ASU Men's Swimming/Diving Cut

From the wiki: "Although the most prominent "public face" of Title IX is its impact on high school and collegiate athletics, the original statute made no reference to athletics. The legislation covers all educational activities, and complaints under Title IX alleging discrimination in fields such as science or math education, or in other aspects of academic life such as access to health care and dormitory facilities, are not unheard of. It also applies to non-sport activities such as school bands, cheerleaders, and clubs; however, social fraternities and sororities, gender-specific youth clubs such as Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, and Girls State and Boys State are specifically exempt from Title IX requirements." The full article is here. Carlos - you comment on many things I can't add to. I just want to add a few things: 1. at the Div 1 level, most athletic departments are independent organizations. They have revenue and expenses. Their revenues come from many places. The majority may NOT be donations. It includes ticket sales, corporate sponsorships (e.g. Nike, Coca Cola), and television. Football loses money at many schools but at others it generates HUGE amounts of cash. 2. The article below goes into detail just how ridiculous this can get for a school like Texas: www.statesman.com/.../0930utsportsmain.html 3. I agree with you that football and basketball are key drivers for alumni donations. They are also the sports most popular with the student body. Women's basketball draws a good crowd at a few schools. Women's soccer averaged almost 5,000 per game at Texas A&M. One of the reasons I enjoy college football is how alive the campus becomes on game day. Just about nothing else can do that to a large campus. That even w/o football, there are more male student-athletes in less sports than there are female student-athletes, despite the ladies having more opportunities to play sports. Is this true? A football roster, including walk-ons, is ~ 100. A Title IX compliant university should have male/female participation counts approximately proportional to the male/female ratio of the student body. Assuming a 50/50 ratio taking football out should leave more female athletes.

I was attempting to turn the discussion back to sports because this is a swim forum, not a forum to debate larger social issues. In an issue as complex as the reasons why a prominent school drops a sports team, larger issues come into play. Most ppl don't know that Title IX isn't just about sports. Title IX shows that sports fit in a much larger landscape. Don't tell me to shut up again, Carlos. It's really unnecessarily rude. I think it's equally rude to misrepresent what someone says, especially when that misrepresentation attempts to portray someone (me) as straight out of the Cro Magnon age. I really took offense to you claiming that I was advocating undergrads getting pregnant and that I was stereotyping women. I was just advocating a position and perhaps playing devil's advocate. As is evident from your last few posts, you flipped out. Pot. Kettle. Kettle. Pot. I know my posts were lengthy, but nowhere did I say the things you accused me of saying. You skimmed my posts, flipped out and projected what you wanted to on them. Sorry for telling you to shut up.

Is this true? A football roster, including walk-ons, is ~ 100. A Title IX compliant university should have male/female participation counts approximately proportional to the male/female ratio of the student body. Assuming a 50/50 ratio taking football out should leave more female athletes. "Should". Schools are granted a bit of lee-way for "trying" (i.e. adding female sports and dropping men's sports). From what I can remember, most schools aren't 100% compliant regarding sports. And from what I can gather, virtually every school is compliant regarding dollars-spent on male and female students, which wasn't the case 35 years ago, w/ male students and male-centric curricular and extra-curricular activities receiving far more funding. Sports become the easy target when in reality there's no longer the need to force the issue. Another thing that complicates the issue for small, private colleges: administrators are beginning to say that small colleges are becoming a de facto Country and Fitness Club. They use sport participation as a way to bring in students. They can't compete w/ the elite schools for students, so this is one way they can do it. Now. Throw in the declining academic performance of boys, throw in strict Title IX guidelines, and you end up tying small colleges' hands in their attempt bring in desperately needed students. Their high-performing female students want better mentorship programs, better pre-grad school orientation and preparation, better liaison with the business community, better student services in general, etc. Not more sports teams.

