Today’s guest columnists are professors John Cairney and Rick Burton.

As the 2025-26 NCAA sports calendar officially closed (with SEC powerhouses Oklahoma and Texas claiming championships in baseball and softball respectively), and with another anniversary (No. 54) of Title IX just passed, a familiar question resurfaces: Will financial proportionality in college sport ever improve?

Evidence of the gender-equity challenges still embedded within college sport can be found in an October 2025 study published in the Journal of Sport Management. After comparing spending on men’s and women’s basketball programs, Adrian Simion and colleagues characterized the results as showing “a regression in Title IX compliance” and concluded that “this inequality persists.”

In fact, the authors concluded, “women’s programs receive significantly and substantially less program financial expense support in terms of program lagged revenue-contingent funding.”

This, of course, isn’t unknown to major college presidents, and it is not what stressed university athletic directors want to hear. Especially at a time when politicians are trying to create legislation designed to “save college sports” (something the Big Ten and SEC have yet to endorse). And super-especially as incremental costs for fielding competitive Power Four teams skyrocket in the age of the annual House settlement payments and pay-for-play schemes.

How is an athletic director supposed to invest more heavily in women’s sports when football and men’s basketball command escalating player payrolls, and national championship coaches of successful non-revenue sports, from lacrosse and softball to volleyball and soccer, are also seeking larger budgets and more money for top athletes?

If we were to listen to an amalgamation of imaginary major college athletic directors, we’d surely hear: “You want more for women’s sports? First, let me find $21.3 million for the projected House cap increase. Then, I need to sign a patch deal, re-leverage my multimedia rights (MMR) and get our collective to fund a last minute $3 million package for a running back or point guard.”

In other words, Title IX is likely pretty low on the to-do list.

So, what is Title IX as we approach 2027? Experts in this space generally point to a traditional “Three-Part” explanation as a Title IX starting point (referenced by Simion, et al). It requires schools to achieve at least one of the following:

1) Test One: The mathematically safest test is proportionality: keeping the share of male and female student-athletes roughly aligned, usually within two percentage points, with full-time undergraduate enrollment. That is becoming harder for large universities, many of which now enroll substantially more women than men, in some cases approaching a 60–40 female-to-male split.

2) Test Two: The second test is female sport program expansion. Rather than achieving immediate proportionality, schools received credit for demonstrating a history of creating new opportunities for women. For years, that logic helped fuel the growth of sports such as women’s wrestling, beach volleyball, crew, equestrian, ice hockey and stunt, partially offsetting the roster advantages inherent in football. Adding teams previously provided institutions with a practical path toward Title IX compliance, but that strategy has played out. The participation gap created by existing men’s rosters and shifting campus demographics has become too large for incremental expansion alone to close.

3) Test Three: Accommodating interests and abilities. The least used of the three, this third leg of the proverbial stool involves the school indicating there is no unmet need by its underrepresented gender involving interest or ability. In other words, in regions like the Deep South, there are few female students clamoring to play ice hockey.

Leaving out a discussion on annual scholarship provisions (i.e., scholarship balancing), the three metrics above provide a very truncated view of Title IX proportionality. But those very tests efficiently obscure a longstanding imbalance: The largest Title IX inequality now resides in athletic department financial support. Simion and his co-authors make that clear.

What they don’t cover is a recent form of Title IX masking provided by NCAA female athletes leveraging NIL endorsements while simultaneously creating significant social media presences. Given their success, some NCAA observers might imagine Title IX is alive and well thanks to the work of female athletes like LSU’s Livvy Dunne or Flau’jae Johnson, UConn’s Paige Bueckers or University of Miami (and before that Fresno State) twins Haley and Hanna Cavinder.

As Dave Meluni, a Syracuse University professor specializing in NIL notes: “Female collegiate athletes aren’t just participating in the social media conversation—they’re leading it. With women’s basketball, softball, volleyball and gymnastics dominating engagement, today’s female athletes are proving performance, authentic storytelling and powerful personal brands create unmatched connections with fans.”

Meluni didn’t stop there. “Engagement—not just follower count—is the true measure of impact and female NCAA athletes are proving they can outperform the men while growing their game and driving value for brands,” he wrote. “To be honest, the future of sports influence is being shaped by women.”

In the end, this column isn’t likely to change funding levels for women’s sports at the biggest schools in Division I, but Simion’s work reminds scholars and egalitarians that future work must “address variation[s] in financial support-based Title IX (non) compliance.”

The real challenge for athletic directors is no longer understanding Title IX. It’s deciding where gender equity sits on a priority list dominated by athlete compensation, conference realignment, media rights negotiations and donor demands. Compliance can be delegated to lawyers and compliance officers. Leadership cannot.

As financial pressures intensify, the departments that continue to invest in women’s sports will likely do so because their leaders choose that path, not because a spreadsheet or federal regulation forces them. The future of Title IX may depend less on legal interpretation than on whether athletic directors continue to view gender equity as central to their mission rather than as another cost center competing for scarce resources.

Will the Save College Sports Act likely do that? Even if it were to pass, don’t count on it. But if college sports does get “saved” by politicians, conference commissioners and university presidents, let’s hope Title IX’s original intention isn’t forgotten.

By the way, did anyone notice that Title IX’s anniversary passed oh so quietly last week with little, if any, attention paid to it?

John Cairney is currently head of the University of Queensland’s School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences. In August, he becomes the dean of the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan. Rick Burton is Syracuse University’s David Falk Emeritus Professor of Sport Management, co-host of the NIL Clubhouse on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and co-author of The Rise of Major League Soccer (Lyons Press).