Jean Cerra - Ybor native & Leader on Title IX and College Sports

Nancy the Narrator:    ​ Welcome to another edition of Women in Baseball on BaseballBiz On Deck, Today's guest, Jean Cerra.   Jean, an E-Bore native, became one of the 11 women collegiate administrators who advanced title 9 into reality as told in Karen Rudolph's book, Sidelined No Longer, 

Today,, Jean Cerra. shares her journey with us from childhood to collegiate challenges along the way. 

Mark Corbett: Welcome to BaseballBiz on Deck. Today we have a very special guest, Jean. Cerra, here we are in the merry month of March and we talk about it being the month for recognizing women and the smart ones of us recognize women. 

Jean Cerra: Okay, I got cut off. I'm just Mark, I just got cut off. Okay. And I'm just now rejoining the meeting, so I didn't hear anything that you said 

Mark Corbett: you didn't miss anything.

We'll start fresh then. Welcome to BaseballBiz on Deck. I'm Mark Corbett your host

. So with me today is Jean Cerra, and I'm telling you we talk about March being the month of the woman, but anybody with any common sense realize it's 365 days a year, 12 months a year. So Jean has been pivotal in women's athletics.

Primarily one of the things that you're going to see is the impact that she and others have made when Title IX came into existence and her part in doing that, because women's opportunities in sports changed [00:01:00] dramatically. And that was back, I believe in 1972. Hey, welcome Jean. How you doing today? 

Jean Cerra: I'm doing great, mark.

Nice to see you. And nice to meet you. 

Mark Corbett: Good to meet you as well. I just wanna thank you personally on, on what all you've done for women and for us who enjoy all of the sports because so much would be missed. It's whether we're looking at a lot of folks say Caitlin Clark and I wanna touch on base with Iowa with you about that later on.

. You have so much history here in the Tampa area. Now I would like to get a little bit background on, what got you involved with sports. What was it you were seeing, maybe within your own family and community that helped promote you within that?

Jean Cerra: I attended Our Lady of Perpetual Health Academy in Ybor City. 

Mark Corbett: Right. 

Jean Cerra: And sports was just something we did. Catholic schools always had teams for girls, so I never knew it was a big deal. I enjoyed competition. I [00:02:00] had a touch of polio when I was a child, and I was restricted from participating in sports.

And so I can remember that my mother wrote a note trying to get me exempt from playing, and I give it to the PE teacher because I wanted to participate. So I just. Discarded the note she wrote to try to get me exempt from it. So it was something I always enjoyed doing. And so I just participated in various teams back then.

You know about the only sports we had were team sports. I used to tease that the only teams that Catholic schools had were things with one ball. 'cause that was all they could afford. So it was volleyball, basketball, and softball. Those were your choices. But I was also fortunate because there is a lifelong legend who grew up and competed in anymore city.

I'm not sure if you're aware of who she is, but her name is Ochin Fernandez and she played softball. She was a [00:03:00] tremendous catcher, played on USCA teams against Cuba in those early days, and her daughter attended Our Lady of Perpetual help. We used to call it OLPH. She attended, she was two years ahead of me, and her mother had a team that competed in the city league.

Her mother was the recreation director at DeSoto Park. And so she would pick us up after school and take us to the park. So we not only competed for OLPH, we also had the opportunity to compete in citywide leagues and won several city titles. Okay. She was a tremendous coach, which again, was a unique opportunity because there weren't a lot of qualified women to coach before Title IX.

The people that were coaching were physical educators because they were the only ones that they felt knew of something about sport because there were no competitive opportunities for girls. [00:04:00] So you didn't have someone who had experience playing college or playing even high school or playing at the national level or the Olympic level.

That didn't happen until pretty much we had a full generation post title IX of women who were acquiring the skills necessary to compete at those advanced levels with good coaching. And today, you're seeing how much their skill levels have improved just by being able to have access to good coaching.

So I consider myself very lucky to have had those opportunities in the early days. 

Mark Corbett: A lot of us, if we're fortunate, we do have a mentor or somebody we can look up to and it makes a difference. And sometimes it seems almost happenstance how that came, comes into a person's life. With you, it was with m machine's, daughter at what was it?

A tapping ceremony? 

Jean Cerra: Yeah. You mean at OLPH? 

Mark Corbett: [00:05:00] Yes. 

Jean Cerra: At OLPH we had an organization that was called Sodality. It was a Catholic student body. And and at that time you, if you were two years older than someone that came in as a freshman, you tapped him as your sister and Genelle Fernandez Lu's daughter, she tapped me when I came in as a freshman.

And she lives over on the beach and she has a tremendous scrapbook about Moochine. You should interview her as well. 

Mark Corbett: I'd love to. I'd love to. But the thing of it was that once you got to Genelle and you, I was looking through some things on newspaper.com and finding you all, both playing on teams for OLPH and it doesn't fascinate me because I was a, I'm similar in age and I'm looking here and I remember, yeah, there was girls sports and boys sports in the Catholic schools.

And to me it was great to see the vitality in both of those, because I [00:06:00] think in some public schools or maybe in some recreational areas, they did not have them. But here in the Tampa area, you had opportunities. And when you saw somebody look like Moochine, I remember reading in the book sideline no longer that she was, she and others were playing over at Al Lang Park A against MLB players who had since left the game.

Jean Cerra: That's correct. Yeah. Way ahead of their time and highly skilled. 

Mark Corbett: That, yeah. That's amazing. When I think about that as far as just even being able to see a woman playing that game amidst all those men, it has to spark the see more, even more opportunity expected for the future. 

Jean Cerra: That's correct. And she laid the foundation for all of us to have the skills to be able to play as far as we could.

