The coaches say cutting football scholarships to 60 would be a disaster. What next, the single wing? 

Hmmm. OK. Try cutting to 75. Or 70. You can play a football game with 70 players. 

Among the roadblocks to peace in this dispute is football's obstinacy.

Third. The concept of strict proportionality - where scholarships must precisely match percentage of enrollment - is not logical.
Generally, women are as interested in sports participation as men. That I can buy. But that doesn't mean a 56% female enrollment on one campus means the exact same level of interest as 56% on another. 

Give the schools some wiggle room. A few percentage points up or down. It could save a wrestling team. 

That's not forcing women from the playing field and back to the kitchen. It's just leaving space for common sense.
Four. No foot-dragging by the athletic directors on enforcement of this law. If they get something - such as flexibility in proportionality - then they give something back. They cut a slice off the football elephant, before they go pleading poverty. 

Five. Everyone needs to remember what Title IX is, and what it isn't.

It's a guarantee that women get access to sport. And it has done wonders.

But I heard a member of the fruitcake lobby the other day carrying on about how ESPN should give women's basketball the same exposure as men, and the need for equal recruiting budgets. 

As if Title IX mandated equal Nielsen ratings. And men's basketball and football didn't pay the bills. 

There is no reason this can't work more smoothly. No reason that women can't continue their sport revolution. And no reason that a wrestling program needs to be purged the same time there is a campus search party out looking for 25 women willing to be on the crew team. 

It takes more give, and more take. And much less rhetoric.

Mike Lopresti.
 

Title IX, has expanded opportunities for women in education and sports programs. The law states that no person can be excluded from participation in programs or activities on the basis of sex.

The first thing Jamie Moffatt wants to make clear is that he is not trying to trash Title IX. But he firmly believes Title IX is broken and needs to be repaired.

Proportionality has led to an understandable outcry among male athletes, coaches and alumni and a growing movement to reform Title IX.

Over 400 men's teams have disappeared since Title IX was enacted. 1000s of male athletes - mostly in such sports as wrestling, swimming and gymnastics - no longer have the opportunities they once had.

Fairness, however, is seldom that simple. The fact is that, because of the budget cuts necessitated by compliance to Title IX, female athletes are now accommodated more completely than their male counterparts.

The percentage of girls playing high school sports has increased dramatically since Congress approved Title IX, increasing from the neighborhood of 3 percent to more than 33 percent.

The National Women's Law Center said the Bush Administration "weakened" Title IX. They claimed that the "Department of Education makes it easy for schools to escape their responsibility under Title IX."

"They say that Title IX is under attack and it is not. They say that Griffith was attacking Title IX, and he didn't. He was just trying to reform Title IX," said Pearson.

Title IX is no longer just a civil-rights measure that guarantees equal opportunity for women in college athletics but is now seen as a rigid rule based on strict proportionality that does more to harm men than it does to help women.

Since most NCAA schools remain well short of proportional compliance, it is natural to assume relaxing Title IX's requirements would only exacerbate the existing gender disparity.

Former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Norma Cantu candidly acknowledges her desire to rebut the widely held view that Title IX is responsible for the decline in the number of men's sports opportunities.

The three sports of swimming, track, and wrestling that bring home the most Olympic medals for the United States have been hit the hardest by Title IX.

"These are perilous times," said Brand. "The future of Title IX is uncertain. We do not know what Secretary Paige will do with the recommendations of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics."

When it comes to cutting men's track programs, West Virginia is hardly alone. In the last few years, universities such as St. John's, Tulane, Vermont, Toledo and Bowling Green have all axed their men's track teams.

While 96 NCAA colleges scratched wrestling from 1980-90, only 20 programs have been dropped in the past five years. Supporters point to several reasons why wrestling should not be cut.

 Title IX improving the application of current Federal standards for measuring equal opportunity."

And, these are the people, who, for whatever reasons (such as Title IX) are not adding new wrestling teams to college athletics.

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