Our view on college sports: Schools axe men's teams, but don't take it out on Title IX

USA Today 5/7/07

When students at Virginia's James Madison University go back to school in the fall, they'll have 10 fewer sports to play or watch. JMU recently announced plans to eliminate seven men's and three women's programs, ranging from gymnastics to swimming. Officials blamed Title IX, the section of a 1972 law that governs how college resources are split between men and women.

To Title IX critics, JMU's cutbacks are the best case yet for undoing the way the law is enforced. But the cuts, distressing as they may be, are no reason to gut a federal program that has succeeded in bringing fairness to college athletics and equal opportunity to a generation of young women.

Colleges — among them JMU, Rutgers University, Ohio University, Butler and Clarion — are cutting back on sports programs for many reasons, including tight budgets, the primacy of football and a decline in the proportion of men attending college.

The worst that can be said about Title IX is that it compounds these problems while succeeding in providing opportunities to female athletes (such as the estimable Rutgers women's basketball team that reached the NCAA championship only to be slurred by shock jock Don Imus). To label Title IX the lone culprit is to give state legislatures a pass on their obligations to finance higher education and to give colleges a pass for their infatuation with big-time men's sports.

To comply with Title IX's three-part test, colleges must do one of the following:

*Bring the male-to-female ratio for varsity athletes in line with the overall student body ratio.

*Demonstrate a history of adding women's programs.

*Demonstrate a policy of meeting the interests and abilities of women.

Tight budgets have made the second test harder to use. The third's vagueness and cumbersome process have always made it less attractive. That often leaves the first test, known as "proportionality," as the only option.

This presents a problem. On one hand, the portion of men on campus is declining — to 42% overall and lower at some campuses, including JMU. On the other, colleges are loath to cut back on men's football.

Indeed, if JMU helps make the case against Title IX, Rutgers, which also slashed its men's programs this spring, sends a different message. It did so while increasing its football budget, suggesting the changes had more to do with the desire to build a football powerhouse than with the demands of Title IX.

The decline in men's attendance at college is a national problem that needs to be addressed. But in the short term, if women make up a majority of students, they deserve a majority of athletic slots.

As for major men's sports, the NFL gets along quite nicely with 53-man rosters, which is approximately half what major college football teams use. If colleges had fewer fourth-string safeties, they could have more men's track stars, gymnasts and such.

On many campuses, it is distressing to see sports programs eliminated. But it would be even sadder if this led to the evisceration of Title IX.