Title IX: Supreme Court Rejects Women's Sports Case

[Lehigh Football Nation]

Supreme Court Rejects Women's Sports Case (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050606/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_title_ix)


WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court refused Monday to consider reinstating a lawsuit that accuses federal officials of discriminating against male athletes in enforcing equal opportunities for women.

Justices without comment rejected an appeal from the National Wrestling Coaches Association and other groups that have been fighting federal policies under the anti-discrimination law known as Title IX.

At issue for the court was whether the challengers showed that the law directly caused a reduction in men's sports, and whether they should be allowed to sue federal officials.

The Supreme Court has indicated a special interest recently in Title IX, the 1972 law that bars sex discrimination in any educational program receiving federal funds.

...

The latest case involved claims that the government is forcing colleges to discriminate against male athletes, because of a requirement that the ratio of male and female athletes be similar to the overall student population.

"If unchecked, the gender quota ... will continue to cause sweeping injustices and discrimination in colleges nationwide, and is already being applied to public high schools," justices were told in a brief filed by the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund.

Over the past two decades, the number of wrestling teams at
NCAA schools has dropped from 363 to 222, while football teams increased from 497 to 619 , according to NCAA leaders. Title IX has been blamed for part of the decline.

In addition to men's wrestling team cuts, other schools have dropped outdoor track, swimming programs and ice hockey, the court was told.

A divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the lawsuit should have been filed against individual colleges that eliminated men's sports, not the federal government.

Title IX covers admissions, recruitment, course offerings, counseling, financial aid, student health and student housing, as well as athletics.

[Edited]

Can you beleive the number of football teams increased despite Title IX? I thought more schools were dropping football instead of adding or upgrading football? Especially at the I-AA level...

[Retro]

The problem i have with TITLE IX is that it's based on the gender of student population.

First, the majority of students at any one school don't even care about sports, whether watching or participating.. Add to that the fact that its more likely the women are the majority in this same group.. ..

In addition, i would bet that they're aren't many school's out there where men outnumber women as students. So what hurts is that for most schools, football is the revenue producer and a lot of that revenue get's ate up to keep other sports afloat. Thus causing universities to cut additional mens sports to pay for the womens sport.. yes, they could add another womens sport to balance with the wrestling or other mens sport, but then you just end up more in the hole again.

Since most of the other sports break even at best and for women's sports in particular, no one attends the games unless it's traditional power like tennessee basketball or arizona softball. So you have all these women at these universities that don't even support the sports of their gender.

I think title IX should be a weighted system based on the amount of participants a sport can actually attain. There is no women's sport to counter football, numbers wise, so you have such an off balance situation to deal with to start. Why not just equal number of sports per gender and not simply the number of participants has to corrulate with the student population.
I think we'd have less of a problem if women's sports were more attended and supported by all involved.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

Something else to think about here...

According to this article, over the past 2 decades (assuming 1985-2005) there are now 122 more NCAA football programs? How could this be true? In California alone what, a dozen schools dropped football at the I-AA level? That would mean that there are at least 140 NEW programs.

How many of them could possibly be new I-A's? FIU and FAU are the only ones I could think of. How many are brand-new I-AA's? (NOT reclassified teams such as NCU, G'Town, NDSU, SDSU.) I can think of only one: Coastal Carolina. Even Fordham was Division III as recently as 1976. Elon too.

Are they counting club football???? That's the only way the numbers make sense. What a ****ty argument for the plaintiffs if that's the case! Is that all the NCAA or institutions would give them?

Based on thie evidence, it looks to me like the NCAA loves Title IX. Never mind that it kills football programs, IMO especially at the I-AA, D-II and D-III levels.

[Lehigh Football Nation]

The problem i have with TITLE IX is that it's based on the gender of student population.

First, the majority of students at any one school don't even care about sports, whether watching or participating.. Add to that the fact that its more likely the women are the majority in this same group.. ..

In addition, i would bet that they're aren't many school's out there where men outnumber women as students. So what hurts is that for most schools, football is the revenue producer and a lot of that revenue get's ate up to keep other sports afloat. Thus causing universities to cut additional mens sports to pay for the womens sport.. yes, they could add another womens sport to balance with the wrestling or other mens sport, but then you just end up more in the hole again.

Since most of the other sports break even at best and for women's sports in particular, no one attends the games unless it's traditional power like tennessee basketball or arizona softball. So you have all these women at these universities that don't even support the sports of their gender.

I think title IX should be a weighted system based on the amount of participants a sport can actually attain. There is no women's sport to counter football, numbers wise, so you have such an off balance situation to deal with to start. Why not just equal number of sports per gender and not simply the number of participants has to corrulate with the student population.
I think we'd have less of a problem if women's sports were more attended and supported by all involved.


I agree 100%. But the fact is, they're not as well attended for the most part.