It wasn't until I got to Florida State University after I graduated from OLPH, actually I went to the University of [00:07:00] South Florida my freshman year. 'cause I was a math major and the university was very new at that time. I graduated in 63, I think it opened in the late fifties. And for me, it just never felt like I was going to college, 'cause I lived at home and commute, commuted, and all my friends from OLPH were there. So I felt like I was going to 13th grade. I remember going into the cafeteria one day to meet all of them for lunch and I said, I'm getting outta here. I'm leaving. And they said, where are you going? I said, I'm going to Florida State.

And they said, but you don't know anybody there. I said, I know, but Florida State at that time, I don't know if you know this, but Florida State was an all women's college and it was Florida State College Teachers' College. It was a teacher's teaching institution, teachers' college for women, and, but they had probably one of the top physical education programs for women back then.

You got a degree in physical education for men or physical education for women. [00:08:00] There were no co-ed classes 

Mark Corbett: Right 

Jean Cerra: until after Title IX. So I was attending there from 1963 actually 63 I graduated from, so I went a year south Florida, so 64 to 67. I graduated there in 1967 and I showed up and of course I meant I decided to become a physical education major at that time, and I'm looking for a team to compete on, and there are no teams to compete on.

And they told me, they said, oh no, you can play intramurals. I said, I don't wanna play intramurals. I wanna play at a highly competitive level. And they said, oh no, that doesn't exist. Now you have to know that back then, athletic departments for men did not have the kind of assets the budgets that they have today.

They were living off of student fees. So we paid men and women, paid the same amount of student fees out of our tuition that went to men's athletics, but did not get anything for women's athletics. So that kind of sparked a little fire in my [00:09:00] belly to say this isn't fair. So I think that carried over the rest of my car career in terms of really having the desire to try to change things as quickly as possible, because time was of the essence.

If you were, when we finally got the opportunity for women to compete, if you were a senior, you had one year to compete and that was it. 

. 

Jean Cerra: So there were no other opportunities after that. So that's why time became so important. 

Mark Corbett: That's the thing. Title IX, what was it? 1972, and once it's put into place, it isn't flicking a switch and there's this cascade of going all across schools in the nation to, to adapt and adopt and make better opportunities for women in sports.

That took a lot of grit from people like yourself to push for it to happen, to get that money because I remember as a young man. , There weren't any broadcasting rights and some of these other things and looking at the largesse that was being spent on young [00:10:00] boys, high school, basketball and football.

But nothing there. So going back to turning that switch on and the immediacy that you saw with that, what were some of the early challenges that you faced? 

Jean Cerra: Once I graduated from Florida State, I just went into teaching physical education. I taught down in Miami-Dade public schools for a year.

But I had started my master's work at the University of Iowa. Now, I don't know, you know that Iowa, now that you're viewing a lot of Iowa teams, there's a lot of prominence there. There's a lot of gifted athletes. , Iowa always had these, was way ahead of the rest of the country in terms of competitive opportunities for girls.

Mark Corbett: Right. 

Jean Cerra: They. When I got there, I couldn't believe some of the guys in my classes. I, they were coaching women and I'm like, why aren't you coaching men? They said, no, there's more money in coaching women's basketball. And women's high school basketball is the only one that is televised [00:11:00] statewide. Men's weren't men were playing the prelims to the girls' games in Iowa.

So now this is a real shocking phenomenon to me. It's really? And so back then women's basketball was a sIX player game. It's not like the men's game today. Okay. I say men's game, it's our game too, but, 

Mark Corbett: right. 

Jean Cerra: But back then, the men played the traditional five player full court basketball.

In those early days, women's basketball was a sIX player game. Okay? And you had three, and it was divided court. So that means you didn't cross the center line. If you were a forward get this, you could dribble the ball only two times and then you had to pass it so everybody knew that you were gonna pass the ball after two dribbles.

Correct. So you dribbled the ball two times, you passed it and then you had to pass it over the center line to or the guards actually would have [00:12:00] to pass it over the center line to get it to a forward, only the forwards could shoot on that half of the basketball court. And it was a basically a three on three game.

Now I'll have to also share with you, when my mother played, it was three court basketball. There was a 10 foot line in the middle, and you still had two dribbles, but you only had two forwards, two guards and two centers. So the centers played in that middle section. 

. 

Jean Cerra: And tried to deflect the ball from going over to the other side of the court.

That was sIX player basketball. That particular kind of basketball. Thrived in Iowa, in rural Iowa, they would pack the gyms to see the girls play. 'cause it was a kind of a unique thing, yeah. They were used to seeing the men play five player ball. So anyway, it just peaked everybody's curiosity.

They packed the gyms and hey, they had a televised state high school tournament in the sIXties. So that tells you a lot right then [00:13:00] and there, so Iowa always had great basketball and I got there and no collegiate teams at that time, but in the late sIXties. The department chair decided that they were gonna start women's teams.

Collegiate teams were starting up just informally because we didn't have a national organization and there were no national championships. So she tapped me to coach the women's golf team only because I played some golf. My father was a golfer and he got me started in golf and bought my first set of clubs.

So that little bit of knowledge was all you needed in order to be able to coach. I can't say I was a great coach, but I knew the fundamentals. 

Mark Corbett: Yep. 

Jean Cerra: And so I, the girls, I gathered the girls and they were, I had five gals that could really play golf, which again, is unique, but the high school federation in Iowa was way ahead of the time.

And so anyway, I packed them into my car and we drive out to the university golf course, which is [00:14:00] a beautiful Rolling Hills golf course called Upper Finkbine. . They used to host the Amana Colonies tournament there. The PGA had a tournament called the Amana Open. Okay. Because of the Amana colonies that were nearby.

And so we're unloading and this guy comes out of the pro shop and out to the parking lot, says, can I help you? And I said, yes. I'm Jean Cerra, I'm the women's golf coach. And he said I'm sorry women can't play on this course. Now Caitlin Clark, she's a gifted golfer and she plays there all the time now and did while she was in college, but we weren't allowed to play.

