I've been sadly bemused over the last year at the complaining and anger expressed by most of the women quoted about men's sports in The NCAA News, especially about football.

Marilyn McNeil's comments in the May 27 issue are an example of the trend in NCAA women's "leadership" that reveals insensitivity toward male student-athletes. Cutting programs is not saying that "players No. 70 through 100 on the football team are more important than the entire wrestling or gymnastics team," as McNeil put it.

After all, she must realize as an athletics director that many of those players who are No. 70 through 100 will play later in their collegiate athletics experience. Those who don't will have been given a chance to come out of the ranks of more than two million high-school football players to play at the college level.

Ms. McNeil goes on to say "we cannot afford the excesses created by players who virtually never get their uniform dirty in a game." I do not think players 70 through 100 would describe their efforts that way.

I would like to see a study showing the amount of money that individual men and women give to athletics. I bet you would see that the general interest in sports is more and at a much higher level among men than women.

The high cost of women's sports, which generally bring no net revenues to the athletics program, is the major reason athletics programs are having money problems. Let's disburse revenues to the sports that create the revenue and attendance, not take from them to support other sports that cost a tremendous amount of money but have few fans and raise a very small percentage of their own funding. Football brings people on campus who end up not only giving to athletics but to the science department, the library and other university functions.

The undonated money that comes from the university should go to the sports having the most general interest to students and the public and to those sports that most likely will be able to generate the biggest percentage of additional donations and revenue for the university. The other sports should have to cut back on expenses and/or raise a greater percentage of support and interest.

This is more fair than the number-counting game and forced revenue sharing that Title IX forces athletics programs into. My suggestion is free from the politics of Title IX. It allocates dollars based on what sports most people are interested in, as demonstrated by their attendance and giving.

Tim Goldner
Oxford, Ohio