TU fails to evenly represent all its sports

Sports writer Hannah Ridley says TU sports media should not pick favorites.
There is a serious lack of equality surrounding the promotion of sports at The University of Tulsa. This inequality can be seen through promotional techniques such as sending emails to the student body, displaying athletic event information on campus televisions and making social media posts. I will be using an example from the emails I received from the university as a student.
On Aug. 24, I received an email with the subject “7 Sleeps Until Tulsa Football Begins!” On Aug. 28, I received an email about weekly student life. The only athletic event listed in this email was a tailgating event for the upcoming football game. On Aug. 29, I received another email with the subject “Important Event Information.” Football is once again the only sport listed. The next day, at 9:53 a.m., I received another email about the upcoming football game. Seven minutes later, another email pertaining to the season-opening football game is sent out to students. Thus, in total, I received five emails about The University of Tulsa’s football before the day their season even began.
However, unlike football, no emails with any information about both men’s and women’s soccer were sent out until Aug. 27, several days after their official season-opening games. This inequality of promotion spans across other sports as well. For instance, the first email stating anything about Tulsa Women’s Volleyball was sent out on Sept. 7, which was 13 days after their season-opening match.
As stated above, this unequal promotion goes past emails. For instance, TU’s official Athletics Instagram page, @tulsahurricaneathletics, also heavily favors football. Not only are the majority of posts on the page about football, but some sports are almost completely excluded from this page. An example of this is Tulsa’s women’s rowing team. The last post pertaining to TU Rowing was on May 31, 2023, almost five months ago, even though the rowing team is currently in their fall season and had a race on Sept. 30.
When asked about this inequality, Freshman rower Stefany Mencias responded, “As a rower, I feel that we don’t get enough credit for how much we do. I also feel as if the university invests more time, energy and money into other sports, which gives them more spotlight and the ability to obtain more sponsors. Our team is undervalued, but it’s not only our team but other teams, like the women’s volleyball team.”
One could argue that this unequal promotion is justified by claiming that football is the most popular sport on campus, and thus, it deserves to be promoted the most. However, many examples disprove this argument and show that the turnout of attendees heavily depends on the promotion and support from the university the event receives. An example of this is a volleyball game at the University of Nebraska. The volleyball game was held at their Memorial Stadium, which is typically used for their football games. This game’s total attendance was 92,003, which shattered the team’s previous attendance record and set a new World Record for attendance at a women’s sporting event. Although this game may be an outlier based on the number of people in attendance, it shows that when universities promote and support sports other than football, there is a positive turnout from fans.
The solution to this problem is simple: universities should place equal emphasis, support and promotion on each sport, regardless of gender or presumed popularity. However, getting schools to implement this solution may be complicated because even with Title IX, universities have not been required to promote each sport equally. While the NCAA states that Title IX applies to “publicity and promotions,” no university has been obliged to equally publicize and promote each sport resulting in the disparity we see today. Although Title IX has been unable to solve this problem and mainly focuses on discrimination based on sex, it can still be used as a tool for solution. For instance, athletes, students and organizations may be able to take legal action and challenge this unequal promotion to fight for added confirmation from Title IX to solidify that federally funded universities must publicize and promote their sports equally. This seems daunting, and as young students, it feels like we hold little power over this situation. Yet we can still hold our university accountable for its inequalities and support all athletic events equally, whether they are promoted by the university or not.