A federal judge’s ruling earlier today in a Title IX lawsuit against Quinnipiac University has focused considerable attention on the question of whether cheerleading should be considered a sport.
District Judge Stefan Underhill said the private Connecticut university violated Title IX by shortchanging female students of athletic opportunities. One way the university did this, Judge Underhill said, was by counting members of a newly created competitive cheer team as athletes for purposes of complying with the federal gender-equity law.
The NCAA doesn’t recognize cheerleading as a sport, and neither does the Office for Civil Rights, the federal agency charged with enforcing Title IX. In Quinnipiac’s case, the judge agreed: Legally speaking, cheerleading is not a sport.
It’s worth noting, though, that he took care to point out—at several points throughout the 95-page opinion—that this could change.
“Competitive cheer may, some time in the future, qualify as a sport under Title IX,” Judge Underhill wrote. “Today, however, the activity is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation opportunities for students.”
At Quinnipiac, members of the competitive cheer squad had all the trappings of a “normal” sports team: They received athletic scholarships, had coaches who reported to the athletic director, and focused on skills and conditioning at their practices. They even voted on a most-valuable-player award at the end of the season.
But all too often the team was lacking in qualified opponents. Instead, it competed against club, not varsity, teams from other colleges and even squared off against high-school squads—hardly a standard practice among varsity teams at Division I institutions like Quinnipiac.
Thursday’s lengthy court ruling, though, provides a road map of sorts for elevating cheerleading to the status of what the judge called a “legitimate varsity sport”—should it wish to go there.
This includes, among other things, creating a championship based on teams’ success during the regular season. It also means growing and standardizing the pool of competitors so that varsity cheer teams like Quinnipiac’s do not face what the judge called “a motley assortment” of competitors.
“Whom a team plays against, how often the team plays, under what conditions competitions are held, and how a champion is ultimately selected are all essential to the varsity experience,” he wrote.
So what’s next for competitive cheer? Will it become the next bowling or sand volleyball, both of which raised eyebrows when first mentioned as potential varsity sports? We know that emerging sports for women have hardly been without controversy, as the recent uproar over sand volleyball illustrates.
It will be interesting to see what happens now that this court ruling lays out some of the details. For now, though, Judge Underhill has made clear that his quibbles with cheerleading are far more structural than ideological.
“I take seriously that the competitive cheer members consider themselves to be athletes,” he wrote, “and not entertainers.”
20 Responses to Is Cheerleading a Sport?
dandelventhal - July 22, 2010 at 6:45 am
I have observed at the highschool level that cheerleading is not only a sport, but its more dangerous and rigorous at times than football. With a mix of jumping, dance coreography, gymnastics, synchronization, cheer, attitude, lifting, “flying” etc., it always amazes me to see them treated as step children in terms of the sports programs and budgets.
jonesie - July 22, 2010 at 6:50 am
It looks like competitive cheer and mens golf are the losers here as not being sports.
tribblek - July 22, 2010 at 8:00 am
I agree that modern cheerleading is highly athletic, compared to what cheerleaders did when I was in high school. However, competition — not athleticism — defines what is sporting. And cheerleading’s original purpose was not competition, but to lead the crowd of sports spectators in cheers, helping to enhance the experience and motivate their atheletes to higher levels of performance (as a side benefit, they are usually excellent examples of fitness and beauty… and therefore a good source of eye candy).I think it would be fine for cheeleading to become a recognized sport. But if they do, I hope they will continue to put their original purpose ahead of their own sporting competitions. Or, at least, let’s have two sets of cheerleaders: competition cheerleaders and traditional cheerleaders.
chrisr - July 22, 2010 at 8:42 am
The history of Title IX is classic Marxism. Few would disagree that young women should have equal opportunity in participating in high school or college athletics. However, the fact remains that particpation rates have always been historically higher for males. Secondly, many athletic programs receive ALL of their funding through gate receipts. For some, men’s football, men’s basketball and men’s hockey foots the entire bill for the entire athletic program. To date, no women’s sports program covers its own cost, not even women’s basketball. When Title IX first mandated equal access of facilities, who would argue? Then Title IX decided there must be equal number of sports teams. So schools such as the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and dozens of others were forced to cut their men’s baseball teams. Men’s wrestling programs across the country were also gutted. “Equality” then devolved to mean “equal outcomes” translated into “roster parity,” i.e., the men’s and women’s programs had to have equal number of participants. The fact is that football programs have ususally about 100 participants with nothing even close in women’s sports. So schools initiated women’s sports programs overnight scholarshipping novice young female athletes who had talent maybe slightly above intramural sports. Title IX was and is not only a misguided executive order, it destroyed the possibility for many young men in playing collegiate baseball and wrestling. Perhaps, the change should be each program pays its own way- that would be equal, would it not?
