Wrestling shaken by cut program

WrestlingTerp · 05-15-2008, 09:07 AM

Originally Posted by goferphan

I don't mean to sound callous but Title IX has done more to hurt college athletics than any other single event in american history.

Some other type of balance needs to be found. The thought that football is the real culprit is very disturbing. If they are going by straight #'s of opportunities, football gobbles up a tremendous amount of opportunities for other men's sports even though they bring in most of the revenue that supports all of the other men's and women's sports.

If you look at football in relation to participation at the high school level then you may find it less disturbing. There isn't another sport that comes close to the number of high school participants in football, at over one million. It is important to remember that "big time" Division 1A schools make up only 7% of the total NCAA membership. It makes a convenient scapegoat to divert attention from the real issue, but little else. And that schools without football have also been forced to drop programs to meet the gender quota.

The bigger issue is trying to shoehorn high school athletic participation rates that are about 60% male into college programs on campuses that are approaching 60% female nation-wide by using a strict gender quota as the means of complaince. The situation is even worse at HBCUs.

There is no valid correlation between gender ratios and interest. When the OCR attempted to allow surveys of interest to be used as a measure of complaince it was met with opposition from the WSF and NWLC, the same groups who claim that interest in participation is supposedly one measure of compliance.

Please note that the problem isn't with title ix, the problem is with the policy interpretation.

goferphan · 05-15-2008, 11:09 AM

I am certainly not the expert on Title IX so I won't pretend to be but when they are gauging its success by number of opportunities for men I women then I take it that that means either number of available scholarships or total number of participants both male and female.

JensenS · 05-15-2008, 12:55 PM

The very, very condensed version of Title IX works like this. You need the percentages of athletes to match up with the percentage of attendees at your school based on sex.

So if a school is 60/40 in favor of women to men, then at minimum 60% of their athletes need to be women. This leads schools to play the numbers game and add women's sports that have a high number of slots available on the team regardless of interest, or if they don't want to add women then as we've seen they just cut men.

matclone · 05-15-2008, 01:24 PM

Originally Posted by WrestlingTerp

Please note that the problem isn't with title ix, the problem is with the policy interpretation.

That's always been my impression. It's the three prong test (an interpretation of the law), with only one prong (the gender ratio) considered "safe" by schools.

WrestlingTerp · 05-15-2008, 01:37 PM

Originally Posted by matclone

That's always been my impression. It's the three prong test (an interpretation of the law), with only one prong (the gender ratio) considered "safe" by schools.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell, all roads ultimately lead to the gender quota as the final safe harbor.

Add a new women's team and you may be okay for 5 years and there is a physical and financial limit on how many teams a school can add. None of the courts have accepted any of the measures of interest and the advocacy groups were up in arms when the OCR approved a method of surveying interest. That only leaves the gender quota.

Of course Congress never approved the three prong test. And the OCR, at least under Norma Cantu, made compliance with the gender quota an ever decreasing target. We stay within 1% of the campus gender ratio at Maryland, and we're fairly fortunate that we are close to 50:50 in enrollment. There are a number of schools that, if the OCR becomes more active in going after them, will have problems meeting the quota.

goferphan: Participants AND scholarships fall under the gender quota. Nearly every Division I wrestling team in the country has to cut walk-ons. The question is how THAT creates opportunities for anyone?

LoSt · 05-15-2008, 01:54 PM

title IX is bullshit we all know this... I really dont see how courts can allow this kind of quota system to stay in place. Remember that schools used to have quotas for affirmative action programs too allocating a certain number of slots to people of color until it wound up in court and was ruled unconstitutional.

What you have here is basically the same principal but its even worse because not only are you imposing an artificial quota but sometimes there arent even enough interested women to fill it (since women on a whole are less interested in sports then men.)

Title IX destroys opportunities for thousands of men. I'm all for giving girls the opportunity to play sports but if they dont have the same kind of interest level that men do then why should they get the same number of spots?

Wiltz · 05-15-2008, 02:19 PM

I'm going to rant for a minute.

Title IX is not bullshit. The execution by schools of Title IX is bullshit.

Title IX was never intended to destroy opportunities for men. These moron AD's out there that cut programs are to blame. Maybe it's because they are lazy or stupid or they just don't care. The last thing Title IX was intended for was to remove opportunities for any student athletes.

Any AD worth a darn would find a way. Ask for support, money, help, ect... Before programs get cut.

Chicken shit moves like Lisa Love pulled with announcing the cuts without giving any of the sports a chance to stay is what is ruining D1 sports.

We are dealing with a precedent that needs to be stopped. If this program gets saved and endowed, what is going to stop some other weak minded/willed AD at another school from following the same playbook. It's a slippery slope for sure. Does Title IX need reformed? Yes it does. It's not the problem it is the excuse that used.

Eliminating programs is the path of least resistance. It takes very little work on an AD's part to kill a program it takes a hell of a lot of work to keep all of the sports afloat.

goferphan · 05-15-2008, 03:12 PM

Can we possibly factor in the fact that 90% of the armed forces are male and only 10% are female, thus leaving more women going off to college then men while men in that same age range are in much higher numbers are off protecting the country.

I agree with Wiltz that Title IX by itself is not bullshit, but rather the execution of it.

ODH · 05-15-2008, 04:21 PM

Originally Posted by goferphan

Can we possibly factor in the fact that 90% of the armed forces are male and only 10% are female, thus leaving more women going off to college then men while men in that same age range are in much higher numbers are off protecting the country.

I agree with Wiltz that Title IX by itself is not bullshit, but rather the execution of it.

There is also the fact the young men can get a higher paying right out of HS without a college degree than women can doing a labor intensive jobs. The construction industry is a prime example. Not that women can't and don't work construction, but percentagewise there are a lot more college-age men than women in construction.

LoSt · 05-15-2008, 04:24 PM

Originally Posted by ODH

There is also the fact the young men can get a higher paying right out of HS without a college degree than women can doing a labor intensive jobs. The construction industry is a prime example. Not that women can't and don't work construction, but percentagewise there are a lot more college-age men than women in construction.

You have a great point there is some terrible unequality going on here.

I vote we expand title IX to cover the construction and lumberjacking industries as well as college sports, whos with me?

Wrestling shaken by cut program

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