Keith Carter, University of Mississippi vice chancellor for intercollegiate athletics, Yolette “Coach Yo” McPhee-McCuin, women’s basketball head coach, Rita Igbokwe, a senior center on the women’s basketball team, and Rick Cleveland, renowned sports journalist, gathered at the Overby Center Tuesday, Sept. 13, for a panel discussion of Title IX and its impact on women’s sports at Ole Miss.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of federal Title IX legislation, which transformed sports across the country for female collegiate athletes.
“I was the sports editor at the Hattiesburg American when this passed,” Cleveland said. “The Department of Health, Education and Welfare sent somebody down to explain what Title IX meant, and the woman came in and she started out by saying, ‘What it basically means is whatever money is being spent on men’s athletics … you’re gonna have to spend that much on the women.’ And I remember muttering under my breath, ‘Well that’ll never happen.’”
Title IX has led to countless changes that have transformed the landscape of women’s sports, doing so through 37 powerful words:
“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
As a result of the legislation, the University of Mississippi now has nine women’s sports and seven men’s sports. The facilities for each sport are nearly identical for both men and women. The scholarships offered to female athletes are equal to that of male athletes.
“We want to make sure that our women’s sports have the same resources — they fly on the same planes, they have the same uniforms, they have the same tennis shoes,” Carter said. “All the things that the men have, we want to make sure the women have, too.”
Most have grown accustomed to providing women in sports with theies and resources as men same opportunit, but things weren’t always that way. In the audience was Beth Estes, head coach of the first women’s golf team at the University of Mississippi in the 1980s. She said facilities for female athletes at the university then were sorely lacking, even though the Title IX legislation had been passed a decade before.
“We were in the good ole’ broken down buses that the school had … the yellow buses that rattled all the way down the highway,” Estes said. “And I was the driver.”
Now, the Ole Miss women’s golf team are NCAA Champions, earning the University of Mississippi its first-ever official NCAA Championship trophy in 2021. But that same month, the world of college sports was shaken by a controversy on social media over athlete accommodations at March Madness. Pictures released on twitter showed the weight room provided for the women’s teams to be far inferior to the men’s.
“If I’m being honest, it’s still a fight all the time,” McPhee-McCuin said. “Not with the university, but the people. Because you can’t change people.”
McPhee-McCuin is the first Black head coach for women’s basketball at the University of Mississippi and has been named in The Athletic’s “40 Under 40.”
A Bahamas native, McPhee-McCuin shared that Title IX allowed her to receive scholarships in order to play college basketball in the United States.
Legislation can create changes for the better on a policy level, but it cannot directly change the attitude of the public. Often the greatest discrimination that female athletes face isn’t an institutional issue within the university or even from the male side of athletics.
In response to the unprecedented name, image and likeness policy, which now allows college athletes to profit off of the use of their name, Coach Yo tweeted, “Thank God for Title IX.”
She says the NIL legislation being put in place really put things into perspective for her. If it weren’t for Title IX, there would be no guarantee that any of the donations made to the athletic foundation would go towards women’s sports — just like there is no guarantee that female athletes will get NIL deals.
“Society still tries, when they can, to say women are lesser than,” McPhee-McCuin said.
But change, as always, is coming. Much of it has to do with the female athletes continuing to play despite the opinions of others — modeled by athletes like Serena Williams or Abby Wambach.
“I definitely think we are headed in the right direction,” Igbokwe said. “Because the most discrimination I’ve gone against has been from men telling me, ‘You can’t do that,’ when they know dang well they can’t do it either. … But now, my little brothers look up to me, ‘cause they know who ‘Big Dog’ is.”
Igbokwe also made a point to highlight the mutual understanding between men and women athletes.
“Other athletes know how much you work every day, day in and day out, and how much blood, sweat and tears actually goes into your one sport,” Igbokwe said.
In the 30 years since Keith Carter has been at Ole Miss as an athlete and an administrator, significant progress has been made. But he says there is change that still needs to happen.
“I think now it’s time to revisit (that equity) a little bit,” Carter said. “If we’re being equitable, then let’s give everybody a full ride and make sure that they have an opportunity. That’s gonna create so many opportunities for young people that they don’t have now.”
The answer isn’t giving women more than men or changing their respective sports. According to McPhee-McCuin, it’s important to have both — a women’s game and a men’s game.
“That’s what makes it beautiful,” she said. “I think if the women’s game was just like the men’s game, in any sport, why would you need a women’s game when you can just watch the men’s game? Although it’s the same sport, it’s played from different levels, different perspectives.”
Continuing to bring diverse perspectives, athletes and fans into the world of collegiate sports is the goal, something that couldn’t be achieved without the landmark legislation.
“We’ve come a long, long way in 50 years thanks to Title IX, and we’ve still got a ways to go,” Cleveland said. “But gosh — if we make as much progress over the next 50 years as we made this 50 years, maybe we’ll be there.”