And he said, I said, so where can we play? 'cause the Iowa City's not a big city. There aren't a lot of golf courses. That was the golf course. He says, you can play Lower Finkbine, which floods half the time of the year, has weeds all over. It's literally on the other side of the tracks. Okay. That was horrible.

But we had a gal whose father was in the state legislature. So then by the next year we got on. [00:15:00] But we could only play on Mondays, which is the day they do maintenance on a golf course. And the worst part was that I had the girls had to get outta classes, which we didn't wanna have to do, 'cause back then, basically the guys, when they scheduled their classes, they knew how to schedule to avoid their practice schedules. But we didn't have any organization of our times and practices, so it was hit or miss. So you might get a gal that can't miss a class, can't come to practice, et cetera, et cetera.

So again, that kind of added to the fire in my belly. And so then when I started at Stevens College, which was in 1971, the year before Title IX passed. I was coaching there too, but I was coaching the volleyball team at that time. 

Mark Corbett: Wow. 

Jean Cerra: And so I was at the very beginnings of the battles legally for to get Title IX passed and to get 'em implemented.

And so we were able to develop a really good volleyball [00:16:00] team. At that time, the AIAW was formed also in 1972. The AIAW is the Association for Collegiate Athletics for Women. 

Mark Corbett: Right. 

Jean Cerra: Which kind of grew out of our professional physical education organization, but they were the first ones to offer championships, but no scholarships for women.

They were against it, if you can believe that. And it wasn't until they were sued by some women, including two tennis players in Florida, that they finally started offering. Scholarships for women. 

Wow. 

Jean Cerra: And so then it started out as state championships, you couldn't go any further than a state championship.

There was no such thing as large schools or division one, two, or three or small schools because no one had scholarships. You just played against anybody and no budgets. So you always played against the schools that were closest to you. 

And of course Stevens Colleges in Columbia, Missouri, which is right next door to the University of Missouri.

And [00:17:00] so we, we competed against the University of Missouri many times and beat them several times and actually, won a state championship at one point. That was a big deal. Yeah. Until we finally ventured out into regional and then national championships. That was back when you might recall, Immaculata College was the dominant school in women's basketball.

The nuns would show up at the games banging these pots and pans, to make noise. It was an interesting time. I did a lot of officiating back then, 'cause I have a national rating in volleyball and basketball, so I officiated a lot of regional and national championships. It was an interesting experience with the nuns, but they were a riot 

Mark Corbett: now.

Yeah, I mean you gotta have a lot of those are strong women. They gotta be strong-willed women to deal with what they do in the schools. I'm going back to some of these schools and I'm thinking before there was Title IX and even sounds like even after it was there, you had schools that would want to oh, [00:18:00] say, oh yeah, we'll have a woman's sports club for that sport, but not a sports team of, associated with the university in and of itself.

Which I guess gave them the ability to say, Hey, that's something independent of us. They can do that, they can play that, but we're not gonna be, they're not gonna be part of us. 

Jean Cerra: They're not gonna have to fund a club team. That's the problem. 

Mark Corbett: Yep. 

Jean Cerra: So you have to pay all of your expenses as a woman to do.

If you're on a club and there were a lot of club teams that started at that time. You were out of pocket or your parents paid one way, one or the other. 

Mark Corbett: Now that once that happened, your career blossomed above and beyond that as well. As far as whether it be Iowa or Missouri or some other things that, that has, it's progressed.

What have you seen change beyond those early days of 1972 to what we see in women's sports today? 

Jean Cerra: Today there's an acceptance Okay. Of women in sport in those early days, [00:19:00] I hate to say this, but they put labels on women who played sports. 

Mark Corbett: Yeah. 

Jean Cerra: And it was the worst connotation than being a tomboy.

Okay. I'm not gonna repeat it here. We, 

We don't. But that was, I think we all know what we're talking about. And so it was almost like, you were shunned if you were an athlete and you were a female. Okay. 

Mark Corbett: Yeah. 

Jean Cerra: And today. The guys don't wanna date. The girls that are athletic, they have a lot in common.

They're attractive, their models, they have great bodies, right? So they work out, they have better, more discipline in terms of working out and eating properly than we did as we were basically just amateurs who did it for the love of the game, 

Mark Corbett: right? 

Jean Cerra: So that's a big change. All right.

Social acceptance, I would say is number one. Number two obviously is funding. All right? When I started at Missouri, the, we had a $35,000 budget in a $17 million athletic department. Okay? [00:20:00] So we had a big hill to climb, a large gap to fill, and that was part of the incentive as you read further in the book of the 11 women that formed the C-C-W-A-A, all from division one A institutions.

Who were being held back by the, education based women, don't perspire they glow attitude of physical educators that carried over into the AIAW and , we were fortunate, the 11 of us, that we had presidents or chancellors of our institutions that wanted to do the right thing for women and kept asking us why can't we do this?

We're doing it for the men and say, we can't. Our rules won't allow it yet. We had Title IX, but they were very selective about what parts of Title IX they wanted to implement because they had this idealistic view, again, chancellors or presidents that are willing to move us [00:21:00] forward. An organization that is holding us back.

Time, as I mentioned, becomes a big deal now, right? First units institution is under the gun to comply with the mandates of law of Title IX. And second, as I said before, time is important to these female athletes who have limited career opportunities once they leave. So their college experience becomes their only chance to really compete at a higher level.

And then I think the other thing that distinguishes then from now is that we have athletic directors directors of athletics that aren't your traditional back then. If you were an AD, you probably were a football coach or a basketball coach who they wanted to end their career because they weren't successful and they make 'em athletic director.

. The bad thing also at that time was the fact that these are men in leadership roles within an [00:22:00] athletic department that never, ever had the experience of working with or bonding with women athletes 'cause their experiences excluded women. 

