As women's collegiate and prep athletics celebrate 50 years of the positive impact of Title IX on sports from badminton to basketball, I wonder if the media have done enough to level the playing field between coverage of both genders.
 
Given that the emphasis on covering women and their games began lightyears behind the start of men's coverage, it's understandable that there had been a chasm between the two when it comes to ink or air time.
 
But one might expect, after 50 years, that the media would have done more in leveling this playing field, wouldn't one?
 
I spent most of the past 55 years in newsrooms before I "re-retired" a little more than a year ago.
 
My understanding of serious journalism started in the 1960s with menial jobs in the newsrooms of the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County (née Santa Ana) Register and the San Diego Union.
 
Since then, I have been the managing editor of four California dailies — each with an acute focus on community journalism.
 
Knowing the difference in the responsibilities to readers between The Times and my beloved Davis Enterprise (which I served in various capacities for more than 40 years), I've seen how the attention to women's athletics has evolved (or not).
 
Local newspapers have done a far better job covering women's and girls' sports than any metro publication. And the metros have done a far better job covering women's athletics than any broadcast or national media giant. (More about all this in a minute.)
 
When you start a long-distance race two laps behind your competitors, it takes a while to catch up. For women in athletics — even after 50 years of the Title IX federal mandate for equality — that race is still being run.
 
For women, the goal isn't necessarily victory. As far as opportunity and a fair shake in coverage are concerned, female athletes will settle for a tie or at least a podium appearance.
 
There's no argument that the number of women in organized sports has burgeoned in the past half-century. Opportunities are almost equal in California high schools and have been equitably provided at universities like UC Davis, Stanford and South Carolina. But distaff facilities, pay, equipment and budget remain sore subjects on many campuses from coast to coast.
 
When I arrived in Davis in the 1970s, UCD had seven varsity women's sports. It now has 16. Davis' enrollment has grown to 60 percent female, and Title IX mandates that athletic offerings reflect the student body numbers.
 
In 1975, Davis High was fielding just four Girls Athletic Association (GAA) teams, and interschool matchups were with whatever school was closest. Now, a majority of the 27 varsity sports at DHS — a regular provider of Aggie talent — are for girls, who regularly gain state and nationwide accolades.
 
So, if media coverage has kept up with the Mary Decker Slaneys, Annika Sorenstams and Simone Bileses of the world, women rule the airways of television and radio as they've jockeyed for co-star status in the media, right?
 
Not so fast.
 
Ten years ago, a University of Minnesota Tucker Center study concluded that merely 4 percent of overall television and print sports coverage was dedicated to women. This while 44 percent of NCAA athletes are women.
 
Recently, a Purdue/USC investigation reports that media exposure of women's sports remains "essentially the same" as it did 30 years ago.
 
"For a long time, the narrative around women's sports in the United States was one of wholesale, linear progress," reports Cheryl Cooky, a professor of interdisciplinary studies at Purdue University. "However, (our) research speaks holistically to the ways in which progress has not been universally linear. While some aspects have improved, deeply entrenched forms of inequality have kept other aspects from growing."
 
The Purdue/USC study puts current women's media coverage at 5.1 percent.
 
However, remove the 2019 Women's World Cup attention, and coverage of women's sports drops to 3.5 percent while the men are still boxing out with the remaining air time and print focus.
 
There has been, however, a break in the clouds …
 
In May, after six years of court battles, the U.S. Soccer Federation guaranteed that soccer players on the United States men's and women's national teams "will receive the same pay when competing in international matches and competitions," the New York Times reported.
 
How big a step forward is this agreement, which came with willing compromise from the national men's team?
 
Former U.S. Women's national team member Becky Sauerbrunn, who joined four teammates in signing the original complaint in 2016, told the N.Y. Times: "It's hard to get so, so excited about something we should have had all along." A Look Back at 'The End of Men's Sports'
 
In 1971, I was named sports editor of the 6,000-circulation Corona (CA) Daily Independent.
 
We had one sports page for two high schools and, despite our name, we didn't publish on weekends.
 
My daily routine was a rookie's dream come true: spend two or three hours in the mornings in the office, then, by 10 a.m., head out to play golf or hit the ponies at Santa Anita or Del Mar. Back by dinnertime, I'd either personally cover evening events or make my calls for local scores.
 
The Life of Riley. The football, basketball and baseball coaches loved me, and because we — by the editor's edict — "covered only boys' sports," my job was that much easier.
 
