Please stop the lie.

Title IX has become a national policy debate, especially this spring during the 30th anniversary of the law, but there will never be any honest and open discussion, nor any constructive compromises, nor any creative solutions to problems, as long as one big falsehood continues to be cited.

The "lie" is that men's college athletics opportunities have not been reduced and have actually grown during the Title IX era. Whenever Title IX-related issues are addressed, those who wish to maintain the status quo keep claiming that men's athletics continue to grow.

It is like they are saying, "End of discussion. Leave us alone. There is nothing bad happening to men's athletics because of Title IX. The only athletes who matter are women."

Those who work in college athletics and on the national sports scene know that this "lie" is misleading and, to be blunt, inaccurate. But as long as some women's sports leaders keep denying that men's college athletics have been injured, there is never any real dialogue or progress.

I do not reach this conclusion without experience and research. Wrestling has been the sport perhaps most affected by college cutbacks. We estimate that as many as 400 (about 60 percent) college programs (including NCAA, NAIA, junior college and others) have been axed since 1972. All of this is happening while wrestling continues to grow on the youth and high-school levels, and the popularity of major college wrestling as a spectator sport continues to build.

Before anyone starts in on the rhetoric about how many wrestling programs were cut before Title IX was strictly enforced, nobody in wrestling is saying that Title IX is the only reason for the loss of college programs. The wrestling community does contend that Title IX has been a contributing factor in a large percentage of those decisions and, in many cases, the most important factor. When schools like Bucknell and Marquette cut wrestling and admit that Title IX was the reason, we should listen to them.

In 1995, I was assigned to work on a Title IX project for USA Wrestling, and since 1996, working on Title IX issues has been one of my job responsibilities. I have read all the published reports and statistics, searched the Web for literally hundreds of articles on the topic, visited with elected officials, written articles, participated in debates, attended conferences and even done my own statistical analysis. My job is to know the issue completely, and I have worked very hard to do that. And before anyone claims that I am biased against women, one of my other projects is the development of women's wrestling in the United States. My job is to help my sport, period.

I was asked at a recent U.S. Olympic Committee conference why do I not believe the statistics, since they come from the NCAA, the federal government or other reputable organizations. The answer is simple. The only way anyone can claim that men have gained in college athletics is by using the raw aggregate numbers without accounting for the change of colleges from one organization to another. The fact is that NCAA membership has grown dramatically, while membership in the NAIA and other organizations has decreased. We are not seeing many new colleges being built or new athletics departments created. Schools merely are changing affiliation. The raw numbers, without perspective, treat things as if this is all new opportunity rather than just a transfer of existing opportunity.

That does two things. It understates the loss of opportunity to men, and it actually overstates the amount of new opportunity for women.

I'll cite two examples:

* The number of NCAA male athletes is larger now than in the past. In 2001, the NCAA had 208,866 male athletes, compared with 169,800 in 1982. (The highest number was 211,366 in 1999.) However, since 1982, when the NCAA began keeping such information, the Association has gained 262 institutions, many of which came from the NAIA, which has lost 187 institutions. The fact is that the average number of male athletes on each NCAA campus has dropped, from a high of 253.54 in 1985 to the low of 199.11 in 2001. The NCAA has more programs now because of the transfer of affiliation, but each athletics department has fewer men.

* The 2001 Government Accounting Office study said that the number of men has increased. Again, in a raw assessment, this is true. The report says that in NCAA and NAIA schools from 1981-82 through 1998-99, women athletes went from 90,000 to 163,000 and men went from 220,000 to 232,000. But again, the number of institutions involved has gone up. The "scope and methodology" section of the report shows how the GAO counted NCAA and NAIA schools, minus those with dual affiliation. In 1982, 1,185 colleges were counted, while in 1999, 1,319 colleges were counted. When you account for the 134 more schools in the study in 1999, that "gain" of men is actually, again, a loss on each campus of almost 10 male athletes, from 185.65 in 1982 to 175.89 in 1999. And where did those new schools come from? According to the National Junior College Athletic Association staff, a large number of two-year schools with existing sports programs became four-year schools during that time. So again, this is not new opportunity.

There actually have been three GAO studies in recent years, and the conclusions about the effect on men in two studies differ from the 2001 report. The 1999 study says in fact that the total number of male athletes decreased, while the number of female athletes increased. This study used 725 schools that were in the same division from 1986 through 1997. This removes totally the problems caused by schools changing affiliation and basically compares apples to apples.

I can promise you that there are talented and dedicated people digging into studies right now and coming up with new ways to discredit my facts and trying to claim that men have not suffered. Many of these people have substantial funding and resources and will go to great lengths to continue the lie. Then, others who want to see change will have to go back to their numbers and try to refute the new numbers being thrown around. It is a never-ending cycle that goes nowhere.

Let's be practical and honest for a minute. I contend that those in the trenches, on the campuses and in the national sports organizations know first-hand that men have lost opportunity. I challenge the NCAA to publish a complete list of dropped sports programs during the last 10 or more years. If the NCAA doesn't have that list, it should. If we can take a look at that information, in its complete form, I believe we all can agree that men's sports opportunities have decreased.

As long as we can't get everybody to admit there is a problem, there will never be any true and constructive dialogue. I don't see how the government's new blue-ribbon commission can get anything achieved if those involved in the debate can't at least reach a starting point on the facts.

Once we can get there, then we can put the special interests and politics aside and begin to focus on the most important people in this matter: the student-athletes, both women and men.

Gary Abbott is the director of special projects for USA Wrestling.