Title IX became law 40 years ago Saturday, and while it wasn’t specifically geared toward sports — it includes not a single mention of athletics — we have come to associate it with the opportunities it has provided women in the realm of athletics.

Those benefits aren’t small. Female participation in high school and college sports has increased by more than a thousand percent since 1972, and the number of female high school athletes now tops 3 million nationwide. Title IX, according to one study, is responsible for roughly 20 percent of the increase in women’s education and about 40 percent of the rise in employment for 25-to-34-year-old women. Women who play sports, according to some estimates, will make 14 percent higher wages than non-athletes over their lifetimes.

Still, significant challenges still face women in sports. At the collegiate level, 91 percent of the athletics directors who oversee women’s sports are men. There are only three female athletics directors at top-tier Division I colleges and universities; there have been only nine in history. Just four percent of collegiate athletics directors at the Division I level are female. No team in the big four American professional sports has ever had a female coach, neither has a men’s football or basketball team at the top college level. There has never been a female general manager in any of the major American sports.

Even in women’s sports, opportunities are declining. Forty years ago, females made up 90 percent of the coaches in women’s college sports. That has dropped to 42 percent, the lowest number on record. Successful female coaches have struggled to find new jobs, and they make significantly less than their male counterparts.

Perhaps, then, it’s time for the NCAA and major professional leagues to adopt a “Rooney Rule” for women. Facing a dearth of African-American head coaches, the National Football League instituted the Rooney Rule in 2003, mandating that franchises had to interview at least one minority candidate for any coaching vacancy. The rule later spread to include senior-level front office positions.

Though it was criticized by both blacks and whites at the time, the rule’s success is undeniable. In the 13 years preceding the Rooney Rule, NFL teams hired just four black head coaches. In the decade since, there have been 11 black head coaches, and two others were named interim coaches in that time. In front offices, the story is much the same. The NFL received its second consecutive “A” grade for diversity hiring last year, and minorities hold 25 percent of the league’s senior football operations positions. Minorities in the NFL still face challenges, but the Rooney Rule has created opportunities that were scarce, and often didn’t exist at all, before.

There may not be a large enough pool of candidates yet to mandate that females be interviewed for head coaching jobs at the top levels of men’s professional sports. But enacting such a rule could boost female coaching opportunities in women’s sports, and it could increase the number of women holding top-level positions in professional sports franchises and college athletics departments. Eventually, it could lead to breakthroughs for women in male sports — creating opportunities for women to coach men’s basketball, baseball, and football teams, just as men coach women in softball, women’s basketball, and other sports.

Sports leagues have taken large steps toward increasing participation of women over the last decade, but a glass ceiling not unlike the one once faced by black coaches in the NFL still exists. A Rooney Rule for women may just be the key to breaking it.

It’s bizarre to watch the Supreme Court’s decision in its fleeting obscenities case today get reported as some sort of victory for broadcasters. Yes, the court, in a decision written by Anthony Kennedy, voided three Federal Communications Commissions decisions against Fox and ABC, declaring that the FCC hadn’t given the networks proper prior notice that the things they broadcast—two incidences of expletives spoken, unscripted, by stars during awards broadcasts and seven seconds of female nudity from behind—could be considered obscene. It’s a nice reprieve for Fox and ABC, but the Court decided it didn’t need to address the First Amendment issues involved. The does nothing to change what networks can broadcast or the FCC’s general ability to determine what’s obscene. As the Parents Television Council pointed out in a statement on the ruling, there are 1.5 million pending indecency cases that the FCC, because it did give proper prior notice to those broadcasters, is now free to rule on.

But the decision does reveal how capriciously the FCC behaved during the period when these penalties were assessed.

