From Mechelle: Goodbye to an advocate of women's sports

We can only hope Brand’s replacement is as committed as he was to women’s sports. Brand consistently spoke with power and eloquence in defense of Title IX. That included condemning the ridiculous e-mail survey that the Department of Education introduced in 2005 as a way for schools to measure compliance with Title IX.

In the eight years of the Bush Administration, the Department of Education tried very hard to go through the back door a couple of times to effectively weaken Title IX and make schools feel that they were on “better” legal ground if they were ever faced with a Title IX lawsuit.

The survey essentially sought to make women “prove” they were interested in sports while not making men do the same thing. Brand was very firm in saying this was absolutely counterproductive to the mission of athletic departments. And whenever university administrators used the tired old platitudes about how it was Title IX’s “fault” that something happened, Brand would always call them out for it.