Sports are fun. They are the great escape from the challenges of real life, providing sustenance for our sanity when war, famine and disease abound. When someone threatens our tenuous tether to sanity -- those games that provide our emotional outlet -- well, that's when we really get emotional. How else can you explain the rage over Title IX?

In my 15 years in the Washington, D.C., headquarters office of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which enforces Title IX nationwide, 10 OCR leaders -- assistant secretaries -- came and went. Most came to the OCR with experience in race discrimination, and several nobly tried to improve the lot of minorities in our nation's schools. But those assistant secretaries who stayed longer than a few months were both amazed and dismayed that the most contentious issue on the OCR's plate, an issue most of them grew to hate, was Title IX athletics. To some, it seemed silly. Equal access to academic courses and employment positions surely were more important. Besides, Title IX athletics complaints total only 2 percent of the OCR's caseload under the five civil-rights laws the OCR enforces. Unquestionably, such limited complaint activity reflects an issue of minor interest.

As the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics has evolved, the commissioners' plight reminds me of past assistant secretaries. Called to serve by the Secretary of Education, the commissioners no doubt assumed their roles with high hopes of accomplishing something constructive. Instead, the commissioners were placed on the firing range for certain individuals' lifelong emotions.

What must be clear to them now is how many people will be dissatisfied with anything they recommend. Short of their issuing a report recommending that Title IX be repealed, I hold the commissioners blameless. They have been asked by politicians to tackle not only one of civil rights' most complicated issues, but its most contentious one, in a few meetings. For that, the blame lies squarely on the politicians, who no doubt are gauging the heat heaped upon the commissioners. I just hope the commissioners -- all intelligent, educated and talented -- will not feel used when all is said and done.

As someone who has spent 23 years in civil rights opposing stereotypes, I do not cast blame on a faceless collective of politicians. Here are some of the facts:

* The third most powerful person in the United States, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois, is: a former wrestling coach; former president of the Illinois Wrestling Coaches Association; recipient of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame's Order of Merit (1996); and inductee in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame as an Outstanding American (2000). In 1995, he called for a Congressional hearing on the three-part test (the OCR's policy for analyzing equal opportunity to participate in athletics), citing it as the leading cause for the reduction of men's opportunities. He has twice introduced legislation regarding Title IX athletics. Considering the multitude of issues that Congress faces, a Congressman who calls for a hearing and twice introduces legislation has more than casual interest in the subject.

* The OCR's second-highest position is held by Louis Goldstein, also of Illinois. Goldstein, appointed by the politically appointed assistant secretary, coordinates national policy development. He represented the men's wrestling and soccer teams in their lawsuit against Illinois State University. Among his other arguments rejected by the court, Goldstein argued that eliminating the men's teams, when men were 45 percent of the enrollment and 66 percent of the participants, constituted sex discrimination against men in violation of Title IX.

* The National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) and others have sued the Department of Education alleging that the OCR's three-part test mandates the very discrimination that Title IX prohibits -- in effect, Goldstein's argument in the Illinois State case.

* Assistant Secretary Gerald Reynolds has suggested during commission meetings that an interests survey should determine participation rates, an argument made by the wrestling team, joined by the NWCA, in its lawsuit against California State University, Bakersfield. As the courts have stated, such an approach would "freeze the inequality of the status quo" and "entrench and fix by law the significant gender-based disparity in athletics opportunities . . . thereby disadvantaging further the underrepresented gender."

Question: Is it coincidence that Hastert, Goldstein, Reynolds, the NWCA lawsuit against the Department of Education and the creation of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics are all in play at the same time?

It brings to mind a World Wrestling Federation tag-team event. Into this morass step the hapless commissioners. The commissioners have been buried under an avalanche of paper submitted for their review, to which some of them may wish to set fire at this point. The mountain of paper can only distract their focus from the quintessential facts.

* More than 70 percent of the time, institutions investigated by the OCR choose compliance options other than proportionality (participation proportionate to enrollment -- option one of three options for compliance). The claim of Speaker Hastert, ABC's "20-20," CBS's "60 Minutes," and anyone else that proportionality is the only acceptable way to comply or the OCR's preferred method of compliance is false.

* Of the 12 U.S. Courts of Appeals nationwide, eight have heard cases involving the three-part test, and none have found it invalid. Two U.S. Courts of Appeals labeled the three-part test a "plausible, if not inevitable" reading of the Title IX statute.

* About 40 percent of the opportunities and one-third of the resources in intercollegiate athletics are provided to women. Neither statistic confirms compliance problems. Title IX allows two compliance options when women are underrepresented in the athletics program (which institutions have chosen more than 70 percent of the time), and with the exception of scholarships, funding requirements under Title IX are highly flexible.

Ultimately, this debate is about whether women have been given too much -- for if someone determines that men, with three-fifths of the opportunities and two-thirds of the resources, are being deprived, such that the Title IX standards that permit this result must be loosened further, then the opportunities for women will be scaled back. Hopefully, the 21st century marks the end of such flawed thinking, and we can put our emotions in check before they go so far over the edge that they take our better judgment with them.

Valerie M. Bonnette is president of Good Sports, Inc., Title IX and Gender Equity Specialists.