Journal of Higher Education Athletics & Innovation

Contemplating A 21st Century View of Title IX’s Application to College Sport

Ellen Staurowsky — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 is arguably one of the most consequential pieces of legislation to affect change within college sport. In retrospect, Title IX’s influence on college sport programs and its governing bodies is a lesson in what legislation can achieve in promoting gender equity within an entrenched male hegemonic system and what its legal limitations are in a predominantly white system of college sport. Title IX’s implementing regulations reflect a negotiated settlement between commercial, economic, and state interests invested in men’s sports and some educational leaders leveraging the optics of what the general public would think of colleges and universities engaged in outright gender discrimination (Hextrum & Sethi, 2022; Staurowsky, 2023). The result in the late 1970s was a series of “last stand” protections for men’s sports, contained in such mechanisms as the “contact sports exception”, designed to resist the incursion of women into those all-men’s spaces. Connected to the idea that in the athletic arena, “separate” could be “equal,” the framework of a gender binary was embedded in the regulations (Staurowsky et al., 2022). This paper explores the limits of Title IX’s liberal feminist conception of equality through Title IX’s impact on the college sport system and compliance; Title IX’s embrace of “separate but equal” and fears regarding strong women; the insulation of men’s sports from women through the contact sports exemption; Title IX, race and intersectionality in college sport; the manipulation of Title IX by the NCAA and the case of NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament in 2021; and the NCAA’s pretense of leadership regarding gender equity and gender discrimination.

Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) Opportunities for Black College Athletes: Strategically Facilitating Academic Achievement and Successful Career Transitions

Jay Coakley, C. Keith Harrison, Jean Boyd — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Omitted in discussions of college athletes’ use of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) opportunities is a focus on equity, educational issues, and transition into post-college careers. We frequently hear National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) declarations stating that nearly all college athletes ‘will go pro in something other than sports,’ but little is said about the challenges faced by Black athletes as they deal with coursework and the transition into post-college careers. In this paper, we summarize how the changing contexts of collegiate sports and race relations in higher education have intensified those challenges for Black athletes. We discuss how NIL opportunities can be used by Black athletes to expand identities, create and nurture relationships with mentors from Black-owned businesses, and develop programs in Black communities and organizations that promote social justice and racial equity. We assert that NIL can be combined with Happenstance Learning Theory (HLT) to develop skills for using unanticipated NIL-related opportunities in meeting challenges in courses and the transition into post-college lives. Lessons learned from support programs for Black athletes serve as a basis for recommending that universities fund the formation of a NIL Alliance of Black Athletes on campuses and provide career counselors to guide athletes as they meet people in connection with NIL deals that involve a combination of financial and personal development benefits relevant to education and future careers.

Exploring the influence of Black liberatory theory on collegiate sport reform initiatives

Brandon Wallace — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0500

As the oppressions of U.S. collegiate sport persist, recent collegiate sport reform efforts have emerged to address the racial injustices and inequalities that remain in contemporary collegiate sport. Because racial justice reform efforts in college sport are intricately linked to broader visions and pursuits of Black liberation, it is necessary for these efforts to acknowledge the diversity of Black political perspectives and explicitly consider precisely which theoretical model underpins their pursuit of racial justice in college sport. The aim of this paper is to outline how racial justice initiatives within collegiate sport have been theoretically and strategically connected to broader Black social movements and the liberatory visions that accompany them. Specifically, I examine how some of the most common theories of Black liberation – Black Liberal Integrationism, Black Nationalism, Black Marxism, and Black Feminism – have shaped the tactical and utopian directions of key movements in the history of collegiate sport activism; such as the boycott efforts led by Dr. Harry Edwards in the late 1960s, the push for HBCU athletics throughout the late 1900s, and the recent University of Missouri football strike in 2015. In effect, I argue that exploring the implicit intra-Black political divergences and tensions of past Black social movements can reveal instructive insights for contemporary collegiate sport reformers that can aid in achieving a more collective, structurally focused, and intersectional vision for transforming collegiate sport.

Antiblackness and Carcerality: Implications for the Study of College Athletics

Sara E. Grummert — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0500

We frequently frame criticisms of college athletics in terms of labor exploitation and/or legacies of racism. Though these remain necessary and foundational analytical frames, there are other important frameworks through which we must analyze college athletics to fully understand how and why inequity and racism is both rationalized and compounded. Antiblackness and carcerality—and their deep interconnection—are two such perspectives that both complement and complicate other approaches to the study of college athletics. This paper discusses these two essential theoretical frameworks and demonstrates the nuance that using them in college athletics research provides through several exemplars.