Mark Corbett: Right. 

Jean Cerra: So today that's a whole different ballgame.

Today, you typically have at the advanced levels of athletics, athletic directors that have a lot of business experience. It's a big time business. Some are lawyers, they're not necessarily the football or basketball coach 'cause they don't have the qualifications to lead multimillion dollar enterprises.

And they also men. Who have now grown up through a system where they're playing side by side with women and they don't see a difference. Women that are being funded at comparable levels to them. So they feel an equal obligation to support them as they do their men. It wasn't like a big deal.

If you remember in the early days of Title IX [00:23:00] 1972 those early se the seventies, the NCAA and D-1-A were suing the federal government so that they, that Title IX would not apply to them. They wanted to get football and basketball exempt from the requirements of Title IX. So when I was hired in 1976, which was only a few years after Title IX passed at the University of Missouri, it.

I remember my interview and he, and it's actually the a question that got me the job and how I answered it. And he said, why would you want to leave an institution? I was at Stevens and I'd just gotten tenure as a faculty member. Wow. And he said, why would you want to leave an institution where you have tenure and security for the rest of your life to take on a job where you'll be on a one year contract year to year, and you're going to be [00:24:00] disliked from the minute you set foot in this building?

That was the question. 

Mark Corbett: Wow. 

Jean Cerra: And my answer to him at the time and he was a unique kind of athletic director, I'll explain that to you too. My question, my answer to him at the time was, if I need tenure to keep a job, I shouldn't have it. And if I'm good, I don't need tenure. 

Mark Corbett: And 

Jean Cerra: We all knew that he had somebody in mind for the job.

And when he called me to give, to offer me the job, I asked him, I said, I'm surprised. 'cause everybody felt that you had somebody in mind. And he said, I did. But I liked the way you answered the tenure question. Now that's what got me the job. He was also not your traditional ex basketball football coach that was promoted to AD he had been superintendent of schools in St.

Louis. Okay. So he had an education background. He was not, he wasn't your jock type [00:25:00] AD. Really nice man. Very intelligent, very kind. And our chancellor at the time hired him as AD, but our chancellor before he became chancellor, had been the superintendent of schools in St. Louis. Before Mel took the job when he came o when the chancellor came over to the University of Missouri.

Mark Corbett: Right. 

Jean Cerra: So it was a unique experience and I think it was another reason why the chancellor was so committed to doing the right thing, for our women. 'cause he had been a cha a superintendent of schools. They, 

Mark Corbett: yeah. 

Jean Cerra: They treat men and boys and girls the same. And it doesn't matter, your heritage, your ethnicity or whatever you are in the school system, everybody's the same.

Okay. So I think that carried over to hi to his tenure as chancellor of the University of Missouri. And I'm thankful for that because I, in many ways I was blessed. Yeah. It was a slow road. It was a slow road for all women at that time to really get funding [00:26:00] levels up to where they are today. But you also have to remember that, the men's non- revenue sports were ignored as well.

All the money pretty much went into football and basketball in those power institutions. And there wasn't a lot of money like today, whether, some have millions and billions of dollars. Okay. Yeah. Finding the money back then, you had three channels that covered sports.

ABC, NBC, and CBS. That's it. And if you were lucky enough to get a football game on television, it was a big payday. Okay. And there's nothing like it is today, but then it was a lot of money. And so there wasn't that kind of money to go around there is today. A lot of institutions subsidized the money didn't come out of athletics.

They were like on our school. It was subsidized by the state legislature in order to be able to have compliance with Title IX. [00:27:00] And I know if you've read the book further on you'll get it into that section where you know when my athletic director there asked told me he was bringing in a friend of his from football coaching to be the associate athletic director.

And I had been assistant athletic director and director of women's athletics at the university, and I can still picture him standing in front of my desk and he said, I just want you to know Jean, that, I'm bringing a friend of mine in as associate athletic director. That was a step above me and I'm running the entire women's program.

This is in the late seventies. So I, Dave and I, whose name is Dave, and I always had a really good working relationship. I, 'cause I think I understood where they were coming from. So my job was in many ways to try to educate them to why it was the right thing to do to bring women into athletics, et cetera, et cetera.

So I could always speak very candidly with him, and he could speak candidly with me. And [00:28:00] he wasn't worried about me suing him. Okay? So I said to him, Dave, why don't you have two associate athletic directors? And he said how would they be different? I said you tell me. I'm a great administrator, so I'll be the associate AD for internal operations.

And this other guy can be the associate AD for external operations. I'll run the athletic department. And he said, but that means you'd have responsibilities for men. And I, this is late seventies and nobody in the country's doing this. 

. 

Jean Cerra: And I said, you know what, Dave? You got that right? And he said, oh, no, Jean, that's not gonna work.

They're gonna. They're gonna run me out of town. I'll be the laughing stock of all the men in athletics. And he wasn't lying, he was being very candid with me. And he was true. It was true. It was, he was right to, to make it even more difficult for him to make that decision. He was the chair of the NCAA Men's Basketball Committee at the time.

Which was the most prestigious committee you could chair [00:29:00] as an athletic director. 'cause all the revenue for the NCAA came out of the B basketball. You didn't have football playoffs like you have today. So he said, oh no. He says, I gotta think about this one. I said, okay, think about it.

I didn't think he would do it, but to his credit, he came in two weeks later and he said, you know what? I'm going to do it. And I had said to him, when he would question me about responsibilities for men, I said, Dave, the part of my anatomy that I need to do this job exists from the neck up and not from the neck down.

Okay. That's in the book too. And and I said, and you know what? Athletics is the only place in a university that we still have jobs defined by gender. 

No, what we did away with deans of men and deans of women many years ago in universities. So it doesn't matter what the gender is, it's all about who's capable of doing the job.

