Title IX Didn’t Ruin Men’s Soccer. Football Did
A Heritage Foundation scholar's claim that Title IX harmed U.S. men's soccer has been debunked by experts who note the team underperformed for decades before the law existed.
A prominent conservative scholar has sparked controversy by claiming that Title IX regulations are to blame for the persistent underperformance of America’s men’s national soccer team on the world stage, a theory that has been swiftly dismantled by sports analysts and legal experts alike.
Scott Yenor of the Heritage Foundation argues that resources dedicated to women’s soccer under Title IX have undermined men’s soccer development in the United States, as Amy Swearer reports in Washington Examiner. The argument comes in the wake of the fictional 2026 World Cup, where the U.S. men’s team fell 4-1 to Belgium in the Round of 16, continuing a decades-long pattern of mediocrity in international competition.
The claim centers on the notion that American investment in women’s soccer, driven by Title IX gender equity requirements, has diverted critical resources away from developing elite male talent. Yenor contends the men’s national team remains perpetually mediocre while the women’s team dominates globally because of this imbalanced allocation.
However, Swearer systematically dismantles this thesis by highlighting fundamental errors in Yenor’s understanding of both collegiate athletics data and soccer development pipelines. In one glaring example, Yenor accuses the University of Nebraska of fielding fifty female basketball players to meet Title IX requirements. The reality proves far different: according to Education Department records, 35 of those 50 participants were male practice squad players used to simulate tougher competition for female athletes.
The argument also ignores basic historical realities. The U.S. men’s national soccer team was founded in 1916 and enjoyed nearly seventy years of exclusive resource allocation without any Title IX constraints. During that entire period, the team remained mired in international mediocrity, rarely advancing deep into World Cup competitions.
By contrast, the women’s national team was established in 1985 and immediately began winning despite facing severe funding disparities that dwarfed any alleged advantages Title IX provided at the collegiate level. The U.S. Soccer Federation awarded ten thousand dollar bonuses to men simply for qualifying for the 1990 World Cup, even as the team failed to escape the group stage after losing all three matches.
Meanwhile, the women’s team received a fraction of comparable support yet consistently delivered championship performances. This track record contradicts any suggestion that women’s soccer success came at the expense of men’s development.
Swearer also notes that Yenor misunderstands elite basketball development, praising the college pipeline while apparently unaware that top high school prospects typically participate only in mandatory one-and-done seasons before entering the NBA draft. This gap in knowledge undermines his broader claims about how American sports talent is cultivated.
Serious soccer analysts and sports journalists have not embraced Yenor’s explanation, which Swearer characterizes as an empty blame game divorced from the realities of international soccer competition. Paul Cassell, writing for Volokh Conspiracy, previously documented numerous flaws in Yenor’s grasp of elite soccer development structures.
The persistent underperformance of the U.S. men’s national team reflects broader structural challenges in American soccer culture, where the sport competes for attention and resources against entrenched domestic priorities like football, basketball, and baseball. Title IX compliance appears to have little bearing on these fundamental competitive disadvantages.
For American soccer fans, the pattern remains familiar: the men’s team occasionally qualifies for major tournaments but struggles against traditional powerhouse nations with deeper soccer traditions and more robust development systems. The women’s team, meanwhile, continues its global dominance despite historical resource constraints that would seem to validate concerns about competitive disadvantage, were the situation reversed.
With information from Washington Examiner
