National Collegiate Hockey Conference

[adamw]

Presumably they wouldn't have to add another women's team, if they had some existing women's teams that are below their scholarship limit - they could just add scholarships to those to offset the new men's hockey scholarships.  I have no idea if that is the case or not, of course.

This is what UConn's intention is. They are intending to add scholarships to women's tennis and women's rowing.

[KeithK]

I'm just saying that you can use the same system and ignore football and get more equitable results.

It isn't equitable to ignore football though.  Football and sprint football are both huge amounts of team members that women just aren't allowed to obtain.  To me, making a different sport instead (a la field hockey) is fair to offset that.  There are also two weights of rowing teams at Cornell for men and only one for women.  Seems sort of unfair if you just ignore things like that.

The fact that there's no female equivalent is not because of discrimination. (Intentional anyway; spare me the arguments about gender roles and structural sexism or whatnot.) Football is big because people like football. Football is a big spectator event in this country in a way that the fringe sports are not.

The original intent of Title IX (I think) was to eliminate discrimination and increase opportunities for women. We've seen this. But a system based on css228's concept - matching programs for a given sport - would easily preserve this and eliminate some of the gross inequitable results that the current compliance regime had created (canceling long established men's teams while keeping the corresponding women's teams.)

Take one look at college enrollment stats and you'd see plenty of evidence that we no longer need any special rules to encourage female participation in higher education.  The presence of a scholarship football ream on campus with no female equivalent doesn't change the fact that women are now a substantial majority of college degrees (~60%).

[ugarte]

I'm just saying that you can use the same system and ignore football and get more equitable results.

It isn't equitable to ignore football though.  Football and sprint football are both huge amounts of team members that women just aren't allowed to obtain.  To me, making a different sport instead (a la field hockey) is fair to offset that.  There are also two weights of rowing teams at Cornell for men and only one for women.  Seems sort of unfair if you just ignore things like that.

The fact that there's no female equivalent is not because of discrimination. (Intentional anyway; spare me the arguments about gender roles and structural sexism or whatnot.) Football is big because people like football. Football is a big spectator event in this country in a way that the fringe sports are not.

We are not Ohio State. Have you been to a Cornell football game? A SPRINT football game? Given the size of the rosters and coaching staffs and the number of fans in the stands, I'm pretty sure that Cornell pays to play football because it can't possibly pay for itself. It doesn't matter WHY there is no equivalent for football, THERE IS NO EQUIVALENT FOR FOOTBALL. When a school chooses to have a football team they are committing at least hundreds of thousands of dollars exclusively to male students. Exempting football from Title IX calculations makes as much sense as excluding defense and entitlement spending (I mean this to be non-partisan, since everyone does it) from budget reform.

Title IX "affects" male athletes "disproportionately" because when it was passed, athletic department budgets included well below 50% for women's sports. Because many schools didn't want to substantially increase their budgets, they had to cut back on spending for men's sports. You might think that it is unfair that male athletes have to lose spots to pay for women's sports; I think that it is a shame that for decades female athletes were treated like second-class students. It is a fact of life that if rectifying past discrimination on a going-forward basis entails the removal of a preference, it will sometimes feel like a punishment to the person who considered that preference the natural order of things.

[Jim Hyla]

I'm just saying that you can use the same system and ignore football and get more equitable results.

It isn't equitable to ignore football though.  Football and sprint football are both huge amounts of team members that women just aren't allowed to obtain.  To me, making a different sport instead (a la field hockey) is fair to offset that.  There are also two weights of rowing teams at Cornell for men and only one for women.  Seems sort of unfair if you just ignore things like that.

The fact that there's no female equivalent is not because of discrimination. (Intentional anyway; spare me the arguments about gender roles and structural sexism or whatnot.) Football is big because people like football. Football is a big spectator event in this country in a way that the fringe sports are not.

We are not Ohio State. Have you been to a Cornell football game? A SPRINT football game? Given the size of the rosters and coaching staffs and the number of fans in the stands, I'm pretty sure that Cornell pays to play football because it can't possibly pay for itself. It doesn't matter WHY there is no equivalent for football, THERE IS NO EQUIVALENT FOR FOOTBALL. When a school chooses to have a football team they are committing at least hundreds of thousands of dollars exclusively to male students. Exempting football from Title IX calculations makes as much sense as excluding defense and entitlement spending (I mean this to be non-partisan, since everyone does it) from budget reform.

