There’s a tendency among casual fans to think that Title IX absolutely leveled the playing field for women in sports. But it ain’t all WNBA out there. For sports like tennis, where the college game is a neglible factor, women play for significantly less money than men — even when their sport draws more overall excitement.

In the world of extreme sports, the disparities are even more pronounced. Because their games are born of street culture, these young female athletes’ rate of pay are irrelevant to the gains made in scholastic institutions. The influence is almost nil. Female who skate, for example, make a fraction of their male counterparts and have traditionally been invited to events such as the X-Games as mere afterthoughts.

On the eve of Saturday's “Let the Good Times Roll” action in the U.K., which features skate star Becky Wood and will be filmed by Claire Wilson, I thought it would be smart to check in with Drew Mearns, founder of the Action Sports Alliance. The Alliance, a two-year-old  non-profit organization, seeks to improve opportunities and levels of participation of women in action sports. Mearns is a veteran of sports management and a former NCAA Division I collegiate head coach.

MOLI: How did the Action Sports Alliance first take root?

Mearns: In the spring of 2005 I was giving a talk at Old Dominion University to a group of sports management professionals called Socrates and Sports Agents. One of the graduate attendees was Mimi Knoops’ mother. Mimi is the second-ranked vertical skater in the world. She was second both this year and last year.

MOLI: What struck her about your message?

Mearns: She had great awareness— and I wasn’t aware — of the great disparity in what women profession skaters had, in terms of opportunity and compensation. She wanted to know if I had any advice. She thought that some of the younger skaters and even the older professionals would want to hear it. That led to me meeting with Mimi and CB Burnside and Lindsay Adams and moms and other interested members of the skating community.

MOLI: What resulted from that?

A non-profit association of professional athletes who through the structure of our business organization could give voice to some of their concern and, in the right situations, act as an advocate.

MOLI: A lot of people think Title IX changed everything for women in sports.

Commercial interests control these (extreme sports) and the commercial interests, unlike universities and public institutions, have no obligation or responsibility under Title IX application for what Wimbledon decides to pay women tennis players or what women’s professional soccer players get paid compared to men. That’s all a function of business, which is partly a function of the demand for the personality and partly a function of the organizations which control professional sports, whether they’re television or a combination of television and sports leagues and sports governing bodies.

MOLI: How do you mix it up with these private-sector entities?

As we were organizing we asked, “How can we improve the situation? From that point, we were a very loose association. What ended up happening was, the leadership of the alliance — being women street skaters and vert skaters — expressed a loyalty to Cara-Beth Burnside. She’s an Olympic champion and the first person to win Winter X and Summer X Gold medals. Shaun White’s done it since then.  She’s a fine skater and a fine leader and as the president of the Alliance, she recruited a rather disparate group.

Coming into the X Games in 2005, there was a lot of frustration expressed. We had just organized that spring. I’d arranged for some funding for the girls to go to other contests and win some additional prize money. And we were coming into the X Games and there was no movement on the part of the X Games to talk with us, to formally give the women’s side a voice in the selection process or the competition format. The invitations to the girls was given sort of as an afterthought. And of course many other women’s sports had been cut from the X Games. There was only women’s skateboarding — two disciplines — and the women were only going to get $12,000 in total prize money. The men: somewhere around $385,000.
Great skaters like CB had felt what good was it to come. It costs them a great deal of money to get to the games. We don’t get  coverage on television and the prize money doesn’t cover our expenses. So why bother, since we’re invited as an afterthought?

The girls got together and just didn’t show up at one of the advertised press conferences a couple of days before the competition.

MOLI: What was the response to that?

The response was that I was immediately tracked down by the General Manager of the X Games and asked, “What’s goin’ on?”

We said, “Nothing. We want to talk. Let’s get together after the games.” We didn’t have any demands. We wanted to be listened to.
I said, “If you’re willing to do all that, I’ll make sure the girls show up.” They said yes.

The girls competed. And the follow-through on that commitment, from our perspective, was not consistent with the commitment.

MOLI: So this is an ongoing battle? Have ’06 and ’07 been any better?

There was no follow-through after we fulfilled our part of the bargain, and we didn’t get a meeting or a voice in what was going to happen in the next competition. During that time, we were approached by the Women’s Sports Foundation, an advocacy group, whose leaders — including Billie Jean King — I knew from my days at IMG. We actually did a study and a written report on the state of women in action sports, with a focus on the X Games and ESPN’s role. We arranged for that report to be forwarded before the summer of 2006 to the X Games people. The response to that was to give me a meeting. We listened and heard all the objections that there wasn’t enough money. Objections that are frequently used in sports to delay making changes that we think are good for the sport and good for the state of women who are in that particular sport.

Going into the X Games, the New York Times wrote a very faithful and accurate article about the great disparity in terms of compensation and exposure. There were two big pictures, one of Mimi and one of CB. And they talked about it as an ethical issue and the alliance and what had happened the year before. That triggered a reaction from senior people at ESPN.

MOLI: And are there good things on the horizon?

The day before the X Games in 2006, we had a meeting with John Skipper, the new president of programming. This was an opportunity to make positive steps together. We negotiated an agreement that gave participation and voice to the Alliance in the development of the X Games. We added a women's sport, surfing, this year. The agreement would increase the coverage of the women's side and it would  gradually bring the women's side of the prise money to parity with the men. We're not all the way, but we're trying to work with ESPN.