<p>Here’s a team that does it at a grass roots level.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/sports/outdoors/index.php?ntid=99196&ntpid=2[/url]”>http://www.madison.com/wsj/home/sports/outdoors/index.php?ntid=99196&ntpid=2</a></p>
<p>The arguments that Title IX is causing schools to cut men’s programsn and that football make school’s money fall flat with me.</p>
<p>Title IX requires colleges to provide equal opportunities to women in sport … it does not require schools to cut men’s teams … the schools are choosing what athletic budget to maintain and how many men’s and women’s teams to have. </p>
<p>Football is the deal breaker at most schools as a squad has so many players that it requires multiple women’s sports to even things out. I do not think it really matters if schools make money or not from football. If you look at the schools that absolutely make big bucks from football like Ohio State and LSU they have among the least varsity sports among 4 year colleges … the least among women and the least among men. If they are rolling in football money why would this be? They have chosen to run a profitable athletics program focussing on sports that bring visibility to the school. Meanwhile schools that absolutely lose money on footballl and their sports programs over all … tons of DIII schools like AWS and D1-AA schools like the Ivies have among the most varisty programs for their students including men’s wrestling and gymnastics teams (among the most oftern cut with the finger pointed at Title IX). Perhaps these schools believe in athletics and ECs for their student’s participation as opposed to trying to run a profit making marketing program.</p>
<p>I agree it is a shame men’s sports are getting cut left and right but please don’t hang the blame on Title IX or give credit to football for provding the bucks to find sports.</p>
<p>(I am not just making this up … I have a jock son and he asked me about sports at a bunch of schools … I’m an analytical geek so I looked up a 100+ schools and there is almost an exact inverse relationship between the profitablility of the football program and the number of sports provided by the school … go figure)</p>
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<p>I just don’t think it’s fair that SMU can be one of the best all-time programs in their sport (men’s track and field) and get rewarded by getting their team axed and having all their student-athletes, who went to SMU not only for their sport but also for an education, have to transfer out and find a new school after being promised four years of being able to compete and get a degree.</p>
<p>I’d feel better about these programs being cut if it wasn’t such a quick transition from having a team to not having a team. I found out our team was getting axed for this year in the spring, which left me hardly any time to transfer had I wanted to (I wasn’t going to, but I know others on the team wanted to and have to wait 'til this year - one full year without competing). In fact, Rice didn’t announce they were cutting their track team until late this summer - after one of our best 400/800 runners (47.8 / 1:52) had transfered to run for them this coming year!</p>
<p>At least give some sort of waiting period before cutting the sport that’ll allow athletes to transfer. That’s my biggest problem with Title IX.</p>
<p>EDIT: Going along with what 3Togo said, the reason why track and field is typically cut is because if there are two seasons, the men are counted for both of those. For example, if a team has 15 athletes and competes in indoor and outdoor track, then each person counts as TWO athletes and thus 30 total. That really, really skews the scholarship totals and schools rarely take that into account.</p>
<p>Well, 3togo, then criticize SPECIFIC programs that are flawed. If it’s done right, big name revenue sports can coexist with no-revenue womens and mens sports while academic standards are upheld. That’s a win-win. Let’s praise the Notre Dame approach and any other school that honorably addresses the issue.</p>
<p>Successful football programs attract applicants. Remember Doug Flutie? The crush of applications that flooded Boston College during his playing days were not from football wannabies hoping to make the team. They were from prospective students who wanted to be at a campus with a lively, winning football tradition. Even kids who have no interest in sports enjoy the game day atmosphere. THe excitement spreads to alumni & translates to donations. Not a bad thing, is it? Years later, BC is still benefiting from a Heisman winner bringing name recognition to their school.</p>
<p>“I agree it is a shame men’s sports are getting cut left and right but please don’t hang the blame on Title IX or give credit to football for provding the bucks to find sports.”</p>
<p>The folks cutting men’s sports are athletic directors (80-90% male) and college administrators (a large majority of college presidents being male.) These men could make other choices, of course, but if they’ve decided that men’s football is more important than men’s track and field, men’s wrestling, men’s diving, men’s golf combined, they are welcome to make that choice, or spend available university funds differently.</p>
<p>Ecliptica: That’s an odd way to count athletes. Why is only track done this way? If a football player also plays lacrosse, for example, his scholarship is only counted against the football team. NCAA is strict about this, becasue they don’t want the football scholarship cap exceeded by a tricky athletic director who awards non-revenue sport scholarships to football players willing to do another season sport. </p>