Title IX "affects" male athletes "disproportionately" because when it was passed, athletic department budgets included well below 50% for women's sports. Because many schools didn't want to substantially increase their budgets, they had to cut back on spending for men's sports. You might think that it is unfair that male athletes have to lose spots to pay for women's sports; I think that it is a shame that for decades female athletes were treated like second-class students. It is a fact of life that if rectifying past discrimination on a going-forward basis entails the removal of a preference, it will sometimes feel like a punishment to the person who considered that preference the natural order of things.

I only wish I could give you a dozen +1s.::cheer::Do you think it's sexists to have a cheerleader smiley for this? It seemed to best summarize my feelings.:-}

[KeithK]

I'm just saying that you can use the same system and ignore football and get more equitable results.

It isn't equitable to ignore football though.  Football and sprint football are both huge amounts of team members that women just aren't allowed to obtain.  To me, making a different sport instead (a la field hockey) is fair to offset that.  There are also two weights of rowing teams at Cornell for men and only one for women.  Seems sort of unfair if you just ignore things like that.

The fact that there's no female equivalent is not because of discrimination. (Intentional anyway; spare me the arguments about gender roles and structural sexism or whatnot.) Football is big because people like football. Football is a big spectator event in this country in a way that the fringe sports are not.

We are not Ohio State. Have you been to a Cornell football game? A SPRINT football game? Given the size of the rosters and coaching staffs and the number of fans in the stands, I'm pretty sure that Cornell pays to play football because it can't possibly pay for itself. It doesn't matter WHY there is no equivalent for football, THERE IS NO EQUIVALENT FOR FOOTBALL. When a school chooses to have a football team they are committing at least hundreds of thousands of dollars exclusively to male students. Exempting football from Title IX calculations makes as much sense as excluding defense and entitlement spending (I mean this to be non-partisan, since everyone does it) from budget reform.

I wasn't restricting my argument to Cornell and I wasn't making a financial argument. I don't doubt that many football programs are a net cost to ther universities even if they probably bring in more gross revenue than any other sport. My argument is that this isn't evidence of sexism. It's evidence of the prefernces of campus and fan communities. make whatever arguments you want abou institutionalized sexism or whatever, there is nothing wrong with the fact that people generally like to watch football games more than they like watching field hockey.

Title IX "affects" male athletes "disproportionately" because when it was passed, athletic department budgets included well below 50% for women's sports. Because many schools didn't want to substantially increase their budgets, they had to cut back on spending for men's sports. You might think that it is unfair that male athletes have to lose spots to pay for women's sports; I think that it is a shame that for decades female athletes were treated like second-class students. It is a fact of life that if rectifying past discrimination on a going-forward basis entails the removal of a preference, it will sometimes feel like a punishment to the person who considered that preference the natural order of things.

I get your point and I agree that removing preferences can easily seem like punishment. That said I don't believe that canceling a long standing, sustainable men's team while maintaining a women's team in the same sport is a fair and equitable way of removing a preference. What it does it create a different set of second class citizens (e.g baseball players, qwrestlers, men's volleyball players to cite a few examples from this thread) while creating an additional set of first class citizens (the analagous womens teams, women's crew, etc.).

I maintain that a sport by sport application of the rule would be a vastly more equitable rule.  maybe the farce of having to establish women's football teams would tend to reign in the expenses of big tiem college football.

[ugarte]

I wasn't restricting my argument to Cornell and I wasn't making a financial argument. I don't doubt that many football programs are a net cost to ther universities even if they probably bring in more gross revenue than any other sport. My argument is that this isn't evidence of sexism. It's evidence of the prefernces of campus and fan communities. make whatever arguments you want abou institutionalized sexism or whatever, there is nothing wrong with the fact that people generally like to watch football games more than they like watching field hockey.

It doesn't matter whether it is "evidence of sexism". The motive doesn't matter. It is clearly disparate treatment of male and female student-athletes. The focus of Title IX is students not sports fans. Title IX doesn't care that you (either as an individual or as representative of the larger sporting audience) prefer football to field hockey.

I get your point and I agree that removing preferences can easily seem like punishment. That said I don't believe that canceling a long standing, sustainable men's team while maintaining a women's team in the same sport is a fair and equitable way of removing a preference. What it does it create a different set of second class citizens (e.g baseball players, qwrestlers, men's volleyball players to cite a few examples from this thread) while creating an additional set of first class citizens (the analagous womens teams, women's crew, etc.).
 
I maintain that a sport by sport application of the rule would be a vastly more equitable rule.  maybe the farce of having to establish women's football teams would tend to reign in the expenses of big tiem college football.

