Copyright 2002 The Tribune Co. Publishes The Tampa Tribune Tampa Tribune (Florida)
June 9, 2002, Sunday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: COMMENTARY, Pg. 2
LENGTH: 543 words
HEADLINE:
Let's Set The Record Straight On College Sports And Title IX
BODY: Regular readers of The Tampa Tribune sports
section will notice that all this month on page 2 there are tributes to female
athletes who have left their mark on athletics locally. It is part of the
celebration of the 30-year anniversary of Title IX of the Education Amendments
Act of 1972.
That year Congress decided schools must
allocate equal resources to men's and women's athletics, and it has produced
huge changes. The year before, 294,015 American girls participated in high
school sports, compared with 3.7 million boys. Last year, nearly 3 million girls
played high school sports, compared with 3.8 million boys.
But Title IX has had its detractors over the years - not because they
don't believe in equality, but because they believe many men's programs have
been eliminated in order to comply with its equity mandates.
The latest group is the National Wrestling Coaches Association, which
filed a federal lawsuit contending that Title IX, while greatly increasing
opportunities for women in school sports, is unfair to male athletes. The Bush
administration contends the suit is flawed on technical legal grounds and should
be dismissed.
"The administration strongly supports
Title IX," said Brian Jones, the Education Department's general counsel. "Title
IX has opened up opportunities for young women in both academics and sports. We
believe we should strive to expand opportunities for women in a way that does
not diminish existing men's teams."
That is the correct
approach. Complying with Title IX should not have to hurt men to help women.
Unfortunately, many colleges have interpreted the law to mean that in order to
achieve equality for women, men's sports have to be trimmed. Any problems the
legislation is causing can be fixed by reinterpreting the law according to its
original intent and doing away with "proportional numbers" in efforts to
comply.
It is understandable that wrestling coaches
would say the law hurts their sport. At many schools wrestling, along with men's
swimming, gymnastics and baseball, has been dropped for budgetary reasons. Title
IX compliance has been cited by many athletic directors as the reason.
These same directors, however, are paying
multimillion-dollar contracts to football and basketball coaches. When a school
agrees to pay its football coach more than $1 million a year and then tells
dozens of male wrestlers and swimmers that they cost too much, that school's
priorities are out of line, and Title IX is not the reason.
Encouraging participation is the reason college sports were created in
the first place. Title IX simply made sure women would be among the
participants. Taking an ax to nonrevenue "Olympic" sports simply makes the law a
scapegoat.
The law's intent was to provide equal
opportunity for women to take part in sports, not to determine participation on
the basis of numbers. And as long as only men participate in varsity football -
which can have as many as 85 players on scholarship at Division I schools -
there are going to be disparities in the numbers of male and female athletes -
even when there are more sports offered to women.
A
little common sense needs to be injected into Title IX
enforcement, not just a concern about numbers.
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