Yes they are!!
Yes they are!!
Some of the previous posters just don't get it. Women have NOTHING to do with this. The AD's are lazy and cut men instead of adding women. Their job should be raising money to fund both. Basically, the MEN making the decisions have the attitude of "If you are a real athlete, then you will play Football, because that's where we are placing 90 scholarships. You 1:59 guys have every opportunity to come walk