well and that denying him and extra year of eligibility is a violation of Title IX. A U.S. District Court disagrees with Butler's assertion as does the NCAA itself, stating that the "pregnancy exception" applies to women only.
"The pregnancy exception is explicitly written for female students whose physical condition due to pregnancy prevents their participation in intercollegiate athletics and therefore is not applicable in this case," said Erik Christianson, NCAA spokesman.
Christianson is right of course. The exception is written in a way that makes it applicable to women only. But men in the workplace have been given the right to take paternity leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. The universities and the NCAA itself make money hand over fist on the backs of these kids without so much as compensating them for the long hours and all of the blood, sweat and tears they put in. It's very much a regular job for today's student-athlete. Why shouldn't men in the workplace of collegiate sports be entitled to the same equality afforded to female athletes?
"If athletic programs allow women to be redshirted for a period of child-raising, then that is treatment that should also be extended to male team members who take leave from school for the same reason. As a matter of social policy, that is a direction that the NCAA may want to consider," said Jocelyn Samuels, vice president of the National Women's Law Center.
It's a direction the NCAA should be considering but one they, thus far, have resisted. They denied Butler's petition for an extra year of eligibility and are now fighting him in court. With the season fast approaching, Butler's time is running out. It will take the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overturning the decision rendered by the District Court to get Butler back on the field.
Title IX brought a strong measure of equality to collegiate sports. It rightly gave women the opportunity to compete in college athletics. While I'd never go so far as to say that everything is perfectly equal and that everything is just hunky-dory, it is far better now than it was before. Shouldn't that equality run both ways? Shouldn't men, as well as women, be given the same considerations where the rules governing collegiate athletics are concerned? That seems to me, to be in accordance with the spirit and purpose of Title IX.
Of course, that would be expecting some common sense from the NCAA, the organization that gave us the BCS, so maybe common sense is a little much to expect.