It's official (sort of) -- cheerleading is NOT a sport

BRING IT ON, said Quinnipiac University and its proposed cheerleading squad, without a hint of irony.  Well, it has been brought, and it's now official: cheerleading is not a sport.  Not for Title IX purposes, anyway, said U.S. District Judge Stefan Underhill in a 95-page opinion (!) released today in Bridgeport, Conn.

This development has generated a lot of news coverage, including local pubs such as the Hartford Courant and the Connecticut Post, as well as national outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, The Big Lead, and Jezebel.  And rightfully so.  The case deals with an important junction of law, sports, and women's rights.  (For those who don't know, Title IX is part of a 1973 federal law that prohibits gender discrimination in public educational programs.  Sports-wise, it is most often used to balance school spending on men's and women's sports.)

Here's the gist of the case.  In March 2009, Quinnipiac University decided to cut three sports teams: men's golf, men's outdoor track, and women's volleyball.  To remain in compliance with Title IX, Quinnipiac tried to replace women's volleyball with competitive cheerleading.  The ACLU (you were expecting someone else?) sued the school on behalf of 5 female volleyball players, arguing that Quinnipiac failed to provide equal opportunities for male and female athletes.  Judge Underhill determined that competitive cheerleading is not a collegiate sport for Title IX purposes.  Quinnipiac, therefore, is in violation of Title IX and now has 60 days to announce how it will comply with that law.  This amounts to a victory for the volleyball-playing plaintiffs (Underhill ordered the reinstatement of the women's volleyball team for the 2010-11 season) but a tears-inducing loss for cheerleaders.  As you can see, Kirsten Dunst is pissed.

Check out the two money quotes from Judge Underhill after the jump.


If there is such a thing as a legal smackdown -- and I believe there is -- you can't ask for much more than this.

Specifically, I hold that the University's competitive cheerleading team does not qualify as a varsity sport for the purposes of Title IX and, therefore, its members may not be counted as athletic participants under the statute.

 But wait...there's more!

Competitive cheer may, some time in the future, qualify as a sport under Title IX; today, however, the activity is still too underdeveloped and disorganized to be treated as offering genuine varsity athletic participation for students.

Nice.  As a law clerk for another federal judge in Connecticut, I have met Judge Underhill several times.  He is sharp, witty (not just for a judge), and extremely talented with the karaoke mic.  I think highly of him and wish I had taken his class at UConn Law.  But most of all, I am proud of this decision.  I think he arrived at the right outcome.  I don't know if he needed 95 pages to do it, but I'm glad he got there.

Look, Quinnipiac probably didn't mean to screw women over.  It had budgetary constraints -- what college doesn't these days? -- so it shut down some athletic teams.  Hey, my alma mater, Brandeis University, also tried to cut men's golf.  In doing so, Quinnipiac tried to comply with Title IX.  It replaced the women's volleyball team with competitive cheerleading, an activity that it tried to argue was a sport.  So was Quinnipiac's heart in the right place?  Did it want to abide by Title IX?  Absolutely.

But at the end of the day, it comes down to the same barroom argument -- is cheerleading a true sport?  If you're ESPN, the answer is yes, since it lists cheerleading along with the other "sports" that it broadcasts, such as billiards and fishing.  If you're mostly everyone else (cheerleaders excluded) the answer is no.  Some people argue it's not physically rigorous enough to be lumped in with basketball, football, and the other traditional sports.  I think that's a ridiculous argument.  For whatever reason, people don't seem to understand or appreciate this, but cheerleading (like auto racing and water polo) is extremely grueling, no matter how subtle the participant's efforts may appear.  Others detractors argue that cheerleading doesn't have enough rules, or that it's simply a recreational activity and not a sport.  Holes can be poked in all of these arguments.

I think Judge Underhill nailed it by taking a completely different approach.  He focused on cheerleading's lack of organization.  He didn't care whether cheerleading is physically demanding.  He didn't care how many hours the cheerleaders practice, or how much skill is involved in each routine.  All he cared about was how organized this purported sport is.  (Information about cheerleading's organization -- or lack thereof -- can be found in pages 29-43 of the opinion.)

The nitty gritty is that OCR (the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Dept. of Education) is responsible for enforcing Title IX.  When determining whether a team is engaging in a varsity sport, OCR will consider "several factors related to an activity's structure, administration, team preparation, and competition."  In other words, the relevant inquiry amounts to a totality of the circumstances test.  All of the relevant factors are listed in pages 49-52 of the opinion.  Despite the extremely broad nature of OCR's test, I think Quinnipiac's biggest problem is that the NCAA -- which governs every other sport at Quinnipiac -- does not recognize competitive cheerleading as a sport.  (Neither does the Dept. of Education, for that matter.)

Bottom line?  This was no snap judgment.  Judge Underhill spent 95 pages exhaustively analyzing the ins and outs of collegiate-level cheerleading.  He simply found that the cheerleading lacks a proper organizational foundation.  And I think that's the right call in this sensitive situation.  Sorry, cheer fans.  There's always women's volleyball.

By the way, if you have the stamina for this whopper of a decision, here it is:

Biediger et al v. Quinnipiac Univ.