Texas A&M Laboratory for Diversity in Sport to host conference

Dr George Cunningham of Texas A&M moderated the 2011 Sport Marketing Association panel discussion on diversity sports marketing on which Doug Litwin represented the FGG  We posted about his recent article on the value of diversity for sports programs. We're pleased that several Equality Coaching Alliance supporters will be participating in an event later this year:

Texas A&M's Laboratory for Diversity in Sport will host a Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in Sport conference. Conference speakers include Helen Carroll; Pat Griffin of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network Sports Project; Jocks author Dan Woog; and law professor Erin Buzuvis, co-founder of the Title IX blog.

Information on the conference is available at http://sogis.tamu.edu . Information on the Laboratory for Diversity in Sports is available at http://www.diversityinsport.com .

In his latest article for the Bay Area Reporter, ECA coordinator Roger Brigham writes of Cunningham's research:

We have all long known from personal experience that homophobia and other forms of prejudice are harmful to their targets. We've witnessed more than enough suicides and the blocked opportunities to convince us. Now a Texas researcher can show sports administrators what we have long believed: schools that actively promote sexual orientation diversity on their staffs perform significantly better on the playing field than their homophobic counterparts.

George Cunningham, a professor in Texas A&M University's Department of Health and Kinesiology who researches the impact of diversity in sports, surveyed hundreds of senior administrators from NCAA Division I schools for his study on the relationships among sexual orientation diversity, diversity strategies, and program performance and compared the responses to how their institutions scored in the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics Directors' Cup annual rankings, which awards points to top performing men's and women's team results.

Based on those results, the report concluded, "Organizations with high sexual orientation diversity and that followed a strong proactive diversity strategy outperformed their peers in objective measures of performance."

In other words, shed your homophobia and you shed an obstacle to your success.

Keep reading HERE.