Your argument makes no sense. If the budgets from the discriminatory era aren't going to change, some men are going to get the short end of the stick in a regime that treats men and women equally. That doesn't make the wrestlers "second class citizens" to women, it makes them second class citizens to football players, because it is maintenance of the primacy of football that is driving the elimination of wrestling, not the application of non-discriminatory rules.

Assessing equity on a sport-by-sport basis denies (a) that the point of Title IX is a general equality of treatment to the two genders not equality of treatment of genders in a particular sport  and (b) the reality that there are sports that only one gender plays interscholastically (football / wrestling / field hockey). You can't wish away (b) just because it would make your solution to (a) easier.

[Josh '99]

Your argument makes no sense. If the budgets from the discriminatory era aren't going to change, some men are going to get the short end of the stick in a regime that treats men and women equally. That doesn't make the wrestlers "second class citizens" to women, it makes them second class citizens to football players, because it is maintenance of the primacy of football that is driving the elimination of wrestling, not the application of non-discriminatory rules.

Thank you; I was trying to figure out the best way to phrase what I wanted to say about this and you went and did it for me.

[KeithK]

Assessing equity on a sport-by-sport basis denies (a) that the point of Title IX is a general equality of treatment to the two genders not equality of treatment of genders in a particular sport  and (b) the reality that there are sports that only one gender plays interscholastically (football / wrestling / field hockey). You can't wish away (b) just because it would make your solution to (a) easier.

I'm not "wishing away" (b).  (b) is entirely relevant to the practical discussion. There is no discrimination involved inthe decision to have a football team that doesn't have a women's equivalent.  Certainly not in this century.

Motives do matter.  Maybe not in the current Title IX regime.  But that doesn't mean they shouldn't be relevant.

This whole discussion boils down to equality of opportunity vs. equality of results. The current regime focuses on equality of results, measured by dollars spent. I don't think that's necessarily the appropriate measure.

[Aaron M. Griffin]

This whole discussion boils down to equality of opportunity vs. equality of results. The current regime focuses on equality of results, measured by dollars spent. I don't think that's necessarily the appropriate measure.

Finally. Thank you. As I said and bowed out of this back-and-forth many posts ago:

I feel like in this case Title IX is working against it's original purpose. It was originally created to ensure that all students, namely women, have the opportunity to play collegiate sports at the varsity level.

However, my point still stands. In this particular case, Title IX isn't providing any additional opportunities to women, only preventing them from being provided to men.

This is where this conversation devolves into one of political philosophy and debating legislative intent.

[Jim Hyla]

Aside from thanking ugarte profusely, I've stayed out of this debate. Both sides have good points. In a perfect world we would fund all sports to their fullest, male or female. We would have full opportunities for men and women in all sports in which they would like to participate.

So, can we agree we don't have that ideal?

Without that ideal, we have seen two sytems. There was the traditional, male driven, system which revolved around football, and gradually basketball took some of the stage, but even then football still ruled hands down. There were other sports, as there are now, but they all paled in comparison. Women were hardly thought about in that system.

Then came Title IX. Guess what, football still rules, basketball is strong, but decidedly second; and everything else still falls far behind. But women can now participate. There has been a literal explosion of girls and women in sports. No one who was alive when I was in school cannot say that the participation by the female sex is not astronomically larger. Without Title IX that never would have happened. Now you're going to say I can't prove that, and I can't, but having lived through it I can come up with no other explaination.

Now we look at what has happened to male sports because of this. I will grant you that some male minor sport opportunities have diminished. However when you compare that loss to the gains that females have made, the scale heavily tips to the help for girls and women.

Finally, we turn to why can't we go back toward, not to, but toward the way it was before. Why can't we exclude the behemoth in the room, football, and just make everything else equal. The reason why, is because even now football still rules. They still get more money for facilities, equipment, coaches, travel, accomodations; you name it they get the best. And that's under a constrained system. Can you imagine what would happen if you took them out of the equation? We were there once and it didn't work, why would you think it would be better now?

No one has been able to come up with a better solution, maybe some day, but not yet. And I don't trust the football cartel to live up to some lofty level; in the last 50 plus years they haven't shown they care, I don't think that's going to change now.

My daughter has no interest in sports, some of her friends do, but I'm glad that she, unlike my and my parents generation, had the opportunity if she wanted it.

p.s. I find it extremely interesting that this discussion comes under the NCHC Thread. In talking about what we worry about happening to the small schools playing hockey, we should realize that that is what happens to the rest of sports if you don't put some constraints on the gorilla in the room.

