For nearly a century, women physical educators kept an iron-fist control of women's intercollegiate athletics within the "sex-separate" spheres of college campuses and under an educational model of competition. According to the author, Ying Wushanley, that control began to loosen significantly when Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments in 1972. Title IX meant greater opportunities for women in educational activities, including intercollegiate athletics. Ten years after the passage of the law, however, women not only gave up their educational model but also lost their power and control of women's intercollegiate athletics.

Playing Nice and Losing looks into the evolution of women's intercollegiate athletics from a historical perspective and examines the demise of the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW). Five major themes emerge: the movement from protectionism to sex-separation of women's college sports; the ascendance of women's sports as a result of the Cold War and power struggle within U. S. amateur sports; the challenge to the sex-separatist philosophy; the NCAA takeover and bankruptcy of the AIAW; and the defeat of the AIAW as a defender of theseparate but equaldoctrine. With Title IX and formerly men's organizations entering the governance of women's intercollegiate athletics, sustaining the sex-separatist AIAW became untenable in American society.