Here is the presentation that accompanied the lecture on amateurism and women in collegiate athletics

1. Amateurs No More
JRN 589 / 450
Amateurism & Women’s Collegiate Athletics
Prof. Hanley

2. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
While the NCAA struggled with
the definition of amateurism amid
the commercial nature of
collegiate sports, the American
Alliance for Health, Physical
Education, and Recreation’s
Division for Girls and Women’s
Sport (DGWS) moved decisively to
“resanctify intercollegiate
athletics” as March L. Krotee
wrote in a 1981 paper.

3. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
“… they did not want to follow the
men’s athletic trails or reach the
men’s athletic summit,” wrote
Joan S. Hult in her 1999 study of
the rise of women’s sports from
the 1950s to the 1990s.

4. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
Women’s intercollegiate sports
were limited to more recreational
rather than intercollegiate
contests for the first half of the
20th century, but groups such as
the DGWS had worked with the
AAU and the U.S. Olympic
Committee to support and
promote elite-level competitions
in women’s sports.

5. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
The Commission for
Intercollegiate Athletics for
Women (CIAW), an umbrella
group for several different
organizations that oversaw
women’s sports, held
championships in seven different
sports each year between 1965
and 1971.

6. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
In 1969, CIAW commissioners
voted to form the Association of
Intercollegiate Athletics for
Women (AIAW).
Unlike the NCAA, the AIAW would
be directly linked to the
educational mission of schools
through the American Alliance for
Health, Physical Education, and
Recreation (AAHPER), which, in
turn, was part of the National
Education Association.

7. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
“With links to the National
Education Association (NEA)
through AAHPER, the AIAW was,
and remains, the only national
intercollegiate sport-governing
body born out of an educational
association,” wrote Hult in her
“NAGWS and AIAW: The Strange
and Wondrous Journey to the
Athletic Summit, 1950–1990”
study.

8. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
The AIAW formulated uniform
rules and regulations regarding
the structure of sports, eligibility
and financial aid.
The alignment between women’s
sports and the educational
mission became evident in the
AIWA’s opposition to full-ride
scholarships for athletes.

9. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
“One must remember that the
AIAW leaders were educators first,
and they were trying to develop a
very different model to govern
athletics,” wrote Leotus Morrison,
a former AIAW president about
the founding of the organization.

10. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
That model differed sharply from
the NCAA’s commercial-based
enterprise.
Legal scholar Ellen J. Staurowsky
concluded that the AIAW wanted
to avoid the commercialization of
women’s sports to remain clear of
legal tangles over the definition of
amateurism.

11. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
“According to the worldview of
the AIAW, shaped as it had been
by watching the evolution of
men’s athletics over time,
sacrificing the health and well-
being of female students to a fan-
driven, commercial-seeking
enterprise was anathema to the
idea of an educational-based
college sport system,” she wrote
in a 2012 law review article.

12. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
Staurowsky added: “It was a
model above all else that sought
to prevent female students from
being treated as pawns in the
pursuit of victory for victory’s sake
in a way that would alienate them
from the rest of the student
body.”

13. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
That meant scholarships for
athletic merit per the NCAA model
would be perceived as “a
corrupting influence that distorted
relationships between students,
their coaches, and their
institutions.”

14. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
Former AIAW president, Bonnie
Slatton of the University of Iowa,
staunchly defended the rights of
students for the “freedom of
education” that would be
undermined by restrictions
imposed by collegiate athletic
authorities.

15. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
Compared to the NCAA’s ever-
growing prescriptive rules and
surveillance of athletes, the
AIAW’s approach amounted to a
full-blown athletics spring.
Off-campus recruiting was
banned, transfer rules were more
favorable to the athlete and
athlete representatives had a
voice in policy issues and a right to
vote.

16. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
Scholarships based solely on
athletic merit were effectively
banned by prohibiting students
who received free rides from
competing in AIAW
championships.

17. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
On July 1, 1972, the AIAW
officially became the organizing
group for women’s intercollegiate
athletics.
But it’s move toward creating an
alternative model to the NCAA
would be brief.

18. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
On June 23, 1972, the U.S.
Congress passed the Title IX of the
Education Amendments Act, a
federal law that AIAW vigorously
supported and helped to write.
It banned gender-based
discrimination in schools that
received federal aid (such as
federally backed student loans).

19. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
As Staurowsky pointed out in her
law review article, “the AIAW’s
model of college sport for women
would be challenged on several
fronts, starting with the rule
barring athletic scholarships” in
the aftermath of Title IX’s passage.

20. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
In January 1973, Fern Lee
Kellmeyer filed a lawsuit on behalf
of women tennis players
challenging the AIAW’s policy of
barring female athletes who
received athletic scholarships
from competing in AIAW
championships.

21. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
“Broadly conceived, the suit
alleged that the AIAW’s anti-
scholarship ban denied plaintiffs’
equal protection of the law under
the Fourteenth Amendment,
discriminated against them on the
basis of sex in an educational
setting receiving Federal financial
assistance under Title IX, and
violated their rights to equal
employment under Title VII,”
wrote Staurowsky.

22. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
The National Education
Association refused to support the
AIAW’s defense of the lawsuit, and
the group asked its member
institutions to vote on a proposal
to allow scholarships on the NCAA
model of full rides for athletic
merit.

23. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
Some 80 percent of AIAW
members voted in support of the
change, which effectively ended
the debate over whether women’s
sports could carve out its own
definition of amateurism.
Yet some expressed reservations
about the path they would now
follow.

24. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
“Do we want to move in the
direction this may lead,” asked
Roberta Howells of Western
Connecticut State College.
“Should we let the U.S. courts
define amateur and educational?”
Howells was ahead of her time.

25. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
The AIAW’s published interim
regulations for its members
regarding financial aid in April
1973.
“We wish it to be understood that
this practice is not recommended
but it is now permitted,” the AIAW
stated.

26. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
“ … AIAW leadership naively
believed that they could still
maintain AIAW’s educational focus
by controlling the non-scholarship
aspects of recruitment and
eligibility,” wrote Hult.

27. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
She added: “In retrospect,
however, scholarships forever
changed the terrain. Because of
the concept, male is the norm, in
Title IX, AIAW had to more nearly
mimic men’s rules and
regulations.”

28. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
The AIAW’s decision to permit
scholarships ended the debate on
whether college students could
receive pay – in the form of full
scholarships – for athletic merit.
Title IX opened vast opportunities
previously denied women in
collegiate sports who now could
receive scholarships equitable
with men under the law.

29. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
“And while the assumption
prevails that Title IX requires that
schools allocate stipends to
female and male athletes
equitably, the assumption is based
on a belief that athletic
scholarships have an inherent
educational purpose [as the AIAW
believed]. What if this is not,
however, the case,” asked
Staurowsky in the conclusion of
her legal analysis.

30. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
She added: “This time around,
college sport officials should be
asked to explain what the purpose
of an athletic scholarship is. If it is
pay for services rendered by
athletes in the college sport
enterprise of mass-media
spectacle, is a Title IX analysis
even relevant?”

31. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
At any rate, the AIAW’s decision to
permit scholarships ended the
debate on whether all college
students could receive pay – in
the form of full or partial
scholarships – for athletic merit.
The group’s desire to remain
separate from the football-
dominated NCAA would also
prove to be unsuccessful.

32. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
From 1906 to 1980, the NCAA
sponsored programs only for
men's intercollegiate athletics.

33. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
In January 1981, the Special
Committee on Governance of the
NCAA proposed to bring women’s
athletics into the organization.
The NCAA, ironically, had fought
against Title IX, but now sought
full control all except the smallest
of colleges participating in
intercollegiate sports.

34. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
The NCAA added women’s
athletics on January 13, 1981.
holding its first national
championships that November.
For the full 1981-82 sports
season, the NCAA introduced
twenty-nine women's
championships in twelve
sports.

35. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
The AIAW closed its doors on July
1, 1982, after NBC decided against
broadcasting AIAW championships
and sponsors such as Kodak
withdrew financial support.
The AIAW had 961 member
schools and conducted 41
national championships in 19
different sports with almost
100,000 athletes at its peak.

36. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
The organization unsuccessfully
sued the NCAA before it closed,
claiming that the NCAA used its
monopoly power over collegiate
athletics to muscle its way into
women’s sports.
The NCAA argued that its
affiliation with higher education
warranted special treatment
under the antitrust laws.

37. Amateurism & Women's Collegiate Athletics
The AIAW’s lasting influence goes
beyond its work on Title IX.
The organization played a key role
in 1978 when the U.S. Congress
passed an act seeking to define
amateurism to help the U.S.
secure the best athletes for the
Olympic Games.