The Iowa State Women’s Basketball team played their first game at Hilton Coliseum on Dec. 1, 1976. Previously, the team played all of their home games at Forker Building.
Despite the Iowa State Athletic Department requiring the women to sell their own tickets, an estimated crowd of 1,500 people attended Hilton Coliseum for the team’s matchup against Drake. During this game, some spectators did not take the game seriously.
“It’s sad that now you look back and the event was treated like a sideshow,” Mike Green, the Iowa State Letterwinners director, said. “You go back and read articles from the 70s and you really are appalled by how the women were treated.”
Although the event was scrutinized in the media, Green said the game set a precedent for what the future of Iowa State Athletics would look like.
“It was kind of a first step for the women to show that they weren’t going away,” Green said. “Even though it took a little longer before it fully happened, it showed that women’s athletics should be treated on equal footing as the men.”
The first women’s basketball game at Hilton Coliseum became a reality courtesy of Title IX. The law, signed in 1972, prohibits sex-based discrimination in publicly funded education programs and activities. In recent years, collegiate athletes started to receive payments for their name, image and likeness. Before leaving office, the Biden administration released a nine-page guidance saying NIL payments must be proportionate between male and female athletes in order to comply with Title IX. The Trump administration rescinded the documents Feb. 12.
Shamaree Brown, the Iowa State senior associate athletic director for student services, said revoking the proportionate pay clause of Title IX could result in significant changes to the athletic department.
“Title IX has been instrumental in ensuring gender equity in sports, including equitable athletic opportunity and resources between male and female athletes,” Brown said. “So, if we played out a worst-case scenario, without this clause, there could be a disparity in funding, facilities and opportunities between men and women’s sports programs.”
Brown said that discrepancies in funding between male and female athletes could impose severe consequences for the future of Iowa State sports.
“This could potentially lead to a decrease in participation and support for women’s athletics, affecting the broad-based approach of our athletic department,” Brown said.
The fight against certain parts of Title IX is nothing new. Although Title IX became law in 1972, Green said that Iowa State did not comply with the law until 1979, when the men’s and women’s athletic departments merged.
“In 1979, schools realized that they had to start complying with Title IX, otherwise, they would lose their state funding,” Green said. “Begrudgingly, the Iowa State Athletic Department, and it’s really sad to say it like this, had to take on the women.”
Green said the implementation of NIL and an upcoming House settlement that, if passed, would award schools roughly $20 million and profoundly impact the equal pay aspect of Title IX.
“If you want to pay a stud quarterback $1 million and there’s a law that says you have to do the same for women, that will drastically change things for everybody,” Green said.
Despite expressing concern over the future of Title IX, Brown stated that the athletic department will commit to the best interests of Iowa State student-athletes.
“Jamie Pollard and our campus leadership have made it a priority to ensure that we are in compliance with Title IX, and that we deliver an equitable athletics experience for all of our student-athletes,” Brown said.