physicsprof - July 22, 2010 at 9:41 am
#4, perhaps Title IX’s effects could also be traced to their share of the increased costs of education nationwide.
nyhist - July 22, 2010 at 9:50 am
Title IX is not an executive order but part of a law passed by Congress. Why does football need 100 players? Why can’t men play both offense & defense as they once did?The reason that wrestling (and other men’s) teams suffered was not Title IX itself but rather the ways colleges responded to it esp. their desire to save football. Nothing in any interpretation of Title IX requires men’s sports to be cut to make room for women’s sports.And why have women ‘historically’ had lower sports participation? Discrimination. When I was in HS and college (back in pre Title IX days) there were NO women’s teams. I loved to play basketball (even 6 a side and half court women’s b’ball as it was then) and had no opportunity to compete against any teams other than those from my own HS. I also was pretty good at volleyball because I was tall. No competition except against other teams from my HS, same story.Title IX is a wonderful piece of legislation. I love today having female athletes in my courses. I love watching the women’s NCAA competitions.
masttg - July 22, 2010 at 10:45 am
Nyhist- Title IX is not that different than an unfunded mandate. It requires schools to provide more athletic opportunities without more money. Something had to go and that something was men’s sports with little financial or alumni support.Football player don’t play offense and defense for the same reason barbers are no longer dentists. Specialization leads to increased skill proficiency and, in this case, increased competition.
pollaeti - July 22, 2010 at 10:47 am
T
rhancuff - July 22, 2010 at 11:25 am
#4, your discussion of Title IX as classic Marxism lacks any sort of economic analysis to show that it’s Marxism. The closest you get is in noting that in some athletically elite schools a standout program such as football may pay for all other athletic programs, but that happens with or without Title IX.
fcslchron - July 22, 2010 at 11:29 am
Yes, how could they?! Women getting sports scholarships!!! The nerve, the audacity, the pushy, b—-y, grabby broads will never be satified. And they don’t even make money for the school. How unfair can it get? Gad! All you he-men out there, don’t give up. Keep protesting and maybe one day you’ll succeed in going back to the good old days, stripping everything down to the good ‘ol meat and potatoes of the profits from men’s football and men’s basketball. And to hell with anyone else. Amen, “brothers.”
physicsprof - July 22, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Grow up, fcslchron. People discussing or (how dare!) criticizing particular aspects of education (or even society in general) are not always driven by sexism/racism/etc. No need to impoverish your cognitive abilities by short-circuiting them.
quicksilver - July 22, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Ha! How entertaining this malay is. I for one am glad that more of my tax dollars will not be thrown into the pool of scholarships that fund these students, many of whom are as academically “capable” as those they are so ironically cheering on.
11159995 - July 22, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Maybe it will take the imprimatur of the Olympics to make cheerleading a sport eventually, as it did with water ballet (also called synchronized swimming), in 1982, with which it shares some similarities, as a group activity related to another recognized sport where athletes compete mainly as individuals (in cheerleading’s case, gymnastics).—Sandy Thatcher
goxewu - July 22, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Cheerleading is an ancillary activity to football and basketball that TV hyped into a “sport.” So how about competitive costume-designing for college cheerleaders on, say, Bravo, being hyped into being a “sport”? Then fundraising for college cheerleading costumes as a “sport” on CNBC. Then catering for college cheerleading’s fundraisers as a “sport” on the Food Channel? Then, at the ag schools, how about competitive raising the food for catering for fundraisers for costume designers for college cheerleading being hyped as a “sport” on the Discovery Channel?Questions: If a school drops football, will its cheerleading squad still compete as a “sport”? If college cheerleading gets big-time, will competitive cheerleading squads themselves have cheerleading squads? What about competitive eating, as in that hot-dog-eating contest every year at Coney Island? (The Big Ten could feature kielbasa, the Pac-10′s southern division chimichangas and its northern division organic salads, the SEC sausage and grits.)Somebody once said in order for something to be a real sport, it had to involve a ball, a race, or a fight. I’m a little permissive than that, but I generally exclude as a “sport” anything that is done to music or involves having to smile.
quicksilver - July 22, 2010 at 2:54 pm
gozewu: OMG, you are like soooooo right Yaaaay!