Now that was like heresy at that time, [00:30:00] but fortunately he bought into it and he became very proud of doing that. And it became the model that then it was emulated all over the country after that. And. I remember he called me a couple months before he died and he said, Jean, that what I did then was tough, but it's one of the things I'm most proud of.

Mark Corbett: Oh man. 

Jean Cerra: And and it took a lot of guts on his part at that time. Today it wouldn't be a big deal, but at that time that was a big deal. And so then I had responsibilities for the men's non-revenue sports. And of course I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna ignore them and just focus on the women. So they finally had an advocate in the administration that was fighting as hard for them.

As I was fighting for the women, I was fighting for both of them. They were both being discriminated against as far as I was concerned, and they became some of my best. After they got over the fear, nervousness, and trepidation they became some of my strongest advocates. [00:31:00] You'll see some of the testimonials in the book.

So yeah, it was a tough time then, but. We've overcome, did take 50 years to get us where we are today. Yeah. I can remember them telling me, nobody will ever come watch women's sports. Jean. You're dreaming. Okay. And I said, of course they're not. I said, because nobody knows when we're playing because there's no media coverage.

You don't put anything out in terms of advanced notice. And I'll admit that the skill levels in those early days were not anything to brag about. But after the Atlanta Olympics, when we won more gold medals than men, and we finally showed the prowess of women that can have a whole lifetime of coaching in front of them and what we see today, as I said to Karen, the author of the book, what I see today, I'm First, I'm thankful that I've lived long enough to see it.

And second, it's the exclamation point on everything that we really and truly believed [00:32:00] could happen. Dreamed of, weren't sure it could, but really believed it could happen with the right kind of support. So now when I see local news covering women's sports event that's like a miracle. Yeah. Because it used to be that we'd have to get our parents to call 'em and call 'em sports desks and say, Hey, how come you're not covering my women's, my, my daughter's event?

And put the pressure on them. But today, no, you know when they're competing, when their championships are. It's a whole new world, and I'm so thankful that I've lived long enough to see it. 

Mark Corbett: It has been a lot of change and a long time coming. And, I look also as far as women women's soccer a few years back just really blew up.

And suddenly you're seeing a fight also to get women paid well in, in soccer because we were looking at the USA team and the men were being paid more than the women. And the women's team was, I think, generating more revenue and was a I don't wanna say more excellent team, but they were a [00:33:00] very fierce team.

And 

Jean Cerra: They won more World Cups. 

Mark Corbett: There you 

Jean Cerra: go. Definitely. So there you 

Mark Corbett: go. 

Jean Cerra: You wanna say excellent or not, that's by comparison, they did win more World Cups. 

Mark Corbett: Thank you. Exactly. And that's the thing of it. And in the past when you were talking about athletic directors giving money, a lot of times they would go to those sports like football, basketball in men's categories, but not in women.

And they, the people could not, they could stop and say, I cannot recognize what's happening with women's soccer. So it took a bit, it took a push, which amazed me in and of itself. And tell me, let me ask you this, do you think marketing and advertising has helped in the promotion of women's sports and by that?

Jean Cerra: Absolutely. As I said to you before, I agreed with him and when he said, no one's gonna come watch women's sports, I said, not if they don't know when they're playing. 

Mark Corbett: Right. 

Jean Cerra: So the marketing, [00:34:00] the fact that they've gotten sponsorships now, national sponsorships certainly has helped.

Okay. Because that's put money into it. And, and let's, it's, I think it's more than just money. I think people are excited to see them play. They see 'em play now at a very high level. They're athletes, they don't think of them as girls or boys or men or women. They're athletes. And when you've got something good to watch and exciting to watch, you're going to keep turning it on and keep looking at it.

I can remember when, after they told me that no one would ever come watch women's sports I said why don't I had suggested at that time that we have the volleyball teams, for instance, play the preliminaries to home football games. Okay? Because you have all of these fans of Mizzou football, 

Mark Corbett: right, 

Jean Cerra: that are tailgating.

They're there early in the morning, they're drinking, they're doing whatever, the typical tailgating [00:35:00] stuff I said. We don't need to charge 'em anything, let's just open the arena, which is right adjacent to the football field and all of the parking lots surround the arena. So if it's hot, they'll wanna come in the air conditioning, give 'em something to watch, and get them exposed because they haven't been exposed to women playing at this caliber, at this high level.

And we did a few, they didn't really, they didn't really get too excited about doing first. There wasn't the interest in really marketing women's sports, just like there wasn't the interest in marketing track and field or golf or tennis or on the men's side. It just, , look, I understand where the ADs were at that time.

You have to give to the hand that feeds you. Okay? And football fed the entire athletic department. So of course their priorities are going to be there. And making sure. I was happy to help, because I wasn't dumb. I knew where the money came from. [00:36:00] So the more success they had, the better our chances of being funded at a higher level.

I understood that part, but but I'll tell you what, we also, when I was there in the seventies, early eighties, late seventies, early eighties, we were one of the first institutions to get major corporate sponsorship for two women's events. When I say major, 'cause they, nobody remember, they were suing.

So Title IX wouldn't apply. And most organization, most Corporations weren't putting their money into women's sports. And I happened to talk to Nike at that time and, I was able to convince Nike to sponsor a MidAmerica Classic called the Nike MidAmerica Classic in the late SI think it was the late seventies, might've been early eighties.

And we invited the top four basketball teams, including Tennessee, which Pat Head Summit was the coach that time Pat Head had competed in AU [00:37:00] ball with the basketball coach at Mizzou, so they were French, so I could get her in there and two, and then us, and then two other institutions. And that was, that turned out to be a great event.

When I say great, maybe we had a thousand people there. Okay. You when, before you might have had the parents and a few students that came to the events, right? 

Mark Corbett: Yep. 

Jean Cerra: And then I added women's gymnastics at the University of Missouri, and I don't know if you follow gymnastics, but they're a contender right now.

