Apparently, in Florida, Flag Football has appeared as a competitive, varsity girl's highschool sport, with five thousand girls playing statewide on 75 teams. One would think that "women's sports experts" would applaud the fact that schools are providing another avenue for students to exercise and bridge one of the few remaining gender divides in sports.
Not so.
Various "experts" quoted in the Times article believe that flag football shouldn't count as a girl's sport under Title IX because there's no opportunity to play in college:
No one is saying flag football isn’t a great sport to play,” said Neena Chaudhry, the senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, which has brought several cases against high schools alleging violations of Title IX, the federal law mandating gender equity in education. “But I do think it’s relevant to ask questions about whether girls are getting the same kind of educational opportunities as boys.”
...
Ms. Hogshead-Makar, who also serves as the senior director for advocacy at the Women’s Sports Foundation, said girls missed the educational benefits if they did not take a sport seriously.
“That’s one of the things that makes sports such an important experience,” she said. “You’re always striving to get to that next rung.”
Ms. Hogshead-Makar said flag football’s time should be up. “We’ve had 10 years of girls who have not been given other sports opportunities,” she said.
This is ridiculous. High school sports aren't funded as part of some kind of NCAA farm league. An NCAA study found that only about 5-10% of high school athletes go on to play sports in college. The vast majority of high schoolers that play sports do it for the exercise, the cameraderie, and because they like the game - not because it's a path to a scholarship or because they're "striving to get to that next rung."
While it doesn't have a college level for elite athletes, there are tons of recreational flag and touch football leagues around the country. I play on one in New York, a co-ed league that has nearly 100 teams and sells out every season. That may not be of interest to sports experts, who are probably elite athletes (Hogshead-Makar is a 3 time Olympic medalist in swimming), but for the 90-95% of high school athletes who don't go on to play college sports, flag football is just as good as any other sport.
I understand the concern that schools might be trying to weasel out of the Title IX requirement that they spend money equally on boys and girls sports, but, judging by the article, Florida flag football seems to be a totally bona fide sport - they've got real teams, practices, coaches, statewide playoffs. The complaint here, that Florida doesn't have any varsity boys sports that don't have an NCAA equivalent, is pretty meaningless.
Trying to scuttle a popular program that has kids off the couch, exercising and learning skills that they can use in rec leagues and with their families for the rest of their lives in order to pick a fight about non-existent discrimination is worse than pointless because it undermines attempte to fight real discrimination.
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