The NCAA News - Comment

• Athletes fare well under current system
• Title IX led to medals for U.S. women
• Women's lacrosse passes safety test without helmets
• Coaches find a comfort zone with new tiebreaker rule

Athletes fare well under current system

The debate on paying intercollegiate student-athletes has been ongoing for several years. Unfortunately, much recent public sentiment seems to lean toward paying student-athletes. I find this trend troubling and based on a flawed premise.

Those who advocate paying athletes generally claim that student-athletes are being exploited, that the institutions they represent are reaping huge financial rewards from their services and that participating in college athletics precludes them from seeking employment during the academic year, creating a financial hardship for the athletes.

First, institutions of higher education are not exploiting athletes. Less than 10 percent of college athletics programs are able to generate sufficient revenue to meet all expenses, let alone make a profit. Ninety percent of all schools rely on institutional subsidies such as student fees and state aid to operate in balance. Programs at the Division II and III level receive even greater institutional subsidies.

Next, proponents of paying college athletes fail to realize the value of an athletics scholarship and the reward student-athletes enjoy by participation in athletics. While the costs of a four-year degree vary ($40,000 to $120,000), calculate the remuneration athletes receive by getting a scholarship, considering that by legislation athletes may practice and compete only 20 hours per week. How many hamburgers must one turn at McDonald's to earn the cost of an education?

While it is true that full scholarship student-athletes may not work during the academic year, they can have a summer job to earn spending money, and on many campuses athletics departments are able to assist athletes in securing summer employment.

I believe to pay student-athletes directly is wrong. It would bankrupt college athletics, destroy any credibility we currently have with our faculty, turn a great part of the educational experience into a professional farm system that most would oppose and add to the image problem we currently have in intercollegiate athletics.

Competing in intercollegiate athletics is a great experience and should not be tainted by professionalizing it by paying players.

Despite television revenue, gate receipts, merchandising revenue and other sources of revenue, our game still is played by young people, not professionals.

Preserve the excitement of and pageantry of college athletics. Do not pay players.

Milton E. Richards is director of intercollegiate athletics at the State University of New York at Albany.

Title IX led to medals for U.S. women

BY CHRISTOPHER MATTHEWS

Thirty years ago, the typical Olympic fan in this country looked at "women's gymnastics" as an oxymoron.

As the Soviets and their satellites grabbed one medal after another, the best we Bud-chuggers could do was snicker that those daunting "East German women" were actually men.

No American was snickering during the recent Olympics. The entire country, it seemed, was watching the Atlanta Games. And the big, dramatic story was not the "Dream Team" of U.S. basketball stars. It was the first-ever gold medal victory by an American women's gymnastics team.

The gymnasts are not alone. Never before has the U.S. fielded so diverse an Olympic squad, packed with so much female talent in so many sports.

There are a number of explanations, one being the availability of positive role models. To inspire her training, the heroic young gymnast Kerri Strug needed look no further than the Mary Lou Retton picture on her box of Wheaties.

But more than Retton's gymnastic triumphs brought the revolution in women's sports in the United States. If Mary Lou is spiritual aunt of today's gymnastic stars, don't forget the role played by Uncle Sam.

I refer to Title IX, that landmark section of the 1972 higher education bill that requires public schools and colleges to give women athletes the same support as their male classmates.

Before Title IX, female athletes were widely discriminated against. Women didn't get a fraction of the scholarships. Women's teams didn't get funds. Even at prominent universities like Stanford, the men's tennis team played in the main stadium, the women off somewhere else. If a woman tennis player needed to travel for a game, she often had to cough up the money or stay home.

Birch Bayh, former U.S. senator from Indiana, was the man who ended this indefensible set-up.

"My dad was director of physical education in Washington, D.C.," Bayh said. "I remember him telling a congressional committee about how important it is to build the body of a young woman so she can carry her mind around."

It was Bayh, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on constitutional rights, who won passage of Title IX. Since then, Bayh, now 68, has followed its impact on the way this country views women athletes.

He recalled picking up a newspaper recently and seeing "Virginia beats North Carolina." Having watched the UNC men's team beat Virginia the day before, he figured the headline writer had it backward. Only after reading the lead did he realize to his happy amazement that The Washington Post was giving first-page coverage to a women's basketball game.