“The Govern­ment argues instead that ABC had notice that the scene in NYPD Blue would be considered indecent in light of a 1960 decision where the Commission declared that the ‘televising of nudes might well raise a serious question of programming contrary to 18 U. S. C. §1464.’,” Kennedy explained. “An isolated and ambiguous statement from a 1960 Commission decision does not suffice for the fair notice required when the Government intends to impose over a $1 million fine for allegedly im­permissible speech.” Well, no kidding, but it’s amazing that the commission was brazen enough to think that would cut it. Particularly given, as Kennedy notes, “a Commission ruling prior to the airing
of the NYPD Blue episode had deemed 30 seconds of nude buttocks ‘very brief’ and not actionably indecent in the context of the broadcast.” That the Commission didn’t acknowledge that is testament to either sloppy work and ignorance of its own precedents, or a conviction that the FCC can dramatically change tack at will.

That isn’t to say that new commissioners won’t be more rigorous and less capricious. But Kennedy did insist that “There is no need, however, for an agency to provide de­tailed justifications for every change or to show that the reasons for the new policy are better than the reasons for the old one.” It’s a sentiment that should unnerve both decency advocates and those of us who’d like to see more creative freedom for television writers.

In the meantime, I’d love to see more shows do what Parks and Recreation and Southland do: write dialogue that reflects how adults actually speak to each other in times of stress and excitement and pain and love, and bleep as necessary. It’s a workaround that avoids the—oh, the horror—prospect of expanding a child’s vocabulary in an instant, while acknowledging the adulthood of the target audience—and it’s a nice little rebuke visual rebuke to the confused standards we have today, a reminder that the FCC thinks the sight of Leslie Knope uttering the occasional obscenity is a threat.

My dear colleague Alyssa said perhaps all that needs to be said about Adam Corolla’s pathetic excuse for a comedic mind, but his continued presence in the mainstream media this week — a bizarre phenomenon I’m convinced owes entirely to the fact that he is straight, white, male, and loud — unfortunately demands a bit of further discussion. In an appearance on CBS’s The Talk this week, Sara Gilbert (the Roseanne star who came out as a lesbian in 2010), confronted Corolla on the offensive way he talks about the LGBT community. He gave this illuminating response:

COROLLA: If somebody says to me, ‘What do you think of your mother-in-law,’ and I go, ‘Oh, she’s a delight, I love her dearly,’ nobody laughs. So if they say, ‘What do you think of Chaz Bono,’ I have to say something that’s horrible, so I can get a laugh. And everyone goes, ‘oh, that’s what you think?’ Nice doesn’t get laughs, especially on stage…When did we start holding comedians up to the level of politicians and teachers? We’re supposed to say these things…we make no policies. I don’t control anything. I just tell jokes.

Watch it:

It’s refreshing to hear Corolla confirm that the only way he knows how to get laughs is to be horrible, but his remarks are telling. (For the record, plenty of straight comedians — Louis CK, Dave Chapelle, Lewis Black, Jon Stewart, etc. — have no trouble getting laughs with LGBT-friendly bits.) The entire reason he believes he can say whatever he wants about women, LGBT people, or whoever is because in his understanding of the world, he bears no accountability for his words. Unfortunately, in this regard, he seems to be correct. He can’t lose an election like a politician, nor can he be fired like a teacher. In fact, the entertainment industry rewards him for his poor taste and outlandish remarks, as evidenced by this very interview.

The Adam Corollas (or Tracy Morgans) of the world don’t have to care about the trans kid whose parents reject her or the gay kid whose classmates bully him, because nothing in the entertainment industry compels them to. But they’re wrong if they think what they say doesn’t have a profound influence on society and public discourse. If Adam Corolla truly believes that the only impact of his “jokes” is the uncomfortable laughter he derives from his audiences, then he is as narrow-minded about the world as he is unfunny.

The bridge is yours.

-We’re getting a Sesame Street movie, apparently.

-This show should only be allowed to happen if David Cronenberg hires Mary Roach to be in the writers’ room.

-James Poniewozik being typically smart on what people will and won’t pay for in a digital media environment.

-I like Jamie Weinman’s thoughts on Andrew Sarris.