They're in top teams in the country. And so I added women's gymnastics and my gymnastics coach and I talked one day and he came up with the idea of this cat classic, a gymnastics cat classic. 'cause we were tigers. 

Mark Corbett: Okay. 

Jean Cerra: And a lot of the top women's gymnastics teams at that time, like Penn State Arizona I guess that, can't remember who else lives in there.

But anyway, they all were in the feline [00:38:00] family. Okay, gotcha. So anyway, we decided that we were gonna go approach the Purina company, which is based in St. Louis. And we went to the Cat Chow division and we talked to them about starting a women's gymnastics event called the Cat Classic. Again, this was unheard of in women's sports and.

They loved the idea so much that they wouldn't let us leave. They said, oh no, you can't go back to Columbia. We're getting our marketing division in here. We're getting our artist in here. And so we stayed the rest of the afternoon, they gave us $10,000, which to us seemed like a million, but to them was a drop in the bucket.

Okay. Yeah. But we finally had a major corporate sponsor, and so we called it the Cat Classic. It was a wonderful event. They gave the gals all kinds of Purina Pro, like we had Purina umbrellas that were checkerboard and blankets that were [00:39:00] checkerboard. I still have. And so on the gymnastics events, the, all of the gals that were competing parade, you know how they parade in gymnastics, they came in parading with their checkerboard umbrellas, and that grew into a really big event after I left.

I don't know they dropped it. I don't think they were too excited about it, but. But I was excited about it 'cause it was a big deal at that time. But anyway, as I said to you, I think corporate sponsorship has made a big difference. 

Mark Corbett: Right. 

Jean Cerra: And certainly in terms of salaries as well, they're still not paid.

The WNBA isn't paid with the men are. Yeah. But I, again, you have to be patient. It does take time. But if you to go back to soccer, they finally won that battle. And they were the first ones to really create, I wouldn't say first because Billy Jean King did it with the WTA.

Good.

Mark Corbett: Good point. 

Jean Cerra: In terms of team tennis and women's tennis you got just, even though we're 50 some years past Title IX, you still have [00:40:00] to prod, you still have to. Poke the bear, and make them aware that things are not really where they should be yet.

Mark Corbett: Yeah, 

Jean Cerra: certainly we've come a long way, baby, but we still have a ways to go. 

Mark Corbett: I look forward to the day when we quit having to say, oh, here is the first woman who is in this position, CEO of whatever. I, the sense of normalcy of a man or woman being in any position should just be flat out open, but those days are, slowly turning. Whether we're talking about how women's soccer has advanced and getting paid, that's more reasonable with their achievements. If we are looking I'm tied into women's baseball, so there's a lot that I look forward to seeing happen with that as well.

But there is a lot of work. It's been 50 plus years since Title IX. This was put into effect, but it's been a long road. I do like that. You didn't waste any time about it, [00:41:00] Jean. You're cracking right in there trying to make sure it's being implemented and finding the catch house sponsors this.

ACEs to you on that. Finding something that was a fit and trying to get a, a way to get the word out there to promote women's sports. I salute you. 

Jean Cerra: I'm gonna say something right now that's gonna reinforce what you just said about doing away with, describing people by gender. All right?

Mark Corbett: Yep. 

Jean Cerra: In certain positions, as I said to you when I said what I need to do, this job exists from the neck up instead of the neck down, man, let's forget gender. You're capable or you're not. And when I received my lifetime achievement award about, oh, I guess it's been three years now, and the one question they asked me was at the end, they said what do you think would really be the best indicators that women are now an equal footing with the men?

I said, when [00:42:00] we get to the point where you can have a job and they do away with the adjective, men or women. Okay. 

Mark Corbett: Amen. 

Jean Cerra: Amen. Let's just use the analogy of black or white. 

We don't say it's a black CEO or a white CEO. Why do we have to say women or men? A lot of people think that, we were in this battle just for women, but that in some ways it's true.

That was the motivating factor. But when we made the decision to take on all of the women in the United States of America, the 11 of us, which was not easy 'cause they were friends of ours, colleagues and friends and say, it's time that we. Just you're integrating athletic departments. We need to integrate men and women as equals within the department, including the organization and [00:43:00] rules that are providing oversight to this.

So it was really more of a battle for equality of men and women or just putting them in the mIX, shaking it up and saying, it doesn't matter. They're all athletes. Okay. And I have to remind people of that 'cause they think, oh, it's just all about the women and women not really, as I said to you, our men's revenue sports benefited, non-revenue sports benefited.

And as I know, I was fighting as hard for them as I was for the women. People lose sight of that. 

Mark Corbett: Yeah. 

Jean Cerra: But you're absolutely right. When we stop identifying people. By gender. You can go back to Martin Luther King. It's the character of the person and not the color of their skin.

Hey, it's the same thing. It's the competency of the person. 

Mark Corbett: Yeah. 

Jean Cerra: And not their gender that matters. It's what's above the neck it that's gonna make them successful or not. 

Mark Corbett: No, Jean. I'm with you a hundred percent. There it is. Just, [00:44:00] I think a lot of these things, a lot of time, what this is about is people trying to wrap their head around it and when there has never been a woman in that position, they wanna celebrate and I get that. And they should. But that conversation should end almost as quickly as it begins.

Celebrate that person in that position. I do wanna address one thing you brought up earlier and I see where it can be a challenge because if you've got a collegiate women's organization and you're looking at trying to blend those together, how hard was it to say, to step away from one and say, let's going to go, let's get into the ncaa.

How hard was that to get everybody on board? 

Jean Cerra: We didn't have everybody on board. It was a risk. Okay. Yeah. Remember there's only 11 of us. 

Mark Corbett: Yeah. 

Jean Cerra: That felt strongly about it. You know how many men, there's 67. At that time there was 67 D1A schools. [00:45:00] Alright. And the organization for Women, AIAW had over 400 members.

