Title IX's biggest enemy is college football

Friday, June 28, 2002
John Mesh

Happy birthday Title IX -- you turned 30 on Sunday.

The impact of Title IX has been felt mainly in athletics. Women's sports has thrived in the last 30 years.

The Olympics, World Cup soccer, collegiate sports such as basketball and softball and the WNBA have taken off in popularity due mainly to Title IX.

Now there is a movement -- led by the National Wrestling Coaches Association -- to get rid of Title IX.

They claim that their sport is in danger and that Title IX is a "quota system."

Because of Title IX, they claim, men's programs have been eliminated.

One part of Title IX does mandate that if a school has a female population of 53 percent, than 53 percent of the athletic funding must be appropriated to women's athletics.

The wrestling coaches are sadly mistaken. Their argument comes from fear and the desire to want to take college athletics back to the dark ages.

If Title IX is overturned, then all of the progress that has been made in the last 30 years has been for naught.

High schools have benefited from Title IX. In 1972, only 1 in 27 females participated in sports. Now it's 1 in every 2.5. There has an 847 percent increase in female participation in high school athletics since Title IX was enacted.

The problem isn't women's athletics -- the problem is football. But heaven forbid that football scholarships be cut.

But there is a strong case being made for either cutting football scholarships or exempting the sport from the Title IX formula.

According to a special report by ESPN's "Outside the Lines" program on Sunday, 31 of the 114 NCAA Division I football programs, 31 are hemorrhaging red ink from heavy debts.

Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins said the number is actually closer to 41.

"The dirty little secret about Title IX is that it never has been fully enforced -- and can't be without serious cuts in football budgets," Jenkins wrote in a recent column.

Last week the National Women's Law Center cited 30 schools for non-compliance, including Notre Dame, Miami and Kansas State.

The law states that schools receiving federal funding cannot discriminate on the basis of sex.

"What this means for athletic departments is that they must award scholarships equitably in proportion to the makeup of the student body."

So athletic directors end up cutting so-called minor sports to make ends meet, not realizing that their biggest bleeder is football.

Most schools still depend on football to carry the weight for the funding of their other sports.

Here are some examples of how football just overwhelms all the other sports:

* At Kansas State University, 49 percent of the students are women, and female athletic participation is 52 percent. But women receive only 35 percent of athletic scholarships.

* The University of Miami, which defeated our beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers in the national title game, has 107 football players and a budget of $13 million.

Yet Miami cut its men's swimming program. That program produced Olympic legend Greg Louganis.

* The University of Massachusetts cut men's tennis, but its football program is several million dollars in debt.

* Tulane University has 106 players on its football roster and lost $3.6 million.

* In 1995, UCLA administrators cut men's swimming and gymnastics, citing Title IX effects.

The school saved exactly $266,490 by doing away with the sports.

UCLA's football budget is more than $6.5 million. * The University of Kansas cut men's swimming and other programs, citing mounting debts.

It would seem that the root cause of KU's problems is its football progam, which has hired yet another new coach and has had very few winning seasons in recent years.

Kansas is a basketball school. A losing football program at a basketball school doesn't draw many fans and doesn't generate much revenue.

The NCAA permits its Division I football programs to hand out 85 scholarships, almost enough for a first-, second-, third- and fourth-string offense and defense.

Big-time schools such as Nebraska, Tennessee and Michigan often suit up 110-120 players.

Schools are permitted to just suit up 55 scholarship players for road games.

This excess doesn't make much sense, especially when other programs are suffering.

If the number of football scholarships is cut from 85 to 70-75, the other funds could help keep other programs from being cut. Instead of facing the football question, opponents of Title IX call it a "quota," said Jenkins.

"The word automatically attracts conservative intellectuals, to whom a quota is an anathema. This is a doubly neat trick because what it does is pit the 'Have Nots' against the 'Have Nots.'"

More than 170 men's wrestling programs have been discontinued in the last 20 years, as schools have made cuts to comply with Title IX.

Florida Athletic Director Jeremy Foley claims Title IX comes "at the expense of" smaller men's sports.

Seventy percent of Division I athletic budgets are devoted to football and men's basketball.

"Athletic directors chronically overspend on football and basketball, keeping up with the Joneses, and hoping that a big bowl season or an NCAA tournament berth will return a cash windfall," Jenkins said. "This is a form of gambling. But administrators won't admit this -- their deficits couldn't be a matter of bad management."

Nine circuit courts have upheld Title IX and most NCAA-member schools are not in compliance.

It's time to slay the college football "white elephant."

John J. Mesh is the sports editor of the McCook (Neb.) Daily Gazette. He believes that Title IX shouldn't be messed with and should be enforced better by the NCAA. If Title IX can succeed at the high school level, than it can do the same at the collegiate level. He can reached at sports@mccookgazette.com.

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