providencepocket - July 22, 2010 at 2:57 pm
While cheerleading did originate as an activity in support of male sports, it has evolved into an athletic, competitive, gymnastic sport. Cheerleading attempts to keep its roots in generating spirit for athletics teams, yet most competitive squads spend the majority of their practice time tumbling, learning and performing stunts, and dancing. That is part of its problem. Since many athletics directors aren’t willing to separate cheerleading as a sport from its roots as a spirit activity, competitive squads are trying to be both. Teams in the South have come much further than we in the Northeast have at developing the sport into what you see today on ESPN.My problem with this ruling is that it completely rejects the idea behind Title IX, which is, that MORE females should have the opportunity to participate in sports and experience the benefits of athletics funding, not fewer. Denying cheerleaders the opportunity to participate on the level of other sports is a sexist decision that keeps cheerleaders (now likely coed) “in their place” in a dated image of smiling ponytails, rather than acknowledging the athletes they have become. If the development of the sport is “uneven,” why not give them the funding and the opportunity to travel to regional and national competitions and improve the competitive level of their teams? I thought that was the whole point of Title IX; to encourage women’s sports and offer college athletes chances to learn the valuable life lessons that being part of a competitive team teaches you.
jrod643 - July 22, 2010 at 2:58 pm
To the article… Sport according to the Oxford English Dictionary – an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. this definition says nothing about the entertainment of others but the entertainment of the individuals playing the sport. The entertainment of others is a by product not the purpose. Cheerleading’s purpose is to entertain others and the entertainment of the individuals participating is a by product. To cheerleaders honestly get together in a gym and cheer for fun? No they’d probably pick up a basketball and start playing a sport. I agree that these young ladies athletic. In fact in most cases they are extremely athletic, and could put a lot of men in there place. However, the fact remains that the outlet they choose to exercise their athleticism is not a sport but entertainment. Should the NCAA recognize this as a sport then they would also have to recognize the likes of Actors, marching bands, and other entertainment activities as well, and in fact every single activity that puts its participants through rigorous and sometimes extreme physical conditioning. “By the way talk to the next actor you find to see if they work out like beasts or not”. I also agree that Title IX does have a slew of marxism throughout it. But can also understand that it’s not the fault of the young lady’s who want to compete. Unfortunately, sports, like the military, will always be a male dominated world and women’s sports will never be looked at in the same perspective as men’s. Some may say it’s nature. Men have been competing in athletic events for thousands of years. Some may call it beougeois, nothing more than a product of our society. At any rate. Simply ask yourself what you’d rather watch. A WNBA game that moves slow even by a baseball player’s standards? Or a men’s college basketball game? The point I make is simply that there’s a reason why men’s sports are more successful and instead of trying to bunch all of the categories of competition under Title IX we should, in fact, differentiate levels of athletic competition between men and women. Indeed there should be seperate standards for both the genders to allow women to compete at there highest level possible and to allow men to do the same. Under the current system both are hindered. Call me sexist but there are certian inherent differences in the athletic ability of men and women and I believe it should be celebrated and governed justly and not swept under the rug to try and keep people from complaining.
jthelin - July 22, 2010 at 10:20 pm
my response to chrisr who wrote in comment no 4:”Secondly, many athletic programs receive ALL of their funding through gate receipts. For some, men’s football, men’s basketball and men’s hockey foots the entire bill for the entire athletic program. To date, no women’s sports program covers its own cost, not even women’s basketball.”chrisr, I think your information is wrong. Few if any athletic programs receive ALL their funding from gate receipts. Most Division IA NCAA football programs cannot even pay for their own program, let alone the entire athletic program (including women’s sports). Those football programs that are self supporting or even show a surplus (to give to other sports) rely heavily on television broadcasts, royalties, donations – all sources other than gate receipts. By the way, why is it acceptable for men’s sports, including so called revenue producing sports such as football and basketball, to receive subsidies from the college or university — but, evidently, it’s an outrage if women’s varsity sports receive a comparable subsidy?Final historic note: the justification for building large football stadia after World War I was the argument by football coaches that such a large seating capacity and ticket sales would, indeed, provide resources for all varsity sports.
willismg - July 23, 2010 at 8:08 am
In my opinion, anything that involves choreography for aesthetic effect, and subjective scoring of same, rather than active adaptation to the efforts of an opponent isn’t a sport. For example, professional wrestling involves a great deal of athleticism, but is not a sport since the moves and the outcome are more or less a forgone conclusion. Ditto such things as gymnastics, diving, etc.
csgirl - July 23, 2010 at 8:54 am
The schools are latching onto cheerleading because they think it will help save their football programs. What I don’t get is why football teams have to be so huge. That is where the imbalance lies. Instead of framing the conflict as “Title IX is requiring us to cut men’s (lacrosse, volleyball, gymnastics)”, instead, we should think of the conflict as “Our need to have a huge men’s football team is requiring us to cut other men’s programs”.I am old enough to remember the days before Title IX. It has made such a dramatic difference for women. When I was kid, girls did not play sports. We had no teams, no opportunities, and no encouragement. Now, all the little girls play. I think the fact that there are ample opportunities for girls at the high school and college level serves to encourage families to sign their daughters up when they are little.