Who says they're not interested? The fact that it's so much harder to get women to participate. It's not uncommon for schools to offer 10 female sports and 7 mens sports. And if you subtract the football team, there are still more men playing those 6 sports than women playing 10. The reality is that women have now grown up playing sports. They're not being denied on a mass-scale like they were back in the 60's and 70's. The interpretation of Title IX hasn't taken into account a major paradigm shift that has occurred. And what do you mean by the statement that women "take what they want from" sports? Don't much like the sound of that ... Is this somehow different than men? Women AND men take what they want out of sports. Men and women play sports to the level they wish. Don't read too much else into that. College athletics are there for those that want to participate. And if the new women's crew team is currently undersubscribed or unsuccessful because it's a fairly new women's sport, does that mean it will be 10 years from now when high school teams are more common? Let's not write women's interest in sports off so quickly! Sheesh. Real change happens in slo-mo. 40 years ago, few girls participated in sports. Nowadays, the number of girls playing sports in the US is unparalleled. And how exactly can "financial stupidity" be a red herring in light of the dollar numbers we know are spent on football and basketball? B/c it is used in a misleading way. It's a scape-goat just as much as Title IX. Football -- which I hate, btw -- and basketball bring in money through alumni donations. THAT's why they still get promoted by universities. They're loss leaders. Sure. There's the whole, "Wull. We've always pumped up hoops and foo'ball" factor, but the bottom-line is that bitching about hoops and football is going to get you nowhere b/c w/o those 2 sports, alumni donations dry up. Have I mentioned that these sports are loss-leaders? It sounds like you're blurring sports and academics/larger social issues. They're separate. :shakeshead: Why was Title IX passed? Larger social issues that manifested themselves in sports. Why am I calling for a re-evaluation/shift in Title IX? B/c there's been a paradigm shift regarding gender roles in society, specifically w/ female participation in sports. First you're discussing minority boys in high school and now you're concerned with mothers and potential mothers seeking tenure and working in corporate america. Paradigm shift. Gender roles. Men now have different needs than they did 40 years ago. Women have different needs. Title IX = archaic. Doesn't reflect paradigm shift. As someone who gave up a partnership, I know first hand that these are all very valid and troublesome issues, with no simple solution, but they are a little beyond the purview of undergraduate education and sports. Sports, maybe. But outside the purview of universities???? They're not. Go to any university health center or student services center and you'll see how these are important issues. Did you know that service on these issues help professors qualify for tenure and raises? It's part of their job. Perhaps graduate schools can work on budgeting that money. Certainly don't want my future undergraduates being encouraged to have children at that age! :frustrated: Not every undergrad is btw 18-22 years old. Don't know what those larger social issues have to do with the plight of college swimming, football or Title IX. B/c all of the afore-mentioned are affected by an archaic piece of legislation. Maybe instead of penalizing women's sports, We're NOT penalizing women's sports. I'm sorry. We're not in the 60's any more. Men's sports are being penalized b/c universities have to have an equal number of male and female athletes. Not sports. Athletes. we could downsize our military spending just a wee bit to focus on these pressing domestic issues? I would love it! And if boys, including minority boys, don't want to be in college or are dropping out, perhaps they should be re-focused on something besides or in addition to sports at a young age? And if girls are more interested in getting pregnant and dropping out of high school, maybe they should "re-focus on something else"? (in case it's not obvious, this is a ridiculous statement.) Sorry for the strawman, but me personally, I'd rather address the issue through education and implementation of programs and policies based on facts , rather than throwing up my arms and saying "oh well". Perhaps too many parents are concerned with kids being first string varsity instead of whether they're getting good grades? W/ middle and upper class boys, it's mainly a question of "male privilege" and the fact that girls work harder. But there are other factors that need to be studied. If alumni won't give money without a football team, it's a good reason not to go to that school. I would never, ever, ever advise a student to take this into account while picking a school. The real issue behind this boils down to human nature, not institutional culture. After this third or fourth discussion of Title IX, I will continue to encourage my kids to pick their school for academic reasons. Wise decision.

