Today's Wall Street Journal has an article by June Kronholz about Title IX. I am not a big fan of Kronholz but it is a good article. She ends the piece with a lament about soccer moms who have sons who are not given the opportunity to pplay soccer.
Unfortunately, not being a subscriber, I couldn't read the article on line. Here's my question: was she going after Title IX interpretation as being the devil, or being balanced by identifying that schools are making conscious choices to continue to spend large sums of money (facilities and scholarships) on their football and basketball programs, thereby not being able to 'afford' smaller men's programs. And there is also the size of the football teams that also drives up the numbers disparity. I'm also not a fan of using the balancing act of numbers to meet the Title XI requirements, but I'm not too sure that's the whole issue here. And for those who say that schools don't cut back on football and basketball because those are the money-makers, that's not true for most Division I schools. It's a complicated issue. I only hope her piece layed them all out.
It's a fairly good article about the Bush's promise to look at the law, and the wrestling coaches lawsuit. The background information trys to cover the whole controversy over compliance and the complications with complying. Um, you didn't read the article carefully enough. She's quoting Kimberly Shuld: "What about the soccer moms who have sons who can't play?". The last two paragraphs were the obligatory quotes- one from a "Democtratic pollster" and the concluding quote from someone affiliated with a "conservative research group". Since the article is pay only, I'll try add some info from it: Article Title: "College Coaches Press Bush on Title IX --- President Vowed a 'Reasonable Approach' to Law, but he Risks Angering Women". And the first line is "The Nation's college wrestling coaches have President Bush in a headlock". The event which prompted the article was the appointment of a commision to study Title IX , then report back after the elections (naturally).
Before this thread proceeds much farther, I vote we all promise to not call anyone names. Period. Well, it's a thought anyway...
You can't look at the article without being a subscriber and I can't quote the whole thing without violating copyright. One poster did quote with more precision than the final sentence of the article, which shows some sympathy for males who are denied the opportunity to play intercollegiate soccer while in college. Flashman, good idea. The odds of people being civil when I post on this and other subjects are not good.
Did she realy mention boy's not able to play soccer when the facts have been stated that soccer has almost as many opportunities as ever for men at this point and time. I won't call names, but I will present the facts when Thomas spreads erroneous information.
She specifically mentions the closing of wrestling, track and gymnastics. As for football- she mentions that women's groups have suggested that colleges trim their "huge football rosters to make room for smaller men's sports." She continues that these same groups have resisted attempts to specificially exclude football, and add cheerleading as a sport. Kronholz does specifically address the quota issue. She mentions that half-dozen courts have upheld Title IX because there are two other ways to comply besides "proportionality". Well, Kronholz doesn't say anything about this, but I'd also add that Division I soccer men programs has grown a lot over the years. Michigan just started a team within the last few years (2000 I think is the first year). Still, the PAC10 is the PAC5 in soccer. Which is an improvement over only a few years ago. I think it sucks that Title IX does have an indirect impact to slow the growth of Division I soccer, but there aren't the victims as the quote might suggest. More or less.
Men's Division I soccer programs have stayed at about the same level for 10 years while women's programs have exploded. The University of Florida does not have a varsity men's soccer team in spite of tremendous demand. They have to meet the quota. Michigan finally added a men's program after years of arguing about it. They will probably cut some other men's sport to make up for it. The newspaper is still on sale on a location near you.
At the Division I level, it kind of has. Small gains though - not any losses. (Full report here - http://www.ncaa.org/library/research/participation_rates/1982-2001/091-120.pdf) But Divisions II and III saw nice gains. Overall, 131 new teams and 4,5000 more players at the collegiate level. Damn that Title IX ripping the guts out of boys who want to play soccer. Read this article - http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/sports/colleges/3383252.htm. A wealth of facts to shoot down your argument. This is where you thank me for pointing this fact out to you. It would have been nice had you admitted you were wrong before (curse you, Great Crash for erasing that thread!) but I'll take this as an apology.
The link did not work. Many colleges would love to start varsity men's soccer programs. Title IX, as applied, does not permit this. Donna Lopiano and others shout down such attempts. Men's soccer should be a growth sport at NCAA Division I. After all, millions of young boys play the sport, baseball likes to strike, football is losing participants at the high school level. Males love sports. But Division I programs are frozen in time. Some add it some drop it. The women's program's get most of the money. I think it is around 1000 scholarships for women and around 400 for men.
Is there anything to keep a university from adding soccer but not supporting it with athletic scholarships? I thought Title IX is only concerned with scholarships, not necessarily the number of roster spots available.
