DePaul hopes Women's Athletics Advancement fee raises 'real dollars'

CHICAGO — DePaul Vice President and Director of Athletics DeWayne Peevy is hopeful if the men’s basketball program’s ticket sales this season return to pre-COVID-19 levels, then the athletic department could raise upwards of $50,000 from its recently announced Women’s Athletics Advancement fee.

Starting this season, the fee adds $1 to the cost of DePaul men’s basketball single-game, mini-pack, group and and select promotional tickets. It doesn’t apply to season or student tickets.

While the fee was only recently announced in September, Peevy envisions that he and his staff will take the final total raised to donors in hopes that they’ll match it. Maybe the projected mid-five-figure funds could double, triple or quadruple that way.

“I don’t want to get the cart out before the horse a little bit, but my thing is I’m not trying to make it minimal,” Peevy told On3. “OK, if we can do this together where ‘Joe fan’ has created this, I can go to other donors and say, ‘How about matching this?’ And it’s going directly to women’s athletics.”

Peevy said it’s unique that DePaul hadn’t implemented a donation attached to its athletic tickets, prior to the Women’s Athletics Advancement fee.

Just riffing, Peevy said maybe the funds could contribute to future scholarships, which is just one of the many possible investments. He said he’ll sit down with the head coaches of DePaul’s women’s athletic programs to discuss how the money could be invested in their programs.

“I don’t want to look at it as a DeWayne discretionary fund,” Peevy said, smiling. “‘Let’s see what we do with it.'”

‘Where have you been the last 49 and a half years?’

June 23 marked the 50th anniversary of Title IX, which is part of the Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits sex-based discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding. The milestone was celebrated through documentaries and significant marketing campaigns from companies such as the dating and social networking app Bumble and Sprouts Farmers Market, each of which signed 50 women to NIL deals.

Leaders in college athletics said the anniversary was and is certainly worthy of celebration but more work needs to be done, too.

“That is, yes, worthy of celebration and I think we also recognize, ‘OK, now let’s get back to work because we have much work to do still as we think about Title IX’s spirit and intent of providing those equitable opportunities,'” Horizon League Commissioner Julie Roe Lach told On3 in mid-July, weeks after Title IX’s 50th anniversary.

A-10 Commissioner Bernadette McGlade says she’s a product of Title IX.

“I went to UNC with two of my older sisters on a basketball scholarship back in the 1976, which was right at the cusp of Title IX being implemented and had it not been for Title IX, we’re first-generation college graduates in our family,” she told On3 in late June. “If we didn’t have that, we wouldn’t have degrees from the University of North Carolina nor have the successful life, professional careers that we’ve had.”

Georgia Tech hired McGlade as the school’s woman’s basketball coach when she was 23. She was hired for her current role in 2008, when she said she was one of just two female D-I commissioners.

“I think we have to maintain, and not maintain but increase the funding and the commitment that we are and have been focused on as far as Title IX’s concerned,” McGlade said. “I feel like everybody really stepped it up, like, the last six months and sometimes you want to say, ‘Where have you been the last 49 and a half years?’ And again, that’s not to be negative but there has been significant advancement changes.”

Peevy echoed a similar message as Roe Lach and McGlade.

“We can’t stop thinking about intentional investment in our women’s sports,” Peevy said. “I mean, DePaul’s had a long history of success in women’s athletics and my primary focus of men’s basketball is not trying to take away from anything else. We’ve got to lift all boats. I know that men’s basketball’s success can help others have more success because of the attention it brings.

“But I’m not trying to take any steps back.”

Women’s Athletics Advancement fee is ‘not a charity-type thing’

Peevy was clear that the goal of the Women’s Athletics Advancement fee is to raise a significant amount of money — “because if it’s $5,500, I mean what is it doing?” he said — but it’s just one prong in the athletic department’s approach to investing in its women’s athletic programs.

“I’m not banking on this to fund my program,” he said. “This is not a charity-type thing. This is an initiative to bring awareness and to bring more focus on that we need to continue to invest in women’s athletics. I’m hoping that if there’s a little bit of attention that comes from this, where other schools want to do it, and Marquette and some others start doing it, then that makes me feel even better that it’s the attention that we really need to invest, and we never ask people to invest enough in women’s athletics.”

Peevy rapped on the table in his office upon saying each word — “we really need to invest” — emphasizing the statement.

“We proudly go out there and ask for dollars for men’s basketball and football but how many times do we really invest in that level of women’s athletics as a whole?” he said. “A lot of them, we don’t even charge to go, let alone where we have annual funding to it directly.”

About a month after DePaul’s announcement, fellow BIG EAST member Marquette announced a similar program. A $1 donation will be added to Marquette’s men’s basketball mini-plan and single-game ticket sales in the 2022-23 season through its Elevating Excellence in Women’s Athletics initiative.

For reference, UConn, the only public school in the BIG EAST, reported just shy of $4 million in men’s basketball ticket sales on its NCAA Membership Financial Reporting System report in the 2020-21 season, when it rejoined the conference.

DePaul women’s basketball’s move to Wintrust Arena

Peevy cited DePaul’s women’s basketball program moving to Wintrust Arena as its full-time home arena as another example of the university’s investment in women’s athletics. Peevy said the move to the 10,387-seat arena came with a cost of $400,000.

“Why aren’t we playing down there every day?” Peevy asked, rhetorically, recalling the thought process at the time.

Peevy said when he brought the idea to DePaul women’s basketball coach Doug Bruno, Bruno said he just wanted to play in one arena, rather than multiple. The team used to play home games at McGrath-Phillips Arena, too.

“There’s certain things that only so many women’s programs can provide,” Peevy said. “Now we’ve given them an asset that that investment that we can make — keep in mind, that $400,000 could’ve went anywhere. It’s not like I got a new $400,000 from somebody just for that.

“So how do we continue to make those investments, whether it’s in our staffing, other positions, the needs?”

Peevy hopes Title IX’s anniversary serves as a reminder

Peevy summarized the current landscape of Division I athletics, from conference realignment to the proposed and potential expansion of NCAA championship fields. Football, and to a lesser extent men’s basketball, are the primary drivers of those discussions and decisions.

But don’t lose sight of women’s athletic programs, Peevy said.

“We talk about all this movement. Everything that’s going on in college athletics is driven by football,” Peevy said. “Basketball schools are trying to figure out what it means for them and then the next thing is talking about expansion of the men’s tournament. Nobody’s talking about the women’s tournament. At all. Nobody’s talking about what it does to other sports. At all. Nobody’s talking about the overlap of the seasons and what it does and attention to other sports because they’re not on television. They’re not driving the media rights deals.

“But we’ve got to continue to invest and hopefully Title IX is just a reminder that there’s other things going on and this is just the world we live in, yes, but don’t forget about everything else.”