HOGSHEAD-MAKER, NANCY AND ANDREW ZIMBALIST EDS. Equal Play: Title IX andSocial Change. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007. Pp. viii+305. Notes, tables,and index. $34.95 cb.

Title IX, the federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in educational programs thatreceive federal funding, was first enacted in 1972. Although the impact of the law was feltquickly in that the number of girls and women participating in school sports begin to risevery quickly, monographs examining the law were slower to arrive. Beginning in 2002,however, no fewer than nine books with the phrase Title IX in their title have been pub-lished. Hogshead-Maker and Zimbalist have added their anthology to the growing schol-arship examining the law. Unfortunately, the book does not make a significant contribu-tion for the informed Title IX scholar because almost everything in it is a reprint; however,it might be more helpful as an introductory text.

Hogshead-Maker is a law professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law and the legaladvisor for the Women’s Sports Foundation, and the anthology is clearly marked by herinterests. The book includes excerpts of many of the major Title IX legal decisions includ-ing Cannon v. University of Chicago (1979) in which the United States Supreme Court

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concluded that Title IX provides a right of action for individuals to sue and NationalWrestling Coaches Association v. Department of Education (2004) in which the D.C. CircuitCourt of Appeals held that the coaches had no standing to claim that the Title IX and itsenforcement regulations and policies had harmed them. The court believed that whileinstitutions’ application of the law might have harmed wrestling coaches, the law itself didnot. The book also includes various legal documents such as the 1975 enforcement regu-lations and the 1979 Policy Interpretation Letter. As an introductory text, or for thosewithout Linda J. Carpenter and R. Vivian Acosta’s Title IX (2005) which contains many ofthese materials, having excerpts of the major cases and all the policy and legal documenta-tion under one cover is helpful.

Zimbalist’s contribution as an economist at Smith College is also present, althoughless dominating. Four of his essays are included, and each provides hard numbers andeconomic theory that Zimbalist uses to debunk the myth that college sport makes money.The chapter consisting of his testimony to the Commission on Title IX in 2002 is particu-larly compelling, although his references to million-dollar salaries of football coaches nowseems oddly frugal compared to the $4 million annually that Nick Saban signed for withthe University of Alabama in 2007.

The anthology is weakest in Part I “Women’s Sport Before Title IX.” Although theexcerpt of Susan Cahn’s Coming on Strong (1994) is theoretically appropriate, it is oddlyedited, being both choppy and short. Welch Suggs’s chapter three from A Place on theTeam (2005) is included almost in its entirety, but, unfortunately, as I wrote several yearsago in a review for this journal, that chapter was the weakest of his book. The chapter onBabe Didrikson was originally published on www.espn.com, leaving the informed sporthistorian to wonder why the editors did not choose to include an excerpt of Susan Cayleff ’s1996 biography. The existing chapter is superficial and surprisingly non-academic com-pared to the others. The only redemptive section of this part is the reprint of the 1973Sports Illustrated article “Sport is Unfair to Women.” The article is a wonderfully written,compelling, but painful reminder of how dark the world of women’s sports was before theimpact of Title IX was really felt.

The strength of the anthology is in the chapters that are not readily available else-where—like the Sports Illustrated article and several examples of congressional testimony.The chapter originally published as a New York Times Magazine article from 2002 entitled“Football is a Sucker’s Game” provides a nice discussion in layperson’s terms about theUniversity of South Florida’s quest for the mythical pot of gold at the end of the collegefootball rainbow. Plus at the very end of the book, Zimbalist includes figures up through2003-2004 on participation and spending, broken down by gender. For these chaptersand the convenience of having all of the legal materials in one place, the anthology has itsgreatest value.

Those readers, however, who are well-versed in the law and who already have a libraryon the topic of Title IX and women’s sports, probably already have or have easy access tomany of the materials that are included in this anthology. The anthology will be of muchgreater use to those who are interested in an introduction to the topic from two ardentsupporters of the law.

—SARAH K. FIELDS

The Ohio State University