Further cuts to come for men's sports

To claim that Title IX has only had positive effects during it's implementation is laughable. To claim that it has not effected secondary men's sports is absurd. Fact is there is only so much money in the athletic budget pie, and when it's cut up to serve more women than previous, the pieces get smaller for the rest of the recipients. As we have seen in recent years, some of the pieces dissappear entirely. Title IX has caused its own budget crunch and women's sports will feel the cutbacks eventually too...... which is not good. Did Title IX advance the numbers participating in women's sports.... of course. No one can deny this. Is this good?.... It's great. Was the ruling written to protect anything but the women's agenda....... flat out "no". Of course football is to blame. It has always been to blame for lop sided and unfair budget decisions. AD's have been greedy for more than a half a century in favor of this sport. This fact is no where near as new as Title IX. Title IX should have been implemented with budgetary safeguards for secondary sports....... i.e. for women AND men. The drain should have been forced back partially on football with cuts in scholarships to reasonable levels. John Smith

Go talk with Whitten about it...he's one of the folks who has been leading the charge on the whole "save college swimming" effort and according to him not a single one of the 100+ Div I college football programs including Ohio State & Texas is a money maker when you look at "tradtional" accounting methods of P&L.... I think this is all an issue of what they call revenue and what they call expenses (for football). If football revenue is just ticket sales - then they probably spend more per year than ticket sales. The article below says UT had football revenue of $25M in 2006-2007. But they also had $8M from the Big 12 (shared revenues), $13.2M in donations, $6.4M in marketing agreements, etc. I bet Deloss Dodds carefully calculates how many leather couches and Playstations to install in the player's lounge based on revenue for all sources. www.statesman.com/.../0930utsportsmain.html Div1 football is a very expensive arms race and it costs big bucks to play.

Turning a profit is irrelevant, that's not why schools or university sports are in existence. I do not understand why football, specifically football, is in our universities. The graduation rate is horrible. The programs are a huge financial drain on the schools. The NFL, MLB, NBA and WBA have a ton of money, at the least they should subsidize thier feeder programs. So, why are university sports like football in existence?

God forbid we right a wrong and let women have anything if it might affect the privileged male status quo! Do you realize what you are saying here? Again, your problem is the amount of money spent on MEN for football and basketball. Feminists are not to blame for MEN obsessing over these two sports and making the pool of money available for other men's sports smaller. The fact that Title IX forced universities to spend some money on women (when they had been spending none) does not change the fact that football is the main culprit. And you can't blame that on feminists for god's sake. They are the last ones watching football. I'm really enjoying watching another female poster take the stodgy old men to task over this. You go girl!!

I'm really enjoying watching another female poster take the stodgy old men to task over this. You go girl!! You can see I'm not having much success. Reason doesn't seem to prevail on this subject when one has his mind made up on the subject. This kind of reminds me of Elise's thread about going back to the 50's...

"......And you can't blame that on feminists for god's sake. They are the last ones watching football." Your right. It's the lawyers that drafted the ruling. A one sided solution with little foresight to address anything but female numerical inequities as opposed to safeguarding the existing sports for women AND men. Title IX should have been drafted to help prevent the slash and burn decisions of athletic departments during it implementation as well as the ever present football budgetary favoritism. Unfortunately, it was only written to protect women. I can't believe I'm actually having to explain this. You are essentially saying that making access to sports for women is less important than keeping men involved. Shouldn't both be equally important? Why do you automatically discount football from the equation? Can you rationally argue how giving 85 MEN access to athletics at a University can be dismissed from this discussion? There is one pie of money. You seem to think men are entitled to 3/4 of the pie because football "doesn't count." Why is that? Look at it this way. We are a hungry family and all there is is one pizza. In times past, the men have all eaten 7/8's of every pizza available with 1/8 of the pie left for the women. Of the men in the family, one is a 400lb. glutton. When reason and justice prevail and the men are then forced to share the pizza equally, one of the men decides that "Fatty" should get almost all of the men's half. Is it then fair for the men to whine about the women getting a fair share of the pizza? Or would they be better served figuring out how to allocate their portion more fairly???? Title IX may fall on it's own sword eventually. It could've been drafted to leverage football AD decisions during budgetary constraints. The problem with reducing the football # scholarships in half may backfire. Who's to say ADs would be willing to spread the remaining scholarship money to secondary men's sports or women's sports. They'd probably just eat it in salary and other budget areas which would result in a net loss of scholarships for women. Funny, you make it sound as though you'll be pleased when this happens just to prove you are right...

A one sided solution with little foresight to address anything but female numerical inequities as opposed to safeguarding the existing sports for women AND men. I see no reason whatsoever that the then existing and currently existing number of football scholarships for men should be safeguarded. You are really on a woman-hating roll, John.

I'm at a 3 day meet this weekend. My mother is with us. She turned to us and said, "girls could never do this when I was growing up." I sure hope no woman ever has to say that to her grandkids in the future. But, if people like John have their way, that sure seems highly likely. The continued crying, and that is exactly what it is, or possibly worse, outright discriminatory action, is stomach turning. Watching all sexes excel in athletics is a good thing. Whining like it's still 1975 is pathetic. We know those on both sides of this and despite arguing about it every 4 months, nothing changes, maybe except the rhetoric. John, get your last few woman bashes in and move onto another pet gripe, for the love of god!

I am absolutely totally in favor of women's sports.I have no problem with women getting 1/2 the scholarships.My wife was a pre-Title IX swimmer who had to fight to let the coach give them any pool time.Where I am going to agree with John is that this didn't have to be the way it was implemented.Cutting men's sports doesn't increase opportunity for women.If there are 100 men's scholarships and 0 women's,then 80 men's and 50 womens is better,but not as good as 100 each.Too expensive you say,only if the purpose of athletics is money and spectacle,not developing well rounded people(instead of just round people.)By the way,the NCAA has been an unfair irrational institution since it's inception(they can't even get a football play off right for heavens sake.)If swimming is to thrive it is going to have to do so in spite of the NCAA not thanks to it(hence my earlier proposal that USA-S etc.start a scholarship fund.)

Where I am going to agree with John is that this didn't have to be the way it was implemented.Cutting men's sports doesn't increase opportunity for women. I don't think anyone here is arguing that cutting men's swimming programs is a good way to equalize opportunity for women. None of us want to see men's sports cut. However, when men start whining that Title IX is evil because their opportunities are disappearing, they are whining about the wrong thing. It is not the fault of Title IX, women, feminists or a left-wing conspiracy that "Fatty" is eating most of the pizza. Getting mad at the legislation instead of those (mainly men) who allocate the resources unfairly is futile and silly.