I feel Title IX is basically broken and highly discriminatory against football specifically, but it's other traditional men's sports such as wrestling that really take the brunt of the axe unfortunately.

Having said that, Title IX has caused women's sports to enjoy unparallelled success for the past 20 years. There's no reason to beleive that this success would be reversed if Title IX were repealed tomorrow. That's precisely why it should be repealed.

[arkstfan]

Most of the growth has come from the NAIA losing members to the NCAA. Those aren't NEW programs, just programs that weren't in the NCAA.

But there have been about 4 schools a year adding football 1985 to present. Notable years, 1985 (6), 1988 (7), 2001 (6). When Jacksonville added football in 1998 they were the only new program that year, there were three added the year before and the year after.

Did a non-careful count and came up with 62 added and 53 dropped/

[UAalum72]

Something else to think about here...

According to this article, over the past 2 decades (assuming 1985-2005) there are now 122 more NCAA football programs? How could this be true?

Are they counting club football???? That's the only way the numbers make sense. What a ****ty argument for the plaintiffs if that's the case! Is that all the NCAA or institutions would give them?

Based on thie evidence, it looks to me like the NCAA loves Title IX. Never mind that it kills football programs, IMO especially at the I-AA, D-II and D-III levels.
I believe there are very few club football programs left.

Including NAIA, there were 647 college football teams in 1983, 677 in 1991, and 707 in 2004, so it's really hard to see how Title IX 'kills football'. You may not like it, but facts is facts.

Numbers for 1983-2001 at http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~dwilson/rsfc/rate/rothman.html

and for 2004 at http://www.mratings.com/rate/cf-m.htm (including the ten New England Smalls in 'group 2')

[yomama]

According to this article, over the past 2 decades (assuming 1985-2005) there are now 122 more NCAA football programs? ...Are they counting club football????

No. There is, believe or not, something in between I-AA and club football.

Central State, UNC Pembroke, and St. Paul's (Va.) in D-II; LaGrange, SUNY-Maritime, and Morrisville State in D-III; and NAIA schools Shorter, Seton Hill, and Avila have either added football recently or have made plans to do so. There are a handful of these every year, and the common denominator is low cost/low scholarship football.

I would guess Division I schools such as Xavier, Bradley, and Santa Clara can afford to fund the same type of program. The bulk of I-AAA--about 60 schools--used to have football, but gave up scholarship football because of its high cost. Don't expect to see them jumping into I-AA without scholarships, however, because the NCAA won't support non-scholarship football at this level with playoff representation.

Citing Title IX is a great excuse for not having football, but the college game has been expanding, even into D-I schools La Salle and Jacksonville. The problem is few schools want to be persona non grata with the NCAA--like La Salle and Jacksonville.

[Pantherpower]

I think title IX should be a weighted system based on the amount of participants a sport can actually attain. There is no women's sport to counter football, numbers wise, so you have such an off balance situation to deal with to start.

I couldn't have said it better, Retro. For the most part, there simply isn't the same level of interest in women's sports and forcing the issue through Title IX is in my opinion, bogus.

[ngineer]

I think the Court was correct in it's analysis. It's not the law but how the individual institutions apply it. It really comes down to money and the priority each school gives to certain demands for it. Bucknell is a classic example of that. They are reinstating wrestling this year after cutting the program four years ago.

[blukeys]

Having said that, Title IX has caused women's sports to enjoy unparallelled success for the past 20 years. There's no reason to beleive that this success would be reversed if Title IX were repealed tomorrow. That's precisely why it should be repealed.

I don't believe that Title IX CAUSED "unparallelled success for the past 20 years." There are very few women's programs in any sport that make any money. UConn and U of Tennessee in basketball and maybe a few others but for the most part women's sports are money losers that no one watches. The improvement in women's sports has been IMHO the result of countless volunteers devoting their time to youth sports that have included girls. This includes soccer, basketball, softball, volleyball, and track. The Title IX advocates will state that this was a result of Title IX. This is patently untrue. It is instead the result of decent parents and concerned adults who wanted to provide opportunities for their daughters.

Now the best of these athletes are getting the opportunities to play at the collegiate level. I am happy for these girls but the loss of non-revenue men's programs has been the result. (At Delaware this includes wrestling) The mandatory shifting of resources ignores what sports would be the most popular at any particular school. For instance I think there would be more interest at Delaware in wrestling, or Ice Hockey than women's crew. Yet the latter is a varsity sport and the other 2 are club sports. LFN don't buy into the hype of the Title IX promoters. There is less there than meets the eye.

[arkstfan]

I've heard the Title IX is killing men's sports argument but it is mostly smoke.

When a school has increased its salaries for the head football coach and his assistants by $500,000 over the course of a year or two and the AD suddenly wants to cut men's swimming to save $200,000. Is it REALLY those nasty evil women's sports that are causing the budget shortage?