Which is another motivating factor 'cause we couldn't get anything passed because they didn't have the same needs that we had or the same chasm to fill in terms of reaching equality. That was not, that wasn't easy because we didn't know how they were going to vote. But I know that my chancellor and the presidents of some of the other institutions of the 11 institutions kept telling us that, listen, presidents are tired of, they're trying to do the right thing and , they're tired of saying, we have one set of rules for women and another set of rules for men when we have an obligation campus-wide.

You gotta remember that title IX has no reference at all to sports. It's one sentence just says you can't discriminate on the basis of gender if you're an education institution receiving federal funds. So what [00:46:00] people lose sight of is that these presidents and chancellors are implementing it campus wide.

So that means law schools, medical schools, engineering schools that used to prevent women from entering or discriminating against them. Were now wide open. 

Mark Corbett: Yeah. 

Jean Cerra: Okay. So all of the if you look today, there's probably more women in law schools and medical schools than there are men in many cases.

Alright? So that Title IX created huge opportunities for women in terms of career alternatives. When I went to college, you were either a nurse or a teacher. If you are a woman, those were about your only two choices. Okay? So these presidents were telling us, look, we're, we have to implement this. Campus wide athletics is the only place where we still have differences between how we treat men and how we treat women.

Which was the motivating factor to try to go into one organization. Now, of course, people would be critical and say why would you want to [00:47:00] go into an organization where they're suing and don't wanna provide opportunities for women? I was a first firm believer that once you're within the organization, you're in a better position to make change, which we made a lot of significant change as women in terms of players' rights, student athletes' rights and treatment and so forth, and academic standards, et cetera.

And and then once you are in that organization, once you're in the NCAA, they can't discriminate. They're, how are they gonna discriminate openly against you? Because they can't say they're not, this is a volunteer organization. They're not in our organization, therefore, we're not responsible for what happens to them.

Once you're in their organization, you're responsible for what happens to them. So you're gonna have to. Think twice about whether you're going to continue to sue. And that's exactly what happened. They dropped the lawsuits and the rest is history obviously. But the vote was really tough.

And again, [00:48:00] basically when the vote took place down here in Miami at the Fontainebleau Hilton Hotel, I'll never forget it in 1981. And it, as I said in the book, it, what I remember the most about that day is that it was one of the coldest days I grew up in Florida. But it was so cold in Fontainebleau the plot and Blue Hilton, I don't think they had heat.

A lot of places in Florida never had heaters, they didn't. 'cause you don't have that many cold days. They either didn't have heat or it wasn't working. But we're all in that convention center. In the meeting room with our coats on and gloves on and you speak and you could, the steam coming outta your mouth.

That's how cold it was there. But it was cold also in terms of the atmosphere. Yeah. Because basically the men just sat back and let the women go at it, at the micrOLPHones to get the legislation passed. Wasn't their battle as in their perspective, but it was ours. [00:49:00] The diff the pre, even though the presidents told us that, they thought we had the votes because a lot of presidents wanted to change.

Okay. We weren't sure. 

Mark Corbett: Yeah. 

Jean Cerra: Okay. We, the vote took place and we lost by one vote. Okay. And so that's to start championships for women in division one. It had passed division two and three the year before in 1980. Okay. Which the irony here is that division two and three was the crux. The majority of the membership in the AIAW, remember I told you they had over 400 members, of which only 67 were D-1-A.

Now there's more other D one schools, but those competing at the higher level, which would be like the FBS today. Okay. 

. 

Jean Cerra: , That meant that the year before the AIAW was really losing two thirds or more of its membership in D two and three, [00:50:00] once the NCAA passed that they, we were last to get into the NCAA, the D1 institutions.

But they made up, the crisis supposedly occurred after D one passed, which to this day, I don't understand because we were a small part of their membership and we always thought. We can go into the NCAA and the AIAW can continue to exist with its division two and three members, right? Yeah.

Because that was the crux of their membership. But they sent, they tend they actually, I was shocked that many, that many D2 and D3 schools actually opted to go into the NCAA. 'cause they were very loyal. But in the NCAA convention set up you get one institution, one vote back then, now everything is by conferences and so forth.

But back then, one institution one vote. So that convention was the first time the 81 convention was the [00:51:00] first time that women would have a seat at the table. Okay? It used to be the athletic director and the faculty representative would be the two people that showed up for the vote, right? Now they would seat three.

The senior woman administrator would be seated. However, you still had only one vote. So if your men, your ad and your senior woman administrator disagreed, you were probably sitting in front of the chancellor or president to decide how that institutional vote was going to be cast. So when you understand that and you realize these presidents have an obligation and these presidents aren't happy with treating their men and women differently, how do you think that president is going to want to have that institutional vote cast?

So even though those other women were very loyal to the [00:52:00] AIAW, they probably got overruled. 

Mark Corbett: Yeah, 

Jean Cerra: that wasn't true everywhere, but for the most part, based on how the vote turned out, I would say. Is a good assumption. So anyway, we lost the vote. The AIAW people were thrilled and cheering and went out.

There was a break after that, a lunch break or whatever, and so there was a break. They went outside, talked to the media, jumping up and down cheering. The convention was resumed while they were still outside talking. And one of the people that voted on the opposing side made a motion to reconsider Okay.

Okay. That the Stanford Athletic Director, one of our women of the 11 women, got to him and convinced him that we had to have another vote. But you have to be on the prevailing side in order to ask for reconsideration according to, parliamentary procedures.

Mark Corbett: And 

Jean Cerra: he had [00:53:00] voted. Not to have championships.

She convinced him to make a motion to reconsider. 

Mark Corbett: Oh. 

Jean Cerra: And so the motion to reconsider took place while they were outside. 

