Barbour has put women in higher-profile jobs within her program, but she's not ... more
Barbour has put women in higher-profile jobs within her program, but she's not naïve about the preconceptions women in college athletics face. "These big programs are dominated by football," Barbour told Eichelberger, "And there is this thought that, in order to lead one of these programs, you have to have played football. You certainly have to address it."
She told ESPN contributor Whitney Holtzman last year that, as a woman, she does approach things "from a different paradigm," but "the fewer times we have to think about our gender being unique in this position, the better. … We're just like the other 10 guys sitting in that room. We have a complex and difficult job to do." less
It's been 40 years since the federal government's Title IX legislation mandated equal athletic opportunities for men and women - but athletic departments haven't kept pace. A Bloomberg News article from earlier this week notes that only four women head up the sports departments at the 120 schools in college football's top tier. That's an anemic 3 percent.
"The numbers are really, really small," Sandy Barbour, athletic director of Cal Berkeley, told Bloomberg's Curtis Eichelberger. "Frankly, we've actually gone backward. At one point, there were eight of us." And they're about to get smaller; Cary Groth, AD at the University of Nevada, is set to retire after this academic year.
Big-time college programs pull in big-time revenues - and face big-time scrutiny, but pluses and minuses alike, it's still mostly the domain of a boys' club. Let's meet the members of the tiny sorority in the top jobs of college sports - Barbour, Groth, Western Michigan University's Kathy Beauregard, and North Carolina State's Debbie Yow.
