Copyright 2001 The Atlanta Constitution The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
July 1, 2001 Sunday, Home Edition
SECTION: Sports; Pg. 8D
LENGTH:
732 words
HEADLINE: RE-EXAMINING TITLE IX: THE PRICE OF EQUITY: Baseball feels sting of Title IX enforcement
BYLINE: TONY
BARNHART
SOURCE: AJC
BODY: These days, Ron Polk is a pretty happy guy.
In June, Polk was hailed as a coaching genius when he took
the Georgia baseball team to the College World Series in only his second year in
charge. Shortly after he got back from Omaha, Neb., Polk accepted an offer to
return to Mississippi State, where he built a dynasty that eventually put his
name on the stadium door. Polk is now set up to finish his career in grand style
as one of the top coaches in the history of college baseball. Life is good.
But if you want to see Polk's mood change quickly, ask him
about the NCAA, the Office of Civil Rights and its enforcement of
Title IX.
"I don't intend to blast the NCAA unless
somebody asks me," Polk said before taking the national stage at the World
Series. "If they ask me, I'm going to look at the camera and tell it like it is.
Because what they've done to our game (baseball) is criminal."
Polk said he is for improved athletic opportunities for women.
"I think Title IX is great. The girls deserve it because
they were way behind," he said. "They didn't have good transportation. They
weren't getting good facilities. But then (the NCAA) went overboard, just like
the bureaucracy of government."
Specifically, Polk is
still upset with the NCAA's decision in the '90s to cut scholarships 10 percent
across the board in men's sports. Women's scholarship totals were increased or
remained the same. The move was made to jump-start schools toward the goal of
gender equity in athletics participation.
The move not
only reduced baseball to 11.7 scholarships, but the sport lost other perks as
well. Polk had his graduate assistants program taken away because there was no
equivalent program on the women's side.
"Some of the
things that were taken away didn't cost a lot of money, but the NCAA was just
concerned about numbers and appearances," Polk said. "Some of it was really
ridiculous."
Danny Hall, the baseball coach at Georgia
Tech, said he agrees.
When he was at Kent State, Hall
recalls the school let his top assistant drive a pickup truck that belonged to
the university. The assistant would throw the equipment in the back of the truck
and haul it to practice every day. But when the gender equity cuts hit, the
school had to take the truck away because the women's softball coach didn't have
one.
"It was the little things that got to you," Hall
said, "because they didn't make a lot of sense."
Baseball coaches, as well as those in other men's sports, were told
they had to limit their walk-on (non-scholarship) players because they would
throw the participation numbers (which are supposed to be roughly equal between
men and women) out of balance.
"Our coaches in baseball
were told to get the walk-ons off the field," Polk said. "It's nothing but
quotas, but the NCAA calls it 'roster management.' It's a bunch of crap. The
female coaches will tell you that they don't want that rule. They don't need
walk-ons because they have enough scholarships. There's no common sense
whatsoever."
For a sport that generates more money with
its NCAA championships than all but football and basketball, Polk said he felt
baseball was being sacrificed to the Title IX gods.
"I
look up and women's track had 18 scholarships. Women's crew had 20 and we get
11.7?" he said. "How did we get left behind? I'll tell you why. Because no coach
stood up and blasted (the NCAA) publicly."
Polk,
however, did. He went national with his anger, including a spot on ABC's Good
Morning America on June 18, 1997, where he ripped the NCAA and the Office of
Civil Rights. Just before that appearance, Polk resigned in protest as
Mississippi State's coach and thought he was done with the NCAA.
Polk got tired of sitting behind a desk and came back to coaching at
Georgia in 2000. Now that he's back in the national spotlight, Polk has not
mellowed when it comes to the NCAA and its handling of Title IX.
The College World Series, said Polk, is a tribute to what college
baseball has accomplished in spite of the NCAA.
"It was
our kids and our coaches who battled low salaries and bad conditions to build
Omaha into what it is," Polk said. "The NCAA just went along for the ride. They
have taken our money, and they haven't given it back to us.
"Don't get me wrong. I'm all for Title IX. I'm just asking for Title X
for baseball. When are we going to see that?"
GRAPHIC: Photo: Former Georgia coach Ron Polk says
Title IX has hurt college baseball. Graphic: SCHOLARSHIPS: THE TALE
OF THE TAPE: .. In an effort to balance athletic scholarships,
Georgia funds nine women's sports and seven men's sports. Georgia will add
another women's sport, equestrian, for the 2002-2003 academic year. Men's..................Full sports....... scholarships Baseball............. 11.7 Basketball............. 13 Football............... 85 Golf....................4.5 Swimming................9.9 Tennis..................4.5 Track-Cross Country....12.6 Total............... 141.2 Women's................Full sports....... scholarships Basketball............. 14 Golf......................6 Gymnastics............. 12 Soccer................. 12 Softball............... 12 Swimming............... 14 Tennis....................8 Track-Cross Country......18 Volleyball............. 12 Total................. 108
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