I'll try and fix that link later. How can you say men's soccer isn't a growth sport when .... IT IS GROWING!!! You are wrong again on scholarship numbers. Women are ahead, but not by that much. BTW, all of this is available free of charge at www.ncaa.org. Go to publications and then click on research. Or I can keep providing facts to prove you wrong - it's your choice. Overall Men - average of 7.5 scholarships for 16.7 athletes for $136,500 average (155 schools replied to the survery so that is about 1,162 scholarships, not the 400 Thomas referenced. Women - average of 9.1 for 18.5 athletes for $150,800 average (222 schools replied so that is about 2020 scholarships) So it's a little shy of 2-1 for women in number of scholarships instead of 2.5-1 like Thomas said. Women get about $33.4M in scholarships while men get $21.2M. (Someone correct me if my math is wrong - I had to do some of the calculations myself) Teams which are classified at the I-AA, I-AAA, II and III levels are very even in scholarships (if given) and operating expenses. Not coincidentally, those are the levels which spend less on football. I certainly hope your daughter doesn't want to play a sport that isn't offered at a large Division I institution because they will only add enough to meet the quota instead of measuring true suport. Fiscal restraint is the answer to making college sports more equitable, not women discriminating against men and men turning mysoginist to mark their territory. Title IX and its application by athletic directors and college presidents is hurting some men's college sports. Soccer is not even close to being in the top five of sports affected. Hell, most sports probably envy soccer's position, which, IMHO, is in the top five of men's sports.
Hmmmmm......... Are you sure the University of Florida does not have a mens' soccer team, Thomas Flannigan? Have you seen Abby Wambach and Danielle Fotopoulos?
Title IX has been interpreted to require proportionality for all areas of the SPORTING world. That includes coach's salaries, alumni donations, locker rooms, uniforms, and number of participants. This includes sports where no scholarships are offered. Bucknell, like many universities, eliminated men's wrestling a couple of years ago to comply with Title IX and alumni tried to chip in to pay for it. But Title IX required that half the alumni donation go to women's sports. Bucknell has no men's wrestling team. Christine Hoff Summers wrote in an Atlantic Monthly article last year that there are around 330 federal programs to address "gender inequity" in higher education and every one favors women over men. Women get around 75 per cent of academic scholarships, and alumnae are encouraged to donate to female-only scholarships and programs. Kronholz points out that women now comprise about 60 per cent of undergraduates (I think it is a bit higher). It will probably reach 70 per cent by 2010. Schools will have to keep cutting men's sports and adding women's programs like rugby to avoid getting sued. Cheerleading scholarships, which are almost exclusively female, are excluded from Title IX quota calculations. Women get more than the overwhelming majority, way more than 60 per cent, of cheerleeading, academic and music scholarships but these are not part of Donna Lopiano's calculator. Most women could not care less about sports so it is hard for schools to even field teams to meet the quota. Universities are throwing money at it. Some even went to Eastern Europe to unload women's crew scholarships on Bulgarian women. Others spend lavishly on facilities that are barely used. If the men's basketball coach makes $200,000 a year then you have to spend $240,000 on women's team coaches, even though men's basketball is very profitable and hardly anyone will pay to watch a women's NCAA event. Meanwhile, men's soccer has a very tight lid on it. Soccer, with the endless media attention heaped on the Golden Girls, has become something like a feminist reparations issue. Men's soccer should be booming at the NCAA Division I level but it is not. Schools can't add a men's sport while female enrollment keeps climbing. All of this is terribly unfair and hurts the USMNT's future prospects but it helps some women and that is all that counts.
Let me translate Women bad, men good. Don't even start on Bucknell. If someone hadn't paid Mike Garcia under the table so he wouldn't go to Penn State or Lehigh, they likely would still have a team. http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/pr/BucknellWorld/1997-5/express.html scroll down to find it. But they had so much fallout from the violations that when push came to shove and they needed to make cuts to meet Title IX, they decided to lop off the team which had caused them trouble. Wrestling killed itself at Bucknell. The school was not meeting the law and they chose to meet it by dropping a program which had been a trouble spot thanks to one coach who coveted one athlete for his squad. Your other points and old and tired. I'll refute them later.
This will be like watching one of the greats, say Ted Williams, take batting practice. So, how many days until THIS Title IX thread hits 500 posts?
Sorry guys. . . no easy answer or clear and straight argument on this. Yes, title IX requires equal prportionality, yes this can hurt men's programs and yes, most schools have their heads up their a**es when complying with title IX by just cutting a program instead of rebudgeting. Proportionality doesn't mean cutting a program, it means making sure funding for all programs is available in a way that both women and men can play. Someone in this thread said that schools are having trouble finding women to play sports. Perhaps that's becuase they were only given the chance to play in the last 8-10 years and it's only with this kids growing up now that women can actually feel entitled to play. This does create problems with funding as schools question proportionality vs. demand for participation. Please keep in mind that title IX was created in 1972 so that women could have the opportunity to play sports when there was NONE!! Now, things have changed and there does need to be a review of the law. DOes this mean that people should bash it? NO, it obviously served it's original purpose, more women can play sports. What's wrong with that?
Bravo. There is no black and white with Title IX,m which is the problem. It's not the law, it's the interpetation by lawmakers and the application by athletic directors and college presidents, who look to cut before they add, who look to trim before they reallocate.
It's not the law, it's the interpetation by lawmakers and the application by athletic directors and college presidents, who look to cut before they add, who look to trim before they reallocate. [/QUOTE] And most schools have their heads up their a**es when complying with title IX by just cutting a program instead of rebudgeting. Most schools, the overwhelming majority (72%) have added women's programs without cutting a single men's program. The cuts have been coming at the D1 level. I personally think these cuts have more to do with the "arms race" in D1 football and basketball, and little to do with women's sports. This is more about budgets than it is about Title IX.