Interesting column today from Jason Whitlock, the always-controversial sports columnist for the Kansas City Star: Full column: www.kansascity.com/.../624817.html Bad guy is NCAA, not KU’s Arthur By JASON WHITLOCK The Kansas City Star May 18, 2008 Excerpts: "The bad guys are the people running the NCAA who refuse to acknowledge that their current system is almost completely void of consistent academic integrity, the people unwilling to recognize that it’s criminal to allow the young men who generate all the money to rot in academic wastelands until age 18. The NCAA knows that nearly all of its member institutions recruit a good handful of kids in football and basketball who are totally unprepared for college. When you’re talking about elite-level hoopers — kids in Rivals.com’s top 250 — I’d venture to conservatively estimate that 70 percent of them are unprepared academically. I’m not talking about meeting minimum eligibility requirements. I’m speaking of hitting campus ready to take advantage of the full academic experience a university has to offer. They’re not ready. They need almost 24-hour tutoring or remedial courses....." "....The NCAA should finance basketball and football academies for elite athletes starting in ninth grade for football players and eighth grade for basketball players. You want athletes prepared for college? Prepare them yourself. Don’t leave them to rot in poor schools or with jock-sniffing teachers. Get involved with them before the street agent. Take a significant interest before they’ve covered themselves in tattoos and owe a debt to someone who cares little about their intellectual evolution....."

I'm pretty sure most of the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion (consisting in part of the Norris Aquatics Center and Combe Tennis Center) At Northwestern was built with alumni money.

Pools come from donors, one way or another - that seems almost always the case with one Div. III conference: At one of the last of the men’s liberal arts colleges, there’s The Class of 1950 Natatorium: www.wabash.edu/.../facility ... The Timken Natatorium marks a donation to by the maker of ball bearings to the small college in its community: athletics.wooster.edu/.../natatorium.php ... This pool, www.oberlin.edu/.../photo1.html , honors a long-serving and much-loved college president www.oberlin.edu/.../RobertCarr.html who retired in the same year the college built its pool. In the same Div. III conference, a new $59-million facility is breaking ground - it's part of a larger facilities program but it's unlikely the donors were surprised to hear there's a new pool along with some chemistry facilities: www.collegeswimming.com/.../ Here’s an interesting approach to sports fund-raising in this conference: the "Remember Branch Rickey” campaign mrrickey.owu.edu/pledge.html ... Mr. Rickey, an alum of Ohio Wesleyan, was known for signing Jackie Robinson, but he “also was credited with developing the farm system of minor league teams while with the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1920s and 1930s and pioneering the use of batting helmets while with the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1950s. After retiring from the Pirates, his plans to begin a third major league helped prompt the first expansion of Major League Baseball.” But, when a Div. I men’s team is cut, the issue seems to be the operating budget, not the pool (i.e., the capital budget). Check out UCLA’s great facilities: www.recreation.ucla.edu/.../facilities_sub.aspx www.recreation.ucla.edu/.../facilities_sub.aspx As the Dartmouth example shows, it's a lot harder to raise money for an operating budget. For the Div. III schools, facilities account for proportionately a larger share of the budget (they travel mostly in their regions, they give no scholarships, and the facilities serve a lot of other recreational programs as well). The operating budget is higher if you aspire to compete, as ASU did, in a tough conference. If you want to fund an annual operating budget of more than $2 million through an endowment, you might need donations of more than $25 million - apart from facilities costs and Title IX impacts. Such a number is a challenge for a place like Dartmouth; it would seem to be a much larger challenge at a big public school with so many competing demands and needs ...

Blodgett Pool at Harvard.

But when has a swimming pool, volleyball court, etc. been built with an alumni donation? Kenyon College - $70 million

I understand the importance of college swimming to the Olympic Movement or the future of the sport in general. It was easy to help:angel:, you just go to: www.saveasuswimming.com Did anyone notice that almost half of the swimmers were from countries other than the U.S.? Brazil, Israel, Croatia, Sweden, Australia...etc.