But the big breakthrough came recently in Atlanta. When Athens hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896, no women participated. None were enrolled on the U.S. team until 1920.

Today, women comprise roughly 40 percent of Olympians, about a fourth of the American team.

"I think it's fantastic," the father of Title IX said after watching the hoopla. "I think it's possible because of the way the government has recognized a woman's right to an equal opportunity to swim and run and do gymnastics."

Bayh's son, Evan, is governor of Indiana and a future prospect for the White House. Bayh's other offspring, the daughters of Title IX, have already shown their stuff in Atlanta.

Christopher Matthews is Washington bureau chief for The San Francisco Examiner.

Women's lacrosse passes safety test without helmets

First of all, yes, there is a risk of injury in any sport, and, yes, women's lacrosse has changed over the years.

However, it remains one of the sports with the lowest injury rates among NCAA-sponsored sports -- particularly injuries to the head. More common are knee, ankle and leg injuries. We are not putting helmets on any other athletes in sports with higher risks of head injuries. Why target women's lacrosse?

Ms. Brown states women's lacrosse is already like men's lacrosse. Anyone who has observed the men's game and the women's game at either the high-school or collegiate level would find such a statement unverifiable. There is no legal body checking in women's lacrosse (meaning hitting the body), the sticks are different, the rules are different, the number of players is different, the field markings are different, etc.

I would ask anyone who believes that putting helmets on women lacrosse players will make the game safer to observe what happens when the goalie (the one player in women's lacrosse who wears a helmet) comes out of her crease into the general field of play. My observations reflect that she is as likely to get hit in the head as not. It appears that because she wears a helmet, players are less controlled when trying to check her. I also would like to note that the men wear shoulder pads and other protective equipment as well. Are there fewer injuries in the men's game?

Finally, the key element in the great debate over helmets and women's lacrosse is that we must remember risk is inherent in sport as well as in life. Choosing to be an athlete and step onto the field assumes a certain understood level of risk.

Of course, as coaches, referees and members of rules committees, we all have an obligation to make our sports as reasonably safe as possible and to adjust with the times. In my 20-plus years as a player and coach, I have seen this occur in our sport. It is impossible to make any sport 100 percent safe and liability-free in our litigious society. There is no conclusive evidence to indicate a move to helmets would do anything to improve the safety of the game.

One last point: The United States Women's Lacrosse Association and other groups concerned with the sport have spent much time looking into the issue of safety and head injuries. What has been found to be a greater risk than poor stick checks are injuries from the ball. Various solutions have been explored and protective eye wear has been developed that has been approved for play.

Before jumping on the helmet bandwagon, concerned parties need to become familiar with all the facts and implications of such a drastic move.

Melissa Falen
Assistant Professor of Physical Education
Field Hockey and Women's Lacrosse Coach
College of Notre Dame (Maryland)

Coaches find a comfort zone with new tiebreaker rule

Tom Osborne, football coach
University of Nebraska, Lincoln
St. Petersburg Times

"I think it's probably good. I think most people don't really like games to end in a tie if you can help it. I think one of the main reasons behind it was that to play in a major bowl now you have to have six Division I wins. If you have five wins and a couple of ties, you're out of a bowl game. They're trying to get a clear-cut resolution."

Bobby Bowden, football coach
Florida State University
St. Petersburg Times

"I'm glad to see ties get eliminated. I hate ties, which is why I have so many losses on my record. In those cases, I would have been better off kicking for a tie. Now I know what I'm going to do: I'm going to kick and try to win it in overtime. I think it's good."

Pat Dye, former football coach
Auburn University
St. Petersburg Times

"I'm not sure I wouldn't like sudden-death better. There are too many other factors in football. I prefer the way the pros do it: Just go out there, kick it off and play.

"But I like the idea of settling it. For me personally, a tiebreaker would have suited us. Our teams generally got stronger as the game wore on. The best-conditioned team certainly has the advantage in that situation."

Ara Parseghian, former football coach
University of Notre Dame
St. Petersburg Times

"Do you want the ball first or last? Having it first I think puts more pressure on you. The other way, you know what you have to do. Suppose one team doesn't score and I have a great field-goal kicker. I call a bunch of conservative plays, then kick the field goal. There will be a lot of strategy used."