Invisible Seasons: Title IX and the Fight for Equity in College Sports

In 1979, a group of women athletes at Michigan State University, their civil rights attorney, the institution's Title IX coordinator, and a close circle of college students used the law to confront a powerful institution--their own university. By the mid-1970s, opposition from the NCAA had made intercollegiate athletics the most controversial part of Title IX, the 1972 federal law prohibiting discrimi nation in all federally funded education programs and activities. At the same time, some of the most motivated, highly skilled women athletes in colleges and universities could no longer tolerate the long-standing differences between men's and women's separate but obviously unequal sports programs.

In Invisible Seasons, Belanger recalls the remarkable story of how the MSU women athletes helped change the landscape of higher education athletics. They learned the hard way that even groundbreaking civil rights laws are not self-executing. This behind-the-scenes look at a university sports program challenges us all to think about what it really means to put equality into practice, especially in the money-driven world of college sports.

Author: Kelly Belanger
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 01/03/2017
Pages: 504
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.47lbs
Size: 9.15h x 6.15w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9780815634706

Review Citation(s):
Choice 08/01/2017

About the Author
Kelly Belanger is a professor in the English Department at Valparaiso University. She is the coauthor of Second Shift: Teaching Writing to Working Adults.