Paul Haagen, law professor
Duke University
Christian Science Monitor

"Title IX has been extremely successfully in creating athletics opportunities for girls. It has ... fostered a culture of women's athletics. It is extremely unlikely that change would have come so quickly or completely without it. ...

"From the beginning, the central problem in determining ... an equitable treatment of men's and women's sports is ... football. If football is removed from the equation, there is very close to parity."

Rick Dickson, director of athletics
Tulane University
Christian Science Monitor

"There's just no counterpart to football. And because of that, you have to skew a number of programs to equalize the opportunities. That's unfortunate, but I don't know how you can argue that it's more unfortunate than the decades of young women who never got the opportunity (to play)."

Jeremy Foley, director of athletics
University of Florida
St. Petersburg Times

"Without Title IX, I don't think women's athletics would have advanced nearly as far as they have, and there still are needs to be met. It's hard to argue that women shouldn't have the same opportunities as men. Should they have it at the expense of men's programs? Obviously that's not what you would like.

"But the underlying premise of providing equal opportunities for women? How can you argue with that?"

Ron Polk, head baseball coach
Mississippi State University
Atlanta Constitution

Discussing how the allocation of scholarship funds affects college baseball:

"The enemy of college baseball is the NCAA. You've got guys making decisions (on scholarships) who have never played the game. We can't have scholarships for baseball because we have to have scholarships for women's crew or women's whatever.

"I'm not against Title IX; I'm just looking for a Title X for baseball. The problem is the NCAA, not tweaking college baseball."

Amateurism

Chris Wallace, general manager
Boston Celtics
The Sporting News

Discussing a recently adopted rule that allows pre-enrolled student-athletes to apply for the NBA draft without jeopardizing intercollegiate eligibility:

"I don't see what would be wrong with that. There are so many forces at work on (high-school) players, and they're not always forces that have the right answers. So if you get swept away, as sometimes these players do, it's nice that they have more of a safety net than they would have.

"I'm for anything that provides more options to players. If it creates a little bit of inconvenience on the NBA side or the college side, so be it."

Billy Donovan, head men's basketball coach
University of Florida
The Sporting News

"To me, the only way the rule would be good is if a high-school kid jumped out and the NBA team told him, 'You're not going to play, go to school and get better.'

"I think every NBA coach and every NBA franchise has a way they want to develop their players, and I can't imagine many NBA teams would tell their guys to go to college for a year."