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Title IX bout Changes could cost athletic opportunities for womenPosted: Friday December 20, 2002 4:09 PM
Now that emotions are heating up, verbal salvos are flying and both sides are headed to Washington, you can expect a beauty of a fight over Title IX in the coming weeks and months. This thing has been festering for 30 some years, ever since President Richard Nixon signed the mandate for equal athletic and academic opportunities at educational institutions into law. Oh, you’ve had the football guys carping about having to pay the freight for women’s sports. You’ve heard the disenfranchised, if you will -- the wrestlers and other minor jocks coldly slashed from college budgets -- blaming the Title IX crowd for their plight. Nobody paid them much attention. Not even the courts bought into all the whining. The law was the law, after all. But it’s a new day, and protectors of Title IX are themselves now screaming bloody murder as the Bush administration weighs hefty tweaks that could dramatically weaken the law. The blue-ribbon committee appointed by Secretary of Education Rod Paige to review Tile IX won’t issue its recommendations until Jan. 8, yet already there are claims that women stand to lose as many as 100 athletic opportunities at major college programs. If you listen to those who want Title IX left as is, this is the byproduct of an assault led by the likes of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., an old wrestling coach, and a slew of anti-Title IX folks now empowered within the Department of Education. Is the process rigged, as they contend? Well, that's a potentially inflammatory charge in today’s political climate, but some facts do make you wonder:
• No one serves on the committee from Division II, Division III or junior colleges -- all with concerns markedly different than big-time athletic powers. More alarming is the absence of anyone from high school athletics, which have historically lagged behind colleges in compliance with the law. • Of those invited to address the committee at four town hall meetings, opponents of Title IX outnumbered supporters by more than two to one. • The General Accounting Office, a non-partisan government agency directed to research the subject, was not called to present its findings. Women’s advocacy and civil rights groups are particularly critical of the hand played by ex-officio commissioner Gerald Reynolds, assistant U.S. secretary of education for civil rights, noting that one of his assistants previously brought a case on behalf of wrestlers at Illinois State. “So you have the Department of Education coming in with a slanted viewpoint," argues Athena Yiamouyiannis, executive director of the National Association for Girls and Women in Sport. “And if you are present at all the hearings, as I was, you will see that the Department of Education staff has clearly been directing the commission members ... to basically diminish opportunities for girls and women in sport." A key proposal that has Title IX supporters fuming would change proportionality, one of the three tests that can be met in determining compliance with the law. Currently, the percentage of female athletes should be close to the percentage of women in the student body. Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow has pitched a 50-50 standard, with a variance allowed of as much as 7 percent -- so that men could legally enjoy a 57 to 43 percent advantage in athletic opportunities. Gender aside, Yow and commission co-chair Cynthia Cooper, the former basketball star, haven’t endeared themselves to the Title IX crowd. “What you have on the commission are athletic directors or people associated with athletic directors who want out from proportionality," says Nancy Hogshead-Makar, an Olympic gold medalist swimmer and a law professor. “They want to be bullet-proof and never have a lawsuit brought against them." OK, Title IX advocates need to pause here and realize slight tweaks aren’t a death sentence to the law. And it’s goofy to watch colleges creating sports, such as equestrian programs (everyone brings a horse to campus, right?), solely to provide ample opportunities for women. But make no mistake -- money is at the root of this fight. It isn’t the girls versus the boys, even if the wrestlers want to pick that fight. Interest in wrestling in some parts of country was flaming out two decades ago. No, this is the cash cows, the major college men’s basketball and football programs, versus everyone else in the athletic pool. You can’t just blame Title IX for the cuts in men’s sports. Women’s gymnastics has taken a harder hit than the men’s programs. And overall, athletic opportunities for men are up 5 percent over two decades ago. The problem, and Yow and her fellow ADs know it, is that the revenue-producing sports can’t shake free from the arms race. Coaching salaries at top basketball and football programs are through the roof -- Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams, for instance, is guaranteed more than $1.5 million a year and football coach Ralph Friedgen more than $1.2 million. Colleges aren’t supposed to lure athletes with money, so they’re sinking enormous amounts of money on facilities to entice teenage recruits. “You look at programs around country and not many are making money,’’ says Houston athletic director Dave Maggard, who is not a member of the Title IX commission. “People are having a difficult time meeting program needs, yet we’re caught in this arms race. “It is one of those situations where everybody looks back at it and says, ‘Boy, it has gone crazy.’ But everybody keeps doing it. It’s like everybody says, 'SUVs burn a lot of gas,' and yet everybody buys them. It is a hard one." NCAA studies reveal Division I-A athletic departments operate with an average deficit of $600,000 a year. If you toss in the student fees and donations gobbled up in the cost of doing business, department operating deficits average more than $6 million. A solution proposed by Smith College economics professor Andrew Zimbalist, and one that darkens the faces of most coaches, is slicing the number of football scholarships from the current 85 to 60 (the NFL makes do with a 53-man roster). That's a projected $750,000 annual saving, says Zimbalist, more than enough to finance two wrestling teams on every campus. Another of his proposals bound to create a buzz at next month’s football coaches convention would have the NCAA seek a congressional antitrust exemption in a bid to harness coaching salaries. Zimbalist suggests knocking them down to $200,000, a figure slightly more in line with what college professors earn. But no way the NCAA takes up the professor’s offer. “The problem with college sports today is not Title IX nor its implementation," says Zimbalist, a prominent voice on the subject of sports economics. “The problem is endemic waste." So perhaps Speaker Hastert should have pushed for a committee to probe the professionalism of big-time college sports, the exploitation of so-called amateurs who far too often leave campus without an education. Or maybe he should have saved $700,000 in taxpayer dollars (the estimated cost of this latest venture) and just ordered a reprint of the Knight Commission report. The problem here is everybody deserves an opportunity to compete, wrestlers and field hockey players, alike. It behooves college administrators to make it work, to balance the books -- not drop their mess in the lap of politicians. Mike Fish is a senior writer for CNNSI.com.
Comments? To e-mail Fish, click here.
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