And then a vote took place and their institutions voted for it. And we ended up getting championships for women, which to this day, I was, and I'll tell you, I have the utmost respect for the leadership of the AIAWI went to graduate school with them.

They were my professors. They were colleagues and friends of mine. 

Mark Corbett: Yeah. 

Jean Cerra: And we wouldn't have ever had championships for women had they not decided to start it. But I'll tell you that if that vote had not gone the way it went to move to give women the option to move into the NCAA. I don't think even 50 years later we would see women where they are today.

Mark Corbett: Wow. 

Jean Cerra: Because they had this idealistic, antiquated view I wouldn't say antiquated. They just didn't believe that [00:54:00] women's sports had to follow the male model. 

Mark Corbett: Gotcha. 

Jean Cerra: Which they thought was corrupt and cheated all the time. Okay. And they were firm believers that women should be pri providing oversight for women.

Again, back to the statement I made earlier, that it wasn't just about women, rights. And so we were looking for equality, a blend kind of department where roles your gender didn't matter. You were respected for who you are as an athlete or an administrator. But I can remember him calling me one of the leaders and who had been in grad school with me saying that I betrayed women.

When I made the suggestion to have a department that was not based on gender roles. 

Mark Corbett: Wow. 

Jean Cerra: And and I said, no, I don't think that's, and I, my answer to her is was, and she was a prominent figure as well, and I said, no one is ever going to [00:55:00] accuse the two of us of not doing what's right for women's sports.

We just disagree on how to get there and how fast to get there. 

Mark Corbett: I am certainly happy that it happened the way that it did, and somebody was wise enough to approach. A no vote and, lobby them to get to the point where they could see the realization of the future. So kudos to you and that whole team of folks who did that in the Fontainebleau those many years ago and they opened wide the door for NCAA Division one Women and or period across all of the sports, but dag on Jean?

Jean Cerra: That unfortunately the AIAW folded the following year, which was not our intent, as I said to you, we thought it would continue to exist with the D two and three institutions, but then they sued the NCAA for antitrust, which I never understood how you could sue an [00:56:00] organization when that's certainly, it was men only.

But when men had two other choices, they could go into the NAIA and the N-J-C-A-A. Okay. Women had one choice. So how do you sue an organization that gives men three options when you only give women one for antitrust? It made absolutely no sense to me, and of course I testified in federal court on behalf of the NCAA and they lost that suit.

But that's the sad part because I really do think that the AIAW had a purpose for people that shared that mission and perhaps even expand to have opportunities for men and women within the AIAW 'cause. It was a philosOLPHy that some of these little schools that don't give scholarships, that, especially D3, that are very education oriented, not highly competitive, would've bought [00:57:00] into, but unfortunately they didn't have that much money and they spent it on litigation.

There's a great book out that kind of explains all of that. It's a book by Ying Wushanley. It's called one of the early books, way, way back when all this was happening called Playing Nice and Losing. Oh, if you get a chance, read it. It gives you a lot of, you'll have a lot more information about the AIAW and how that was structured.

Mark Corbett: That's a good one. I'll make sure we have that in the notes as well. Jean. And I wanna remind folks, we're talking with Jean Cerra here and luckily I got to be introduced to Jean by Karen Rudolph. She's the author of Sideline No Longer the Untold Story of Women's College Sports. She visited the Tampa Baseball Museum and Ybor, which is how this whole thing got connected.

But Jean, I can't think, 

Jean Cerra: yeah, I was with her. I was really impressed with I was with her. 

Mark Corbett: Oh, that's so cool. Yeah. 

Jean Cerra: Uhhuh. 

Mark Corbett: I didn't know. I didn't know. Josh, I'm sure probably gave you a pretty good tour. He's very informative. 

Jean Cerra: Oh, he was great. He was great. Yeah. 

Mark Corbett: Did he show [00:58:00] you Shoo Shoo Senaida Wirth?

Jean Cerra: She, I saw her on the wall. There was, isn't there a mention in there? 

Mark Corbett: Yeah. We're she's on the wall and I'm trying to do a lot this year to celebrate her centennial and unfortunately she's no longer around, but she, if I look across recreational sports in Tampa, she was doing everything from volleyball, acrobats she was doing on different softball teams for different companies.

She was in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League and when she wasn't playing, she came back and she played basketball for the Sea Breeze basketball team in Tampa. 

Jean Cerra: Oh, wow. 

Mark Corbett: Yeah. 

Jean Cerra: I'd have never heard of her. That was interesting when I was in there. And again, Moochine Fernandez I think is a person that, you should talk to her daughter, she's got a lot of information on her.

Mark Corbett: I would absolutely love to. I'm gonna, if you get this call, if you gimme the contact info, I'll make sure that I do. So I 

Jean Cerra: appreciate that. Yeah I'll alert her to the fact you'll be in touch. And and I have encouraged her to pay a visit to the museum and to bring her [00:59:00] scrapbook because, unfortunately all the stuff back then, 'cause there wasn't any media coverage, it's, you gotta work hard to uncover it.

Mark Corbett: Yep. 

Jean Cerra: It's just not readily available. 

Mark Corbett: I didn't know you, you'd came and visited. Again, I wanna thank you and for sharing your history and giving us a sense of how things have changed with Title IX. And it looks like there's still some work to do, but my gosh, who would've guessed.

Jean Cerra: I know I dreamt of it. I didn't know whether I'd live long enough to ever see it. E even Karen, when she approached me about writing the book, I said, listen, I'm 80 years old. If you're gonna write something, you better start quick. 'cause I don't know how long I'm gonna be alive. 

Mark Corbett: He's a sense of a media a 

Jean Cerra: second.

How long my brain is going to work in order to remember all this stuff. 

Mark Corbett: I thank you for sharing all this with us today. And folks, I'll Alex I'll put stuff here in the notes on Jean and Jean. Cerra, thank you so much