During the summer, there were no club sports to cover (just recreational softball). Rarely was there big news about local prep athletes playing at "the next level." Soccer wasn't in anybody's vocabulary yet.
 
But on June 23, 1972, Title IX was approved by the U.S. Congress. It didn't mean that girls at Corona and Norco high schools (or women at UC Riverside) would magically be placed on equal footing, but it was fair that someone was looking out for all student-athletes.
 
It was a couple of weeks after the signing of the addendum to the 14^th Amendment that a teaser on the front page of The Daily Independent heralded the new law:
 
"Girls Will Get Some Much-Needed Help."
 
In my brilliant column that day — appropriately named "Nicks, Bumps and Bruce's" — I enthusiastically supported the new ruling.
 
(Refresher course: Title IX declared, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."
 
Because it was summer, I had to fill our sports page somehow, and I decided to go extra-long on my column. I told the world (well, 6,000 subscribers) that the Girls Athletic Association prep sports would transcend.
 
• More sports for girls.
• Better leagues.
• Better equipment.
• More female coaches.
• Equal footing in administration.
• Eventually, women's sports would pop up on TV and be equal to the men in coverage.
 
(I was just being nice. I didn't really believe that last one.)
 
My support for Title IX was a departure for me at the small-town newspaper (Corona had a population of 26,000 at the time). After I had been writing about 86-year-old golfers and a guy who races pigeons, this skein drew attention.
 
The afternoon the column ran, I was at the finish line at Del Mar. When I got back to the office on that July evening, six message sheets and an envelope with a note inside were on my desk.
 
Most of the notes said, "Call 'so-and-so: Title IX." The principal of Norco High left a message that said, "It's the end of men's sports."
 
That one hurt because it was from Chet Nicholson. A friend.
 
A former Los Angeles Ram draft selection, a terrific guy who had my respect as a coach and administrator, hated what I had said.
 
When I called Nicholson back the next morning, I had already added a few more call-back notes to my pile. It seems that everyone in organized athletics saw me as a traitor.
 
Nicholson's primary concern was about the budget. He worried that if he provided enough money for not-yet-emerging girls' sports, he'd have to cut boys' programs to accommodate field hockey or soccer or …
 
Nicholson had nothing against girls' sports. He just didn't have enough money to support them, he thought.
 
"This could be the end of men's sports," he cautioned at the end of our conversation, still not convinced that promotion of Title IX in the newspaper was in the best interests of prep or college sports.
 
But Nicholson — like clever, enlightened administrators and coaches at schools like UC Davis already had — started living by the law. His Cougars became one of the Inland Empire's leaders in girls' sports.
 
Meanwhile, I doubled down on Title IX. As varsity girls' teams emerged, I provided coverage in The Daily Independent's sports section. Although not equal to the boys, the girls were at least being featured.
 
As readers (mostly parents of the girls who were playing) began asking for more coverage, I had a problem.
 
To accommodate those requests, I needed more space. One page wasn't enough. But in newspapers, more pages means more cost.
 
The solution? My publisher supported my request for more space, but warned, "this new direction better be good" as he urged his staff to sell more sports-related advertising.
 
Simultaneously, school fundraisers became more and more important in propping up their new girls' programs.
 
Together, The Daily Independent and area schools found a way to make it work. The more our readers were exposed to girls' sports, the more interested people became.
 
Attendance increased with this rising interest, and awareness in the business community made fundraising easier.
 
Now in Davis for more than 40 years, I have been proud to be associated with this community's commitment to equality in all walks of life. The skids were greased for me to support equality in sports coverage. The dedication that dozens of former employees brought to the newsroom ensured that deserving female athletes got their fair share of the spotlight.
 
And I've always admired how UC Davis has been ahead of the curve when it comes providing equitable opportunities for female student-athletes. So many championships. So many elite competitors thanks to brilliant coaching staffs.
 
And the accomplishments by girls at Davis High — they've won the most Sac-Joaquin Section titles by any school — prove there has always been something in that Putah Creek water.
 
Together, the growth of girls' (or women's) sports and media support can be self-fulfilling prophecies.
 
But in general, the media apparently have not caught up yet — harken back to the Purdue/USC findings that coverage of women's athletics hasn't changed in 30 years.


NOTE: In the final Title IX installment by longtime local journalist Bruce Gallaudet, UC Davis Athletic Director Rocko DeLuca joins other Aggie administrators and coaches, past and present, in talking about the future of college women's sports.