[bnr24]

Aside from thanking ugarte profusely, I've stayed out of this debate. Both sides have good points. In a perfect world we would fund all sports to their fullest, male or female. We would have full opportunities for men and women in all sports in which they would like to participate.

So, can we agree we don't have that ideal?

Without that ideal, we have seen two sytems. There was the traditional, male driven, system which revolved around football, and gradually basketball took some of the stage, but even then football still ruled hands down. There were other sports, as there are now, but they all paled in comparison. Women were hardly thought about in that system.

Then came Title IX. Guess what, football still rules, basketball is strong, but decidedly second; and everything else still falls far behind. But women can now participate. There has been a literal explosion of girls and women in sports. No one who was alive when I was in school cannot say that the participation by the female sex is not astronomically larger. Without Title IX that never would have happened. Now you're going to say I can't prove that, and I can't, but having lived through it I can come up with no other explaination.

Now we look at what has happened to male sports because of this. I will grant you that some male minor sport opportunities have diminished. However when you compare that loss to the gains that females have made, the scale heavily tips to the help for girls and women.

Finally, we turn to why can't we go back toward, not to, but toward the way it was before. Why can't we exclude the behemoth in the room, football, and just make everything else equal. The reason why, is because even now football still rules. They still get more money for facilities, equipment, coaches, travel, accomodations; you name it they get the best. And that's under a constrained system. Can you imagine what would happen if you took them out of the equation? We were there once and it didn't work, why would you think it would be better now?

No one has been able to come up with a better solution, maybe some day, but not yet. And I don't trust the football cartel to live up to some lofty level; in the last 50 plus years they haven't shown they care, I don't think that's going to change now.

My daughter has no interest in sports, some of her friends do, but I'm glad that she, unlike my and my parents generation, had the opportunity if she wanted it.

p.s. I find it extremely interesting that this discussion comes under the NCHC Thread. In talking about what we worry about happening to the small schools playing hockey, we should realize that that is what happens to the rest of sports if you don't put some constraints on the gorilla in the room.

+1 (or 10000000)

[Ben]

There has been a literal explosion of girls and women in sports.

That sounds dangerous, I'm going to take cover.

[ugarte]

Assessing equity on a sport-by-sport basis denies (a) that the point of Title IX is a general equality of treatment to the two genders not equality of treatment of genders in a particular sport  and (b) the reality that there are sports that only one gender plays interscholastically (football / wrestling / field hockey). You can't wish away (b) just because it would make your solution to (a) easier.

I'm not "wishing away" (b).  (b) is entirely relevant to the practical discussion. There is no discrimination involved inthe decision to have a football team that doesn't have a women's equivalent.  Certainly not in this century.

Of course there is no discrimination in having football be men-only. However, if an institution decides to have a football team, it will have a roster of 50+ players and the athletes that benefit will be exclusively men to say nothing of the massive peripheral spending required to support a team that large. To balance that out, across the entire athletic department, require funding sports exclusively for women, cutting different men's programs that also don't have a female equivalent (wrestling or, at some schools, hockey) or making some other allowance for the fact that THE INSTITUTION chose to have football blow a hole in the budget and throw the department-wide gender equity out of whack.

That is what equality of opportunity means in the Title IX context: not equality of opportunity to play a particular sport but equality of opportunity to play a sport at all. That's why football can't be an off-book program and why the pain always falls on sports like wrestling and squash.

[ugarte]

There has been a literal explosion of girls and women in sports.

That sounds dangerous, I'm going to take cover.

Seriously. I'm starting to think that maybe women's sports aren't such a good idea after all.

[Towerroad]

I grew up in a family with 4 boys. We all played sports at some level but nothing real serious. I have 2 daughters and a son. I admit that early on I was baffled about girls and sports but as a dutiful dad I signed my daughters up for soccer and volunteered to coach (that is too generous a term I was really a warm willing body). Over the years I coached my daughters teams in Soccer and Basketball. I learned 2 things.

First, girls really want to play just as much as boys. They enjoy the thrill of competition and take to team work better than boys. They really want to win.

Secondly, girls are much easier to coach than boys. If you practice something during the week you will see it on the field that weekend in the game. There are far fewer ball hogs on a girls team.

I have been to a few of the women's hockey games and they are a pleasure to watch. Given time I think they will sell out as well. I used to be skeptical about Title IX but no longer. Let them play.