Commentary

By Kevin Hampton
Gazette-Times reporter

One little paragraph.

Read it: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from the participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving federal assistance.”

That’s Title IX. Short, to the point. Yet its impact reverberates throughout college athletics today.

Oregon State University is holding a celebration of the 35th anniversary of Title IX this weekend.

A banquet is scheduled for Saturday with Ann Schatz leading the proceedings and plenty of guest speakers on hand. There are several chances to see OSU female athletes in action with the soccer, volleyball and cross country teams all at home.

Women’s sports have played a big part in the recent success of OSU athletics. The gymnastics team has made the NCAA Championships the past two years. Two years ago, the softball team qualified for the Women’s College World Series for the first time.

Women’s cross country and track was brought back. The volleyball and basketball programs are being rebuilt.

There’s no question Title IX played a big part in making women’s sports a relevant part of the NCAA and key to the strength of any athletic department.

Title IX provided the foundation for the development of women’s collegiate sports, but is it relevant today? Yes, but not to the degree it was when it was written. For the most part, it has served its purpose.

Now it’s used to police athletic departments, to enforce equality.

According to Title IX, if a university consists of 51 percent female students, then its athletic teams must reflect that percentage.

Fair on the surface, but from a financial standpoint, it doesn’t make sense.

No sport equals football’s impact on a school. Football success brings attention and money.

Most other sports, male and female, operate in the hole. Football helps foot the bill for the rest of the athletic programs.

Oregon State’s football program brought in $23,915,841 last year with $8,139,245 in expenses. Men’s basketball had a slim profit margin with $3,508,281 in revenue while spending $2,691,741.

In contrast, women’s basketball made $375,989 and spent $1,750,714. The other men’s sports bring in $1,186,119 and cost $3,485,588 while the women’s sports made $843,999 and had $6,127,849 in expenses.

Of course, it’s not entirely about money. All sports have value beyond the dollar. But here’s the rub: Football also requires a large roster. The scholarship limit for a team is 85 and teams usually carry just more than 100 players. That skews sports participants far to the side of the male athletes. It means adding women’s sports and often cutting men’s sports.

Wrestling has taken the biggest hit. From 1972 through last year, 449 college wrestling programs have been dropped. Forty-nine programs were either added or reinstated. Equality must seem like a one-way street to the athletes on those teams.

How do the female athletes of today benefit from the slashing of men’s programs?

The answer, of course, is they don’t. No young girl ever grew up to play college basketball because the school cut wrestling.

Pressures to keep in line with the law have sometimes resulted in strange decisions.

The administrators at University of Oregon fell over themselves to add baseball after Oregon State won back-to-back national titles. To do so, adjustments had to be made to comply with Title IX.

What happens? Another wrestling program bites the dust and the Ducks add competitive cheerleading. Nobody wins.

Oregon State has done a creditable job of balancing participation by adding women’s cross country/track and its 29 runners. Income? Not likely.

So what to do? Title IX has value. Erase it and many university honchos would take a quick look at the above numbers and start dropping women’s sports. That’s not acceptable.

The answer is simple. Revise the way Title IX is applied. Give football programs a waiver. Expect equality from the other sports. Sports that are played by males and females match naturally and the other numbers could be worked out.

This weekend, go ahead and recognize those who helped make it easier for the female athletes today. Go to the games.

Women’s sports should be celebrated.

Equally.

Kevin Hampton covers sports for the Gazette-Times. He can be reached at kevin.hampton@lee.net.