Gwen Knapp, columnist
San Francisco Chronicle

"The (meetings of the Secretary's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics) will go on, until a final report comes out in January, and the ending seems pretty predictable. Title IX will be bludgeoned.

"And as the last scene fades to black, college wrestlers will be no better off than they were before. In fact, they could be in worse shape, having just beaten up on the wrong foe.

"This drama, they'll discover, was just that. The campaign against Title IX has been less fact-based than the typical movie on the Lifetime channel.

"It's true that college wrestling has been gutted in the past 20 years. But some of the worst damage was done between 1984 and 1988, when Title IX was suspended by a Supreme Court ruling. ...

"...Title IX, which as recently as six years ago was hailed as a triumph for America, the source of gold medals galore at the Atlanta Olympics. Now it's a bogeyman (bogey woman?). Advocates for dismantling the law, in cahoots with the Bush administration, seem to view Title IX as hard-core, left-wing legislation. An honest history suggests otherwise. The original law was signed in 1972 by Richard Nixon. The Restoration Act, which closed the loophole that led the Supreme Court to separate athletics from Title IX, was signed by Ronald Reagan."

Alcohol issues

Henry Wechsler, director of college alcohol studies
Harvard School of Public Health
USA Today

"(What complicates the issue of binge drinking) are higher education's joint efforts with the alcohol industry to educate students about responsible drinking. Anheuser-Busch recently sponsored a full-scale responsible-drinking advertising campaign by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges during National Collegiate Alcohol Awareness Week. Although well-intentioned, such partnerships legitimize the role of the industry as an alcohol educator and make drinking look like an essential part of sports.

"The NCAA also has worked together with the industry in similar efforts. Anheuser-Busch, for instance, sponsors NCAA alcohol-education programs for athletes and purchases advertisements during college sporting events and NCAA championships.

"The result is that the industry looks good by promoting 'responsible' drinking while at the same time its alcohol ads crowd the airwaves and bars, and liquor stores push alcohol at ridiculously low prices to students. It's no wonder that during the past decade, studies have shown no change in the level of binge drinking at American college campuses.

"Universities and the NCAA must end their relationships with the alcohol industry if they really expect a change in the excessive drinking behavior of college students. If the industry truly wants to have an impact on this chronic national problem, it can begin by encouraging retail outlets to curtail their outrageous marketing practices and by limiting and altering its own national beer advertising."

Academic reform

Quin Snyder, head men's basketball coach
University of Missouri, Columbia
San Antonio Express-News

"The more emphasis we put on education, the better. When players walk across campus, people don't ask them how they did on their math test. They want to know how they'll do against Kansas. Those players need to be reminded there's more than that."