There is March Madness, and then there are some things to get mad about in March.  

Mad as in frustrated. 

Texas and Indiana are miles apart—as were the facilities (and the swag bags!) provided by the NCAA to those college athletes competing in their national basketball championship.

Title IX was enacted in 1972. It stated that “[n]o person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” 

Seems a decent weight room is somehow exempt from the “benefits of” when referring to a women’s program. The NCAA was forced to apologize last Friday when Sedona Price of the University of Oregon Women’s Basketball team posted pictures of the simple dumbbell set representing ALL of the workout equipment afforded the women’s team at the NCAA Tournament, while the men’s teams had vast facilities, with a myriad of machines and weights. 

These benefits have certainly been denied the women of college sports. 

This Women’s History Month let’s not confuse the rules with the reality. Saying someone is equal does not make them so. Enacting a law stating discrimination is wrong, does not eliminate it. Let’s be more demanding, like Sedona Price, about real equality that lives up to the law’s intent. Sedona might wear a different uniform than the Suffragettes, but 100 years later, she used a different platform to make sure that the voices of female athletes were heard.