But Bucknell, with only 3,500 students and no real chance of drawing large crowds to its campus, continues to play Division I-AA football and I-A basketball. The Patriot League - while having an admirable goal - is a perfect example of what's wrong with college sports today. Small colleges with excellent academics chasing dollars with Division I programs. It's a zero-sum game because they will never hit the big time, but their pursuit of the big time forces them to limit their offerings of other sports.. So we should discriminate against people who are more interested in attending college? Interesting point. And do I need to tell you again that rugby is not an NCAA sport yet despite efforts of women's groups to have it so? It has been approved as an "emerging sport" but not a varsity sport. So these mythical schools adding rugby in order to keep from getting sued are not very smart. Men bad, women good again, eh? Maybe they earn the academic scholarships? Maybe they are more interested in cheerleading and music. It's not all a conspiracy - don't you get that? Mysoginism is passe. Prove it. Not just anecdotal eveidence, but true hard facts that show this is a regular occurance. Was it The Thompson Twins who sang "Lies, Lies, Lies, Yeaah!"? Men's basketball outspends women's basketball almost 2-1 overall. Check out the NCAA Gender Equity Report for Division I. Men's coaches make, on average, $50K more than women's coaches. Assistants make, on average, 30K more than women's assistants. Women get a hair more in scholarship money, but men have more than women in operating and recruiting expenses. And I can't find it currently, but I was always under the impression that the women's basketball tournament was one of the top five moneymakers as far as NCAA championship tournaments went - men's hoops, hockey, lacrosse and wrestling also did very well as far as bringing in cash, IIRC. All of this is groundless speculation. As I have proven time and time again, men's soccer is growing overall, but staying put at the D-I level. How can this all be blamed on Title IX. Your own words kill your argument - "Schools can't add a men's sport while female enrollment keeps climbing." When men start attending college on a more equitable level, they will get more opportunities. It's as simple as that. Until then, worry more about wrestling, track, baseball and the other sports which are truly targeted. You keep trying to build this straw man that college soccer is dying on the vine, when nothing is further form the truth. If the NCAA and Title IX zealots really wanted to damage the sport, they would move to FIFA rules, cut the number of subs allowed, which would cut the squad numbers. But that's not happening. Only a miniscule amount of what you say is happening.
I went to college between 1970 and 1974 and there were lots of women playing sports. The percentages were much smaller than men but then again, they weren't as interested in it as men. Title IX certainly was passed with good intentions, but it has morphed into something else, and it can't be fixed by "rebudgeting". The reality is that men's basketball always makes money for the school, men's football sometimes does but it always generates lots of publicity for the school. Other sports, such as men's hockey occasionally are money spinners. Everything else, with rare exception, have to be subsidized. As female enrollment percentages increase colleges are caught in a vicious cylce. They have to allocate more and more funds to women's sports and either double their athletic budget or cut men's sports. If they cut men's sports they run the risk of having even fewer men enroll, since sports tend to attract male applicants. Title IX as applied to hurting men's soccer tremendously in this country. Schools would love to add it because there is tremendous demand but adding will get you on Donna Lopiano's enemies list.
The way I would phrase it is that it's about the control of budgets which are affected by Title IX. They have to make those decisions in the context of the law, and they choose to not touch the football and hoops budgets for the most part. I have lots of problems with Title IX, but my passionate criticism of Thomas' straw man coes because he plays fast and loose with what few facts he brings to the table. Is how people react to Title IX hurting some men's sports? Absolutely. As a former wrestler, I know this first-hand. Is it hurting soccer? Since soccer has almost as many teams and athletes as its ever had, it's hard to say yes when taking an objective look at the facts. Just because a college has a club soccer team doesn't mean there is an injustice done against people by not allowing them to play varsity soccer.
Wow, making sense for a change. Prove it. For the love of all that is right, prove it or forever be spitting into the wind with hysterical rantings that have no basis in truth.
Originally posted by monster At the Division I level, it kind of has. Small gains though - not any losses. The reason that there appear to be gains is that Division I has grown considerably. In fact, there have been losses. Furthermore, programs like Cal have had to strip scholarships. Read this article - http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/sports/colleges/3383252.htm. A wealth of facts to shoot down your argument. I get a message saying "article not found." Re: Michigan This is where you thank me for pointing this fact out to you. Name another major school that has added men's soccer in the past five years (this, in spite of club teams that are overflowing with excellent players).
I do not respond to posts that violate TOS and insult. I will not participate in a flame war. The entire premise for Title IX has passed. Forty years ago women comprised about 35 per cent of undergraduates and a much smaller percentage of graduate students. Now, they comprise at least 60 per cent of undergraduates and a majority of graduates. They get 75 per cent of academic finanical aid. There are many government programs and private scholarships available only to women. You can debate the constitutionality of this but as a practical matter, women don't need affirmative action on the campus with these kind of numbers. It is the men, not the women, who are falling farther and farther behind.