What Title IX Built and What It Broke

Title IX created the single most powerful structural advantage in the history of women’s football, but it also locked the U.S. into a development model that no longer works.

It began as a civil rights law mandating equal access to educational programs, including athletics, in any institution receiving federal funds. The result was a massive increase in girls’ and women’s participation in school sports, especially at the high school and collegiate levels. Soccer exploded in popularity because it was relatively inexpensive, scalable, and easy to implement. By the 1990s, it had become the sport of choice for a generation of American girls.

What it created was a volume-based pipeline built on school infrastructure. High school to college to the national team. Access to fields. Funded programs. Scholarships. Games. Coaches. Uniforms. Travel. Not because the market demanded it, but because the law required it. Title IX didn’t just make participation possible; it made it mandatory for schools to provide equal opportunity.

That’s how the U.S. got ahead. No other country had anything close. While Europe, South America, and Asia treated women’s football as either a curiosity or a threat, the U.S. built an entire internal ecosystem. It wasn’t just grassroots. It was institutional. That’s why the U.S. kept winning. Not because the players were more talented, but because they were more supported, played more games, and had more resources behind them from an early age.

But the success created its own mythology. Winning justified the system, so no one questioned whether it was actually the best model. Just that it was working. And that’s where the secondary problems started.

College soccer became the default pathway. But it’s not a developmental system. It has limited training time, short competitive seasons, and a massive gap between teams in terms of quality and professionalism. Meanwhile, the youth system became privatized and expensive. Pay-to-play wasn’t caused by Title IX, but Title IX removed pressure on U.S. Soccer to build something else. Because college existed, they didn’t have to.

And pay-to-play changed everything. At the recreational level, it might mean a few hundred dollars a season. But that’s not how players get discovered anymore. The only real route to the elite level is through expensive club teams. ECNL, Girls Academy, MLS Next, or the right regional travel side. If you’re not in one of those environments, you’re unlikely to be scouted. And those environments are not free. The annual cost for a player at one of the top youth clubs in the U.S. can range from $5,000 to $15,000 per year, before travel. When you add in tournament fees, flights, hotels, equipment, strength and conditioning, and individual coaching, many families are paying more per year to play youth soccer than they would to attend a four-year public university.

This is the contradiction no one in the U.S. system wants to confront. The same system built on access and equity through Title IX now operates through a private pipeline that’s unaffordable to the majority of families. Soccer in America is not a sport of opportunity. It’s a sport of investment. And visibility comes at a cost. College coaches don’t scout public high schools. They go to club showcases. ID camps. Invite-only events. If you’re not on that radar by 15, it may already be too late.

The result is exclusion disguised as development. The myth of meritocracy continues, but the path has narrowed. Wealth now substitutes for access. This isn’t just a diversity problem or a geography problem. It’s a systemic problem. Working-class talent in the U.S. is being priced out before it even reaches the scouting conversation.

In Europe, football finds the player. In the U.S., the player has to find football, and be able to pay for it.

The NWSL’s new CBA was one of the first serious steps toward breaking that cycle. For the first time, American players at the professional level had a framework for minimum standards: salary floors, housing guarantees, health benefits, and protections against unjust termination. It offered stability to players who had long operated without it. It also codified something more important: recognition that these are not student-athletes or amateurs. They are professionals.

Then came the death of the draft. What used to be the primary gateway from college to the league was replaced by open player agency. It was framed as a step forward in equity, and it was. No more players being forced to relocate across the country, sign rookie contracts they didn’t negotiate, and enter a team environment that might not suit them, personally or professionally. In theory, it was a move toward autonomy, dignity, and fairness.

But it also exposed the vacuum beneath it.

Because the U.S. still lacks a real development pathway outside the college system, the elimination of the draft created more questions than answers. If you remove the most visible, formalized transition between amateur and pro, what replaces it? Where do players go to develop? Who is scouting them? Who is signing them? Who is responsible for bridging the gap between structured collegiate systems and the demands of a professional career?

Right now, no one owns that space. It’s fragmented and informal. College is still the main environment where players are seen. But the NWSL no longer relies on college as the gateway. So instead of a cohesive pipeline, there is disconnection. The league wants to become more professional, but the U.S. system that feeds into it remains educational and outdated.

And without the draft, the onus now falls on players, and their agents, to navigate that gap themselves.

So players turn to agents. But here’s where it gets complicated. NCAA athletes are now allowed to hire agents in limited circumstances, but only for the purpose of managing name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals. That’s it. Those agents are prohibited from negotiating professional contracts, marketing the athlete’s playing ability, or facilitating transfers to pro clubs. The moment an agent crosses that line, formally or informally, the player becomes ineligible for NCAA competition.

This creates a false sense of security. A player may have an agent, but unless that agent is strictly handling NIL opportunities and doing nothing to advance the player’s football career, eligibility hangs by a thread. There’s no margin for error. Even a conversation about trial opportunities, international options, or future pro contracts can be enough to violate NCAA rules. And the NCAA doesn’t issue meaningful certifications for agents in women’s football. So players and families are left to guess who’s credible, who’s qualified, and who’s going to put their eligibility at risk.

That’s the real dilemma. You want to explore your options? You’re gambling with your scholarship. You want help navigating a complex and opaque market? You can’t accept it. You want to know if anyone in Europe is watching your game footage? You better hope they find you on YouTube, because you can’t ask someone to check. And so, many players are forced into silence, hoping for discovery rather than planning for it.

This creates a system where most players go unrepresented at the exact moment they need advocacy the most. When college ends and the NWSL draft no longer exists, you’re essentially on your own. And raw-dogging your way into the pros without guidance, without structure, and without leverage is now the norm, not the exception.

And even if you do decide to take that leap, your odds of landing with a competent agent are slim. The majority of agents operating in the women’s game are unregulated, inexperienced, and unvetted. They chase players who are young, unprotected, and ambitious, but often provide no strategy, no real contacts, and no results. For every good agent in the space, there are ten who shouldn’t be advising anyone. They don’t understand the market. They don’t have relationships with clubs. And they don’t know how to guide a player through a high-risk transition that has no safety net.

So instead of a professional pipeline, we’ve built a high-stakes maze. One wrong conversation can end your college career. One wrong agent can stall your pro one before it starts. The choice is yours, but the odds are against you either way.

That’s not structure. That’s chaos dressed up as opportunity.

Title IX made soccer accessible. The CBA made it safer. The end of the draft made it freer. But none of those things, alone or together, made it clearer.

Pathway matters. Agency matters. Equity matters. But so does structure. If the U.S. doesn’t build something to replace the system that Title IX sustained for 50 years, then freedom becomes confusion. Equity becomes instability. And agency becomes burden.

This isn’t about choosing between old and new. It’s about designing something better than both.