That was the number of fans who packed the University of Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium last week to root for the hometown Cornhuskers as they took on the Omaha Mavericks in a women’s soccer game—setting the world record for the largest attendance at a women’s sporting event.
A crowd of 92,000 would dwarf the attendance of all but a handful of Division I college football games. Women’s sports is finally coming into its own.
It’s been a long time coming; more than a half-century to be exact. On June 8, 1972, Congress passed Title IX, the civil rights law that prohibited sex-based discrimination in any school or other educational program that receives federal funding. Two weeks later, President Nixon signed it into law. Although the word “sports” appears nowhere in the law, that’s where the impact of Title IX seems to have been felt the most.
Title IX paved the way for equal funding of male and female sports. Putting them on the same financial footing has elevated female sports in the publi...