Interventions in Support of Anti-Racist Praxis in Athletics

Siduri Haslerig, Kirsten Hextrum — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Since the 1990s, college athletic departments have developed parallel and redundant student services that are specific to athletics, ostensibly to broaden the accessibility of these resources for athletes (Smith, 2011). However, this insularity can create echo chambers and totalize institutional norms (Comeaux, 2018; Hatteberg, 2013). Previous research has documented that many athletics practitioners, even those in student-facing roles, are neither trained as educators nor student affairs professionals (Navarro et al., 2015). Additionally, athletics practitioners are often untrained and unprepared to address racial equity topics and have little prior experience working with racially diverse students and coworkers (Bernhard & Haslerig, 2017). This article discusses two efforts to better prepare anti-racist athletics practitioners: one at the graduate level with students working as athletics graduate assistants (GAs) and pre-professional graduate students and a second with current athletics staff and administrators. Through the lenses of Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Whiteness Studies, we discuss the need, development, and theory of change undergirding these two interventions implemented at the University of Oklahoma and offer suggestions of how other universities and athletic departments could approach and/or implement similar programming.

An Examination of the Assimilative and Anti-Immigrant Policies, Practices, and Cultures that harm International College Athletes

Simran Sethi, Kirsten Hextrum — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0500

International college athletes (ICAs) are distinct from other international students because of the demands of elite intercollegiate athletic participation. Institutional practices inaccurately position ICAs as a homogenous group with similar needs and utilize assimilation methods when providing support. We engage with integration and assimilation as theoretical frameworks to reveal how these approaches disrupt ICA’s college experiences. In reviewing existing literature, we consider how contemporary National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) policies, higher education institution (HEI) practices, and athletic department cultures impose assimilation on ICAs while extracting their athletic talents. We found assimilation is normalized in NCAA’s amateur rules; in HEIs and their academic policies and practices; and in athletic departments. Throughout, we discuss how assimilation harms ICA’s athletic and academic achievement. We conclude with suggestions for the NCAA and its member institutions to adopt integrative policies and practices.

A Case of Interest Divergence: An Athletic Department’s Anti-racist Book Club

Kirsten Hextrum, Siduri Haslerig — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0500

In this article, we present the implementation and eventual dissolution of anti-racist programming within one athletic department as an exemplar case. The anti-racist programming represented the potential of a counter-hegemonic effort to disrupt White supremacy in athletic organizations. It also represented a unique partnership between faculty and athletic practitioners. Throughout, we share the larger context in which the case emerged, discuss the challenges and opportunities in designing and implementing the anti-racist programming, and describe how and why the programming and partnership dissolved. Our accounts and observations are framed through the critical race theories of interest convergence, divergence, and imperialist reclamation (Bell, 1980; Guinier, 2004; Nishi, 2022). We conclude with implications for higher education activists interested in engaging in similar efforts at their institutions.

“In the Arena”: Reflections on Critical Public Engagements on College Sport

Johanna Mellis, Derek Silva, Nathan Kalman-Lamb — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0500

In this paper, we reflect on the challenges, opportunities, motives, imperatives, and strategies of engagement associated with public scholarship about college athletics. Public scholarship has become a trendy topic across the academy as universities increasingly push academic workers to boost institutional brands suffering from chronic underfunding through highly visible engagement in the public sphere. We argue that although public scholarship is a vital part of academic work, principal imperatives driving this form of labor should be political/ethical rather than promotional. It is therefore not enough for academic workers to simply generate data for academic audiences, as without public dissemination, the impact is inherently limited and exclusionary. While public engagement is a necessary and important part of our work, it is fraught with the contradictions inherent to the critique of the same institutions that demand that engagement in the first place, as well as the associated collateral intellectual and personal damage that comes from wading into public debate. Through an autoethnographical account of our personal experiences, as scholars intervening in public discourse around the rights of campus athletic workers and our own encounter with ESPN college basketball personality and former college coach Dan Dakich, we will trace some institutional and personal strategies for educators to create protective measures, build community, and mobilize solidarity against real or perceived harassment. Such tactics aim to help scholars produce public work that genuinely contributes to societal conversations, challenges prevailing misconceptions, and centers the voices of minoritized, abused, and exploited athletes above all.

Introduction to Special Issue College Sport (In)Equity: Working Within and Beyond the Law to Achieve Intersectional Racial Justice Praxis

Kirsten Hextrum, Siduri Haslerig — Fri, 19 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0500