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Abstract
The 2010 Quinnipiac cheerleading case raises interesting questions about the nature of both cheerleading and sport, as well as about the moral character of each. In this paper we explore some of those questions, and argue that no form of college cheerleading currently in existence deserves, from a moral point of view, to be recognized as a sport for Title IX purposes. To reach that conclusion, we evaluate cheerleading using a quasi-legal argument based on the NCAA’s definition of sport and conclude that cheerleading fails to qualify as a legitimate sport. A philosophical argument leads to the same conclusion, primarily because of the essential entertainment-aspect of cheerleading. We then examine a consequentialist moral case for making cheerleading an intercollegiate sport and argue that the balance of moral reasons is against doing so. Finally, we look at cheerleading’s newest offspring – Acrobatics and Tumbling, and STUNT – and express our moral reservations about their current claims to be worthy of Title IX recognition. While we would not claim that any single one of our arguments is decisive, we are convinced that the cumulative weight of the arguments against granting intercollegiate sport status to any of the forms of cheerleading or its derivatives is, at present, irresistible.
Notes
1. Title IX is a federal law which prohibits discrimination, whether in academics or athletics, based on sex in educational institutions that receive federal financial assistance.
2. See Biediger v. Quinnipiac University. To take one example of such dissimilarity, a total of five different scoring systems were used for the Quinnipiac competitive cheer squad’s 10 competition events, and their opponents included collegiate club teams and even high-school opponents (Biediger 2010). Underhill’s ruling was upheld by a federal appeals court on 7 August 2012 (Eaton-Robb 2012).
3. Founded in 1906 to protect student-athletes, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is the governing body for collegiate sports programs in the United States. The NCAA maintains oversight of 89 championships in 23 sports at more than 1000 colleges and universities, and administers sanctions for rules and recruiting violations.
4. See, for example, Cassman (2010), Torgovnick (2008), Grindstaff and West (2006).
5. Sometimes the label competitive cheer is applied to what Judge Underhill aptly described as ‘group floor gymnastics’ (Biediger 2010), where no actions or props are used that are aimed specifically at spirit-raising. For our position on this kind of competitive activity, see our discussion of Acrobatics and Tumbling and STUNT later in the paper.
6. This was noted by Judge Underhill (Biediger 2010).
7. To speak of sports competitions as involving judgment is not necessarily to say that the criteria for winning are subjective. One way a contestant might be judged to have won a contest is in virtue of having scored more points.
8. We have chosen to start with Suits’s definition as it is often taken as foundational in discussions of how best to define sport. For example, Robert Simon’s book, Fair Play: The Ethics of Sport, discusses at some length Suits’s definition (Suits 2005, 54–5) and notes that ‘his account of games continues to be interpreted, debated, and evaluated within the professional literature’. And ‘his account certainly seems to fit paradigmatic instances of sports such as baseball, lacrosse, football, soccer, golf, and many other clear instances of sporting activity’ (2010, 45). For other influential work on this definitional question, see Coakley (2008), Loy (2002), McNamee (2008), Meier (2002), Morgan (2006), and Wertz (2002).
9. Some attempts to define sport in the philosophy of sport literature do try to outline necessary and sufficient conditions, employing elaborate diagrams and/or references to Ludwig Wittgenstein and the philosophy of language (see previous note).
10. Also, football is no less a sport on account of its being dangerous – so dangerous, it appears, that we do not support its continuation in its current form. Below we discuss the relation – or lack thereof – of the existence of men’s college football to our argument against the ratification of competitive cheer or a derivative as a Title IX-sanctioned college sport.
11. We acknowledge that the parallel with figure skating may be quite close, but would make two comments in response. First, figure skating is not an NCAA collegiate sport, and has not, so far as we are aware, petitioned to become one, so we have not examined it in detail. If figure skating turns out to carry the same risk of catastrophic injury, we would have the same objection to it that we have to cheerleading. Second, to the extent that figure skating (or any other movement-oriented athletic activity, like dance, that is as much spectacle as sport) promotes overt sexuality, we would find it objectionable. In other words, we would extend our objections to cheerleading to other activities to the degree that those activities are relevantly similar.
12. To be clear, we are not arguing that collegiate sport has an obligation to promote virtue. Instead, we are accepting that assertion as commonly held and claiming that whatever the virtues are that are supposed to be fostered by sports participation, entertainment, which is so prominently featured in cheerleading, is not among them. Thus, while cheerleading may provide additional or distinctive opportunities for females to take center stage without having their femininity questioned, the price of those opportunities is the loss of (or at least the relative omission of) the virtues commonly held to be promoted by participation in sport.
13. The idea of a pole-dancing squad is not, sad to say, pure invention. One group petitioned to have pole dancing included as a test event in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London (Hyde 2011)!
14. A precise definition of ‘direct catastrophic injury’ is not crucial for our purposes.
15. Zemper draws primarily from data collected by the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
16. We do not deny that there are other sports (e.g., wrestling) that are such as to exert pressure on participants to engage in unhealthful weight-loss practices. We make reference to the unsafe dietary practices competitive cheerleading encourages not to suggest that it is uniquely dangerous in that respect but to lay down one plank of a cumulative argument.
17. For a much discussed moral critique of football on account of its brain-trauma risk, see Gladwell (2009).
18. As we were completing this paper, The New York Times reported on yet another important study linking brain disease to ‘routine hits’ to the head (Belson 2012).
19. Still, it may be important to note that we would also argue against football on safety-related grounds. Certainly we would not impose paternalistic constraints on females that we would not also impose on males. Such an argument, however, is well beyond the bounds of this paper.
20. Whether or not football-related concussions are partly responsible for CTE and CTE is partly responsible for the suicides is beside our present point, which is simply that health risks are normally, and appropriately, a matter of moral concern; they are costs that need to be weighed alongside benefits.
21. See, for example, Peltz (2011).
22. The uniforms for male and female athletes are also different for college volleyball and gymnastics. We find this objectionable as well, though less so, since the differences are not as stark as those between the attire of female cheerleaders and the attire of male cheerleaders.
23. For example, traits associated with femininity are also present in (female) gymnasts, but the traits are not an essential part of the sport, and may not be exhibited by gymnasts who are successful nonetheless. To the extent that cheerleading changes to replace the emphasis on femininity with emphasis on strength and fitness, our argument is weakened. At this point in time, however, its embrace of femininity as an essential element renders it significantly problematic. One might take this in another direction to argue, for example, against football since its athletes’ exhibit traits associated with masculinity. Although this is beyond the scope of this paper, we would be sympathetic to such an argument.
24. See Marilyn Frye (1983, 17–40) and Judith Butler (1990, 24–5).
25. Or, as Jeff Webb, founder of the Universal Cheerleading Association and Varsity Brands, Inc., put it when he testified in the Quinnipiac case: ‘They don’t cheer and they don’t lead’ (Cloutier 2010).
26. We are grateful to journal editor J.S. Russell for calling our attention to the need to clarify our position here.
27. We are not so naïve as to believe that business interests are not already intertwined with college sport, and we recognize that this may sometimes contribute to the well-being of both, but the case under examination seems unique. A business may advertise at a sporting event, with large signs or through display of logos on athlete’s uniforms, but that business will have paid to do so, either through cash to the university or by donating gear. To be analogous to STUNT or Acrobatics and Tumbling, the business would have to have created the sport, filled the ruling board with its shareholders, and sold the uniforms and gear to the athletes.
28. Of course, all sports were created at some point in history, but this would be the first created solely to meet Title IX purposes (and to generate a profit for the business interest pushing for its inclusion). In all other cases, sports were created to meet the desires or purposes of participants. Sometimes those desires and purposes were deemed valuable and the sports made their way into the realm of college athletics; on other occasions, the sports did not make it because of a lack of interest or because they were taken to be objectionable in some way, for example, ultimate fighting and pole-dancing. Also, it bears repeating that while this argument alone may not be decisive, the cumulative weight of the arguments is irresistible.
29. The degree of one’s understanding of these sports may be influenced by one’s circumstances. It may well be that the NCAA should take into account whether any particular sport is generally associated with higher socioeconomic status, but this question is beyond the scope of our paper.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrew B. Johnson
Andrew B. Johnson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Missouri State University. Correspondence to: Andrew B. Johnson, Missouri State University, 901 S. National Avenue Springfield, MO 65897, USA.
Pam R. Sailors
Pam R. Sailors is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Missouri State University. Correspondence to: Pam R. Sailors, Missouri State University, 901 S. National Avenue, Springfield, MO 65897, USA.