<p>Why is any athlete ever counted twice? It’s only one scholarship.</p>
<p>This was an article written in 2003 about Tulane cutting the track program in 2002. It makes some good (and humorous) points towards the end. It explains why athletes count for two sports, as well:</p>
<p>EDIT: Ugh, it’s not working for me now. Here’s the article, sorry in advance for the long post:</p>
<p>October 3, 2003-- Tulane’s track and field department was put on the shelf in 2002 thanks to Title IX, a federal amendment aimed at gender equality, which is in fact obsolete when applied to collegiate athletics. Rather than creating gender equality by adding and maintaining women’s sports, Title IX now works equally hard to subtract men’s sports.</p>
<p>Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 is a document intended to create complete gender equality in all academic institutions, private or public. The relevant portion of Title IX calls for three things with intercollegiate athletics. First, athletic financial assistance (scholarships) has to be given out in numbers proportional to the number of students of each gender. For example, if a school is 55 percent female, 55 percent of all athletic scholarships have to be given to women. People have proposed that the rule be changed to reflect athletic “interest” in the sport, but as it stands, a school like Tulane, whose student population was roughly 51 percent women in 2002, must have 51 percent (or more) of its scholarship athletes be women.</p>
<p>Similarly, “opportunities” to participate have to be proportionate as well. This means that in order to compensate for a large football team with many male players, Tulane may have to compensate by having several teams for women to have the same number of athletes.</p>
<p>Third, male and female sports have to be treated equally, although not necessarily exactly the same. This essentially means that the school has to spend equally. Things such as locker rooms, equipment, dining and publicity have to be equal.</p>
<p>Some of this does not make sense. Attendance for women’s sports is historically lower than men’s sports, and thus the school may not be able to make back the money it spends publicizing women’s sports, but by law the school has to.</p>
<p>There was a time when Title IX was necessary. Women athletes were not given a fair shake in 1972. However, times have changed. Many women’s sports are established, and women now have myriad opportunities to compete athletically.</p>
<p>Title IX states that its purpose is not to eliminate men’s sports; yet since its inception in 1972, over 250 collegiate men’s sports teams have been eliminated. The main reason Tulane picked track and field as the sport to cut? Under NCAA rules and regulations, track and field athletes count as both indoor and outdoor athletes; hence 15 male athletes counted twice, as 30, under the NCAA system.</p>
<p>Tulane now fully complies with Title IX rules and regulations, and thus we keep our NCAA Division-I status. As an institution, Tulane does not receive awards, accolades or financial compensation for this. Our athletics program is forced to find creative ways to balance the sports, namely creating a women’s swimming and diving team when the only swimming facilities athletes have to use is the student-owned Reily Center swimming pool. If our Associated Student Body had not decided to raise fees to create the Reily Center years ago, our athletics program would have been forced to spend more money to create facilities for another sport it cannot afford, as it ran a multi-million dollar deficit last year.</p>
<p>The fight has gone past equality, and the scale is now unbalanced in favor of women. Universities are losing money in order to comply with the law, and are often forced to drop men’s sports in order to provide equal opportunities to both genders. There are stories of other universities giving scholarships to women who aren’t deserving just so that they can legally give another scholarship to a man.</p>
<p>Actually, I’ve changed my mind. Title IX didn’t go far enough. Collegiate athletics are still unfair to different groups of people. The basketball team, for instance, has a surplus of tall people. Universities should be forced to hand out a certain percentage of scholarships to short people. Also, the entire athletic program is biased against overweight people. There should be a law stating that they need to give scholarships to the obese in direct proportion to the amount of obese people enrolled in the school. Scholarships should be awarded to every single ethnic group in direct proportion to the amount of people of each ethnic group enrolled in the school, as well as by tax bracket and region. Then and only then will collegiate athletics be truly fair to everyone.</p>
<p>mini, the gender of the AD doesn’t matter. Men’s football is absolutely more important than all the sports you mentioned combined. All but the most irrational recognize that. Title IX offers the univeristies no choice. They cut the program with the least impact. Women athletes consistently petition for their male counterpart teams to be retained. Nobody is listening.</p>
<p>No one forces them to cut ANYTHING.</p>
<p>And, frankly, I personally hold football of no importance whatsoever. IF all those male ADs and college presidents feel differently, that’s their right, as long as they uphold the equity end of the bargain. And no one forces them to take a dime in federal aid either.</p>
<p>I think Title IX is the greatest thing to happen in college sports in a century.</p>
<p>Most D-1 BCS teams are not spending university funds. They are self-supporting although some might have a student sports fee in exchange for free tickets to most events. </p>