-It’s been That Kind of Week, so you get Carly Rae Jepsen and Owl City because I’m in the mood to be happy:

The Invisible War, the Kirby Dick-directed documentary about the sexual assault epidemic in the military, was one of the best movies I saw at Sundance. Its exploration of the culture of which scandals like the Tailhook case are just a symptom is powerful. And the movie takes on a rarely-discussed subject, how sexual assault affects men both as victims and as through their wives’, daughters’, and parents’ trauma. The Invisible War is a difficult movie to watch, but it’s a moving and bracing one, and it’s helped spark a national conversation about the damage done by indifference and abdications of responsibility within the chain of command. I spoke to the movie’s producer, Amy Ziering, about finding men and women who were willing to come forward about to share their stories, and how the military can lead society—if it decides it wants to change. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

I’m curious how both of you came to this subject matter.

We read an article in Salon about four or five years ago, and we were kind of shocked and appalled by what we’d read, and started doing our own investigating, and found [the story] was correct if not worse. Of course, we’d been aware of things like Tailhook and Aberdeen, and these scandals that were reported in the press. But we hadn’t been aware that it was an ongoing problem in the way that it was. The statistics were one of the things the article helped us point us towards. These flare-ups that were reported in the press as these one-off situations were symptoms of an underlying chronic condition. They would get attention when there was this cluster issue that rose to the surface. It’s misperceived in that way…It’s served the military and promoted what we we have called a coverup. Its ideal situtation is [assaults are] presented as a strange, aberrant occurrance as opposed to something that’s ongoing and daily. They do temporary damage control and everything moves on.

How did you find your subjects? Given the consequences women often face for speaking out about being sexually assaulted, it couldn’t have been easy.

We did extensive investigative work. we went to VA centers and put out flyers. we talked to everyone who was an advocate in any way, we used social media, we had a Facebook page. One reason this issue hasn’t come forward is it doesn’t breed naturally outspoken advocates. The nature of the trauma is so severe and radically debilitating that people are reticent to speak up because of the retaliation they’ve experienced, and because of the difficulties they’re having in their day to day lives. It’s hard to become an activist when you can barely get out of bed…That was a very long process. By the time we decided who we were going forward with as our main subjects, we built a good, trusting relationship. We were careful to preselect people who we thought would have the stability, wherewithal, fortitude to handle public scrutiny when the film came out. The last thing we wanted this to do was negatively affect anybody. Any interview, we said your mental health comes first, we can stop and start.

How have they reacted to seeing the movie?

Hugely positively. It’s been life-changing just to feel like they’re not alone, they have this community, and to feel suported and believed. That’s a huge difference to someone who’s been marginalized. Two of them said it saved their marriage. Many of them, when they’ve shown relatives, the change in the relatives’ attitudes really improved all their family relations…We’ve had several people offer to fix Kori’s jaw, and we have three families that have banded together to undertake that.
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Forbes’ annual list of the highest-paid actresses is out, and three things about it stand out.

1. The ceiling’s not that high: Kristen Stewart is the highest-paid actress on the list with $34.5 million for the entire year. Robert Downey Jr. will make $50 million from The Avengers alone this year. Even women who anchor well-established commercial franchises aren’t as valuable as men who help anchor comparable properties.

2. There’s not a woman of color to be found: Jennifer Anniston’s the lowest-paid woman on the list with $11 million. I’d love to know what Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, both of whom were nominated for Academy Awards, made.

3. A lot of the money on this list wasn’t actually paid to the relevant actresses in salary for movies they made: A lot of these actresses’ incomes come from perfume contracts, endorsement deals, and residuals. That’s terrific, and it would be wonderful if more actresses, like Cameron Diaz, were getting rich backend deals. But it’s worth remembering that these actresses’ salaries aren’t as high as the overall figures quoted here.

I hadn’t really thought of it this way until now, but Anna Karenina really is kind of the perfect movie for a year of dudes being horrible and sanctimonious about women and sexual freedom, isn’t it?

Also, Jude Law should play censorious more often. He’s always struck me as one of those actors whose looks ended up sending him in the wrong direction from his talents.