Nonrevenue men's sports, still caught between the law of the land and the realities of the marketplace, continue to complain that their subsidies are shriveling. They find it outrageous that men's programs of long standing (if fringe interest) are discontinued for the sake of women's teams plainly established for the purpose of meeting quotas. They act as if varsity status were a permanent right rather than a revocable privilege. They look on the modern age with one foot stuck in the 19th century, one hand clutching a kerosene lamp.

In essence, the problem is that college athletic programs have finite funds and no shortage of constituencies eager to appropriate them. That much isn't going to change, no matter what the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics recommends. You can't fix this problem to everyone's satisfaction. You can't achieve absolute fairness without abandoning athletics altogether.

With rare exceptions, the only sports programs that generate significant revenue on campus are football and men's basketball. Yet Title IX makes no distinction between what's profitable and what's a money pit, forcing schools to allocate substantial resources to programs with little likelihood of a return on investment.

Imagine a financial services company compelling its clients to spend like amounts on savings bonds and lottery tickets. Such are the strictures America's athletic directors deal with each day.

"In my experience as an athletic director . . . I cannot think of any issue that has been any more contentious than Title IX," San Diego State AD Rick Bay testified yesterday. "And yet, I don't think this has to be the case. I think gender equity can be achieved in a way that is fair to both men and women, if only common sense and compromise become the watchwords of the debate . . . As always, I am better at defining a problem than I am in solving it."

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. Since the federal mandate provides no additional funding, achieving compliance often comes at the cost of a men's program.

Title IX advocates are quick to blame the extravagances of football when men's minor sports are eliminated. Frankly, with its 85 scholarships (at Division I-A), with coaches who are compensated as if they were Fortune 500 executives, with hotel expenses incurred on the night before home games and with 300-page glossy media guides, college football fairly begs for pruning.

"Endemic waste" was how Smith College economist Andrew Zimbalist described it yesterday.

Coaches claim these expenses are necessary to keep up with the competition, borrowing a page from the Pentagon's Cold War playbook. Unilateral disarmament, naturally, is viewed as madness.

Tim Sullivan
 

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

 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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