<p><a href=“http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/04/commentary/column_sportsbiz/sportsbiz/[/url]”>http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/04/commentary/column_sportsbiz/sportsbiz/</a></p>
<p>“I think Title IX is the greatest thing to happen in college sports in a century” </p>
<p>Hey, something we agree on. I should play lotto now and hell is pretty cold right now. :)</p>
<p>Yes, just think of the wonderful men’s track team that a school could have if all its athletic funds went toward that. But it wouldn’t be fair to other sports or women track athletes. (For some reason, this reminds me of a recent Onion satirical article, about Florida State deciding to eliminate its academic program since this was detracting from its football program…)</p>
<p>The double-counting of male track athletes twice by the NCAA seems a more logical thing to object to, or the abrupt way Tulane responded to the Title IX problem. Actually, by 2002, it shouldn’t have had a Title IX problem to begin with that would necessitate abrupt action disadvantaging students that had relied upon a particular state of affairs continuing.</p>
<p>I don’t know who wrote that article about Tulane. But the description of how Title IX works is inaccurate. To take one example, the article says:</p>
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<p>No, the total amount of aid must be roughly proportionate to the relative numbers of male and female athletes at the school.</p>
<p>Here is a more accurate description of Title IX – <a href=“http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/ge/aboutRE.html[/url]”>http://bailiwick.lib.uiowa.edu/ge/aboutRE.html</a></p>
<p>Doug Flutie and BC … Notre Dame … </p>
<p>Cornell … Men’s Varisty Teams = 17 … Women’s Varisty Teams = 17
Williams … MVT = 16 … WVT = 16
BC … MVT = 13 … WVT = 16
ND … MVT = 12 … WVT = 12
LSU … MVT = 7 … WVT = 9 </p>
<p>All that football money for BC and Notre Dame and they have less men’s teams and less women’s teams than money losing Cornell and Williams … why would that be? And yes, these 2 schools do do a better job of providing opportunities in non-revenue sports than most big-time D1 football schools … kudos for spending more on non-revenue sports than most of their partners … shame on them (in my opinion) for not providing as much oppsortunity as tons of other schools do. </p>
<p>To me it is rather ironic that there are less than 200 D1 football programs in the US out of 3000 schools … among these 200 maybe 50 earn a substantial “profit” on their football program … and thse 50 schools by and large have the least varsity sports among the 3000 schools. I’m with Mini on this one … the school administrators have made a very consicous choice … a choice 2800 other schools did not make and did not blame on Title IX while living with much less financial backing.</p>
<p>Ecliptica, I feel for you and if you choose to transfer I hope you find a good new home … the whole D1 deal is very weighted against the student if anything changes.</p>
<p>DianeR,
Thanks for the link. Clearly, Title IX does not apply to high school athletics. I am sick to death of seeing nearly new equipment and facilities replaced and upgraded for football players, while other sports of both genders languish with substandard or no equipment and run down facilities. I don’t know if my daughter will compete in college athletics, but if she does, YAY FOR TITLE IX!</p>
<p>FYI - Title IX absolutely applies to HS … for that matter it applies to grade school programs also … any program receiving federal funds. College programs are very visible; inequities at one of tens of thousands of high schools is harder to find for the parties responsible.</p>
<p>:eek: OMG, I didn’t know that! Well, our hs is probably not in compliance! Don’t even get me started!</p>
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that is not my understanding (and I am not an expert). The whole topic of proportionality brings lots of debates. Proportion of what … # of athletes, # of scholarships, or dollars spent. What should the goal be … % of female athletes matches the student population … or it’s OK to be below the % of females in the student population as long as “reasonable” progress is being made moving towards that percentage … to be honest I have never seen an interpretation using the % of athletes as a measure. (I am far from an expert just and interested jock who reads about in the news.)</p>
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then your local federal authorities should pursue if it is brought to their attention … one big catch, these suits often take years and it will likely be someone else’s daughter who reaps the benefits of bringing a school into compliance.</p>
<p>Amen to lkf725!
I bought my daughter’s goalie equipment because the school stuff was too small and she kept coming home with injuries due to the size problem.</p>
<p>I look across the field hockey field during games and see dozens of football players at practice with helmets, pads and numerous specialized coaches. I like football but it does get irritating that they get all the resources.</p>
<p>The vast majority of the BCS D-1 football schools are state schools and do not have the free $$$ to spend school funds on minor sports. Most get no money from the school general funds. Stanford and the few other privates have more extra cash and can afford to fund a large sports program for both sexes. However the funding for sports that the big schools do have is far more per sport than at schools like Williams. The large state programs plus Stanford and ND win most of the championships in male and female sports.</p>