The Tyranny of Title IX
Greg Yatarola
Issue date: 4/2/08 Section: Viewpoint
On March 23, the University of Iowa regained its place in American collegiate wrestling. Behind Brent Metcalf, 2008 NCAA tournament Most Outstanding Wrestler, Iowa claimed its first team championship since 2000. Between 1975 and 2000, Iowa won an astounding 20 team titles, 15 of them under the leadership of coach Dan Gable, the legendary wrestler who won an Olympic gold medal while not surrendering a single point during the tournament, at a time when the sport was dominated by the Soviet bloc. Now the Hawkeyes reign again, led by coach Tom Brands, one of Gable's former wrestlers.
Sadly, Notre Dame didn't do so well - no ND wrestlers advanced to the finals. That's because there are no ND wrestlers. ND wrestling was cut back in 1992, a casualty of the Education Amendment Act's Title IX, which requires that no person shall, on the basis of sex, be denied the benefits of any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. As written, the law is quite unobjectionable. As implemented, though, it's been destructive and stupid.
Judges, bureaucrats, and college administrators have interpreted the law to demand "statistical proportionality" - so if a school's student body is 60% female, then 60% of its scholarship athletes must be too. Never mind that, from earliest childhood, boys are far more interested in athletic competition than girls are, or that everyone else is generally more interested in boys' competition too.
The situation would be bad enough without football, which itself accounts for 85 scholarships. With that many scholarships on one side, it's hard to balance the ledger, especially since athletic directors have sometimes been unable to add women's teams because they can't attract enough interested girls to fill them. So schools often cut men's programs instead.
The case of football shows how ridiculous this balancing act is. Football programs, especially at places like ND, generate revenue and publicity for their schools. Moreover, football scholarships often go to recipients whose families might otherwise struggle to afford college. Can any of this be said of, oh, women's golf? Doesn't matter - to the NCAA, collectively afflicted with that mental disease known as political correctness, there's no difference between giving a scholarship to someone like Chris Zorich to play a sport people actually pay money to watch, and who might suffer for years from injuries sustained in playing it hard, and giving one to a girl whose private high school had its own golf course. As for the justification I often heard bandied about in guys' dorms, that female athletes serve the important role of "comfort women" for the football team: even if this were true, the football team would perform better without such "comfort".
Sadly, Notre Dame didn't do so well - no ND wrestlers advanced to the finals. That's because there are no ND wrestlers. ND wrestling was cut back in 1992, a casualty of the Education Amendment Act's Title IX, which requires that no person shall, on the basis of sex, be denied the benefits of any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. As written, the law is quite unobjectionable. As implemented, though, it's been destructive and stupid.
Judges, bureaucrats, and college administrators have interpreted the law to demand "statistical proportionality" - so if a school's student body is 60% female, then 60% of its scholarship athletes must be too. Never mind that, from earliest childhood, boys are far more interested in athletic competition than girls are, or that everyone else is generally more interested in boys' competition too.
The situation would be bad enough without football, which itself accounts for 85 scholarships. With that many scholarships on one side, it's hard to balance the ledger, especially since athletic directors have sometimes been unable to add women's teams because they can't attract enough interested girls to fill them. So schools often cut men's programs instead.
The case of football shows how ridiculous this balancing act is. Football programs, especially at places like ND, generate revenue and publicity for their schools. Moreover, football scholarships often go to recipients whose families might otherwise struggle to afford college. Can any of this be said of, oh, women's golf? Doesn't matter - to the NCAA, collectively afflicted with that mental disease known as political correctness, there's no difference between giving a scholarship to someone like Chris Zorich to play a sport people actually pay money to watch, and who might suffer for years from injuries sustained in playing it hard, and giving one to a girl whose private high school had its own golf course. As for the justification I often heard bandied about in guys' dorms, that female athletes serve the important role of "comfort women" for the football team: even if this were true, the football team would perform better without such "comfort".