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Lawmakers rip Emmert, demand more progress on NCAA equity

Mark Emmert
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Three congressional lawmakers say the NCAA has made "inadequate progress" in addressing the inequities in the treatment of male and female athletes.

The lawmakers singled out the college basketball tournaments that begin this week and sent a six-page letter to NCAA President Mark Emmert.

Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney of New York, Jackie Speier of California, and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey say he has failed to implement some of the key recommendations from an external review last year.

They said the NCAA was “violating the spirit of gender equity as codified in Title IX," the Associated Press reported.

The NCAA says its work is not done, and many improvements have been made.

"We are focused on the many improvements made since then that provide students across all our championships with a lifelong memorable experience," the NCAA said in response to the letter, the AP reported.

According to the news outlet, lawmakers had an issue that the NCAA had not created a chief business officer role that would oversee NCAA’s media partner relationships with CBS/Turner and ESPN, the Corporate Partner Program.

According to the AP, another thing the NCAA has also not done was change the leadership structure where NCAA vice president of women’s basketball Lynn Holzman would report directly to Emmert instead of going through NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt.