National Collegiate Athletic Association

Comment

January 20, 1997


Guest editorial - Men treated unfairly by Title IX application

BY H. CLAY MCELDOWNEY

Because of decisions passed down by the courts and because of policies being implemented by the Office for Civil Rights in reference to Title IX, part of the education amendments passed by Congress in 1972, we are losing college and university athletics programs at an alarming rate.

Title IX requires that schools not deny opportunity for participation on the basis of sex. However, the OCR has adopted a proportionality rule that requires that schools adjust athletics participation so that it is proportional by sex to enrollment. Unless the gender-neutral athletics participation ratio is equal to the enrollment ratio, proportionality cannot be maintained in athletics without perpetually discriminating on the basis of sex. For this reason, the policies being implemented by the OCR and its director, Norma Cantu, are contrary to statute.

OCR's policies, which were clarified by Ms. Cantu in January 1996, reinforce the proportionality rule and provide no protection to prevent a school experiencing budget constraints from eliminating male participation in order to avoid violating Title IX. What results is unfair and discriminatory to male athletes.

Policies of the OCR had a measurable impact at Princeton University. In 1993, the university announced that it was discontinuing the varsity wrestling program in part because of the need to provide better parity in the amount of money being spent on men's and women's sports. Wrestling was chosen to be dropped because of its "favorable" impact on gender equity at the university. The university stated that "the recently cut varsity sports -- wrestling and gymnastics -- stood little chance of being reinstated because of Title IX."

We are fortunate and grateful that the university trustees agreed to allow the varsity wrestling program to continue at Princeton and that our alumni have come forward to support it. In June, the Friends of Princeton Wrestling kicked off an endowment effort with cash and pledges of $513,000, plus life trusts of $721,000.

Other wrestling programs haven't been quite so lucky. Since 1972, more than 250 wrestling programs have been dropped from the college ranks, even though wrestling is

one of the six most popular high-school sports. To my knowledge, only Princeton wrestling has been saved from the ravages of Title IX (cut and then reinstated). In addition, there have been countless athletics programs in other men's sports (football at San Francisco State University; men's swimming at the University of California, Los Angeles; and baseball at Colgate University) that have received the ax as a consequence of Title IX policies.

The Friends of Princeton Wrestling wholeheartedly support the underlying goals of Title IX, which are to advance athletics opportunities for females and to allow girls and women to enjoy the same benefits from athletics participation as boys and men. However, we abhor the notion of advancing participation by one sex at the expense of another.

In an April 2, 1995, column George Will (Ph.D, Princeton, 1968) tackled affirmative action: "Attempts to achieve by government coercion that elusive, because illusory, goal of a 'level playing field' inevitably produce instead an exponential growth of prohibitions and regulations that shrink the individual's sphere of sovereignty." Attempts by government to mandate a level playing field prevent people from playing the game.

Princeton's experience in saving its wrestling program shows that it is possible -- although difficult -- to work within the system and succeed. Other colleges and universities -- including Yale University and Central Connecticut State University, which earlier this year dropped its wrestling program -- are looking to the Princeton model as a way of bringing varsity wrestling back to their campuses.

Changing the way Title IX impacts male athletics, either by getting the OCR to change its policy or by legislative clarification, faces formidable obstacles. The courts have consistently laid down interpretations of the law that have forced colleges and universities to reduce athletics opportunities for men while expanding them for women. In Cohen v. Brown, the court determined that, despite sponsoring 17 women's sports, well above the national average, Brown University did not meet Title IX's requirements and directed the university to reinstate the two women's sports that had been dropped, but not the two men's sports.

Once a men's program is dropped, it is next to impossible to bring it back in the face of Title IX's proportionality rule and budget constraints.

Students deserve to be treated fairly and equally. The OCR must eliminate the role of proportionality in assessing whether an institution provides equivalent opportunity for athletics opportunity for both genders. Counting numbers has resulted, and will continue to result, in decreasing athletics opportunities.

H. Clay McEldowney is former chair of the Friends of Princeton Wrestling.


Letters

Anti-tobacco rules need to be enforced

It was distressing to see a blatant violation of the NCAA substance-abuse policy on national television. At this year's Rose Bowl, an assistant coach was engaging in the use of smokeless tobacco. The announcers even alluded to it.

With more than 400,000 tobacco-related deaths a year, we have a responsibility to educate and become role models for substance abuse. We preach to athletes about becoming role models, but what about coaches?

If our coaches and administrators do not provide the necessary leadership in this area, the athletes see only the hypocrisy in us and the NCAA.

As I work in this area, what I observe as our biggest problem is lack of personal concern for the athlete and consistency in implementing policies. Our coaches need to stand up and be counted!

Joe Gieck
Head Athletic Trainer
University of Virginia

NCAA mark in Japan

Having spent eight months in Japan in 1993, I read with interest Curtis Tong's guest editorial decrying how unfortunate it is that "the marketeers of American pro sports are heavy contributors in bringing changes to (the traditional Japanese way of life)."

Indeed, I had no success in the Japanese capital finding any store that carried a sizeable selection of baseball caps from teams in the Japanese leagues. The shops were all full of U.S. pro league hats.

We shouldn't ignore, however, that collegiate sports marketeers are working their magic in Japan as well. I was stunned to discover that many of the ubiquitous soft drink vending machines around Tokyo stocked a sugary beverage that prominently bore the NCAA logo!

Sieg Lindstrom
Managing Editor
Track & Field News


Opinions -- Neinas: NCAA bureaucratic, short on common sense

Charles M. Neinas, executive director
College Football Association

CFA Sidelines

"The NCAA is in need of an infusion of common sense. The organization that was originally formed for the purpose of developing playing rules and establishing championships has become a bureaucracy of the first order.

"The organization has an appropriate role in establishing eligibility rules, promoting sports, conducting championships and monitoring recruiting. Yet the NCAA's regulatory authority has grown beyond the bounds of practicality. The NCAA rule book is replete with good intentions, but the operation has become too cumbersome. (Part of the problem rests with the membership and the belief that an NCAA rule can cure all athletic ills.)

"Too often there is legislation by interpretation, without regard to the practical impact. The organization preaches economy, but the growing bureaucracy requires institutions to increase their costs to employ personnel to handle NCAA regulations and paperwork.

"The mood of the country is against big government, and the NCAA should take notice. Through the years, institutional autonomy and conference authority have given way to NCAA regulation, and it is time to reverse the trend. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, 'I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure. Try to please everyone.'

Could that be the reason that there is continued restructuring within the NCAA?"

I-A football playoff

Gary Nuhn, columnist
Dayton Daily News

"So here we are after a week of crummy weather and closed practices, of Groucho and Lucy, but no O. J., of a legendary quarterback for one team and a quarterback not chosen until Monday for the other, and we're about to watch a Rose Bowl we're not sure has any meaning.

"It's No. 2 in the country, Arizona State, against No. 4, Ohio State, yet people all over Ohio are asking, OK, so what?

"How did it get to this?

"Ohio State's loss to Michigan soured half the state's population and left the other half questioning its enthusiasm.

"The Rose Bowl should be the highlight of the season. When you only get there once every 12 years, it should have a place of its own on the mantel.

"Instead, there is a shroud over the game. And it goes deeper than the Michigan loss.

"It also has to do with the proliferation of bowls and the mostly futile attempts of college football officials to set up a national-championship game.

"There are 18 bowl games now, pretty much guaranteeing that 17 of them will have a thimble full of meaning.

"The Cotton Bowl used to be a big deal. Now you couldn't find 10 people at the mall who could tell you who's playing in it. It's my job to know, and I don't.

"Same with the Orange Bowl. Once it mattered, in and of itself. Now it's just another game played by teams with bad breath with the sole purpose of filling a slot in a TV schedule.

"It used to be the pinnacle of a football program to be in a bowl. There were only seven bowls in the '50s, and four of them had stature. Now the ratio is 18-1.

"Now with every team 6-5 and above from a major conference guaranteed a trip to Shreveport, the fizz is gone. It has become so routine for Ohio State to go to a bowl -- eight times in the last eight years--hat now for many fans it's not enough to go to the Rose. Now the only thing that will sate the beast is the national championship. Take your 10-1 records and go fish, those fans are saying.

"In the '50s and '60s, when only the Big Ten champion went to a bowl -- when everyone else stayed home -- the Rose Bowl was sufficient. Let Texas and Alabama play for the national championship in the Sugar Bowl. The Rose was still the Rose.

"Now, the Rose is just the Citrus Bowl on steroids."

Editorial
Worcester (Massachusetts) Telegram & Gazette

"Nowhere is the deplorable commercialization of college sports more evident than in the annual scramble for postseason football bowl berths.

"Ostensibly held to spotlight the best of the best, bowl games have devolved into an annual wallow in greed and wretched excess.

"Any pretension of amateur standing is gone in this era of megabucks coaching salaries, huge stadiums with luxurious accommodations, multimillion-dollar television deals and under-the-table payoffs to athletes.

"The bowl games are awash in cash from ticket sales, concessions, team memorabilia, broadcast rights, commercial endorsements and corporate sponsors.

"How contemptuous the marketing geniuses who invented the Carquest Bowl must be of the simple Cotton, Sugar, Orange and Rose Bowls of yesteryear.

"The annual lineup of four or five contests has ballooned to an 18-bowl free-for-all money grab. That's why teams bypassed for bowl consideration -- because they lack sufficient commercial appeal -- threaten to take their grievances to court.

"While the single-minded pursuit of postseason cash can be lucrative, the price of such venality is high. The abuses and violations that appear to be inseparable from big-time collegiate sports have tainted the reputations of all too many institutions recently.

"The trend will continue until schools and their alumni recognize what has happened to college sports -- and realize that price is simply too high."

Tiebreaker rule

Kirk Bohls, columnist
Austin American-Statesman

"This year, 25 (Division I-A football) games would have ended in ties.

"Instead of 50 teams not knowing whether to leave the field in euphoria or despair, the game was decided on the playing field, where it should be. What a novel thought: a game actually played to its conclusion, kind of like the season ought to be....

"This is not to say the NCAA shouldn't tweak the overtime rule for next season. It needs some work.

"Move the ball back to midfield or at least the opponent's 40-yard line. Starting a series at the opposing 25 too easily rewards the offense by putting it in scoring position through no work of its own. Make a team earn a score.

"Get rid of inflatable scores like California's 56-55 win over Arizona and Georgia's 56-49 victory over Auburn, both needing four extra sessions. If for no other reason than to spare defensive coordinators misery, do not count these misleading statistics compiled in overtimes.

"Also don't count all the points for the final score. If the game ends in a 17-17 tie and isn't decided until a winning field goal in the sixth overtime, make it a 20-17 win instead of a 55-52 win. Otherwise, you have more asterisks for records than Rodman has tattoos."