By Jeremy Rosenberg
The panel discussion had concluded. The Annenberg Auditorium stage lights were down and outro music played.
As 10 minutes turned to 15 and then 25, sports broadcast journalist and USC Annenberg alumna Lindsay Rhodes Soto remained standing on the darkened – but energized – stage.
The NFL Network host, anchor and reporter candidly answered question after question from students who were clearly enthralled with Soto’s every word.
“I want to do exactly what you are doing,” said the first student to reach Soto. Variations on that ‘How do I get there?’ career theme were repeated by other students until the auditorium and even the dessert and coffee reception upstairs in the Annenberg East Lobby had all but cleared out.
Complex societal issues don’t often allow for a lone, simple interpretation and this Thursday night gathering was no exception.
Were all these students mobbing Soto because she is a woman, many of the students are women, and women still have obstacles to overcome to achieve true gender equality in all things athletic – from being recognized for playing sports to reporting on sports to running college athletic departments and professional sports teams?
Or were all these students mobbing Soto as they would any talented on-air school visitor – male or female? Is Soto a rare role model or one of many? And 40 years and counting after the passage of the groundbreaking gender rights federal legislation known as Title IX, are these and so many other related questions really still in need of asking?
Absolutely, said communication professor Daniel T. Durbin. Durbin is the director of the USC Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media & Society and the moderator of the discussion headlined by Soto and Donna Lopiano, “Title IX to 2013: Perspectives on Gender and Sports in the New Millennium.”
Durbin began the event by providing a brief background overview about Title IX to the overflow crowd. One commonly repeated narrative about Title IX is that it became law – “and forever after, equity reigned,” Durbin said. “Tonight,” Durbin said, “we’re here to challenge that narrative.”
Lopiano then proceeded to do just that. She is the former CEO of the Women’s Sports Foundation and the president and founder of Sports Management Resources. Fox Sports called Lopiano among the 10 most powerful women in sports. She also was a highly decorated amateur athlete.
Lopiano presented a slew of statistics that when taken together painted a sorry portrait for the state of women in sports. For example: Women make up 57 percent of America’s college students but 43 percent of the country’s college athletes. In high school, those numbers are 49 and 42.
Also, Lopiano said, only one in five college athletic directors are female. Six percent of newspaper sports section editors are women. Less than 2 percent of sports media coverage focuses on women. “We’re spending a billion dollars a year more on men’s sports than women sports,” Lopiano said, then added: “Women aren’t getting their fair shake.”
During the ensuing panel discussion, Lopiano shared with the audience her childhood dream – to be a pitcher for the New York Yankees. Lopiano recalled being the number one selection in her Little League draft.
Then, while she was standing in line to receive her uniform, a man walked over with a rulebook. “A very tall father,” Lopiano said, “came next to me and read four words that changed my life: ‘No girls are allowed.’”
Lopiano came of age during the pre-Title IX 1950s and 1960s. Rook Campbell grew up later. Campbell is a former professional cyclist and lectures at the USC Annenberg Center on Public Diplomacy. She was a special guest on the panel.
Campbell told the crowd that she’d attended the school thanks to a Title IX-related scholarship. Campbell said she too as a kid dreamed of playing for the Yankees. Unlike Lopiano, Campbell was allowed into Little League, although she was the only girl on her club. Just like Lopiano, however, Campbell was labeled a “tomboy.”
“I didn’t really understand the negative aspects of that as a kid at first,” Campbell said. “I just affirmed it.”
Campbell started out in crew before her work as a bike messenger led her to discover and develop the talent for cycling that led her to the professional European circuit.
While abroad, Campbell noticed that although television cameras and the necessary crew and other broadcasting infrastructure would be in place during the women’s portion of races, only the men’s portion would be broadcast.
As part of her scholarly researcher, Campbell returned to ask TV executives just why that was. Most of the decision makers were men, Campbell noted. “It’s a media issue at so many levels,” she said.
This observation was right at home with much of the rest of the evening’s discourse. Soto, for instance, talked about her experiences watching NBC’s Hannah Storm host NBA coverage and how Storm became her role model. Lopiano saluted Soto and Storm but said there weren’t enough such role models.
Soto talked about how when she was emerging in her profession, everyone from colleagues to people at parties would quiz her about sports as if to figure out if she really knew enough about the subject. Men holding similar jobs were not similarly doubted.
Given her expansive resume – which includes Olympics, baseball and hockey coverage as well as football – that no longer happens. Nor is Soto the sole female in her field. “I work with a lot of women,” she said. “I’m certainly still a minority, but I’m by no means the only woman in the office or the only woman in the locker room.”
On a larger scale, Durbin and the panel discussed institutional reasons why both women’s sports and the so-called “minor men’s sports” aren’t as televised and aren’t considered as popular as football and men’s basketball and the like.
This circuitous conundrum comes down in no small part to the huge rights fees that television outlets pay leagues. This, Lopiano said, causes the outlets to spend substantial airtime promoting those very games. Why? “To try to recoup these overpaid rights fees,” she said.
Lopiano pointed out that the viewing audience for the Olympics is sixty percent female. “Look what happens when a TV station wants to sell women’s sports,” she said, naming the Women’s World Cup as another example. “If you put women’s sports up there,” Lopiano said, “men and women will watch.”
“Title IX to 2013” was part of the Sports & Social Change Speakers Series, generously supported by Nike. The discussion served as the grand finale to the four-day, second annual, USC Conference on Sports.
This year’s theme was “Gender & Sports” and included six daytime panels and lectures that featured leading scholars from USC Annenberg, USC Dornsife, the University of Paris, Sorbonne, Nouvelle, and a host of other prestigious academic institutions.
For a complete list of the participants and titles in those events – which for example included one session focused on South African runner Caster Semenya and another on youth sports – click here.
At the end of the “Title IX to 2013” event, Durbin announced that next fall – likely in October – the Institute of Sports, Media & Society would convene a conference on LGBT issues in sports.
Photos
USC Conference on Sports: Gender and Sports
USC Annenberg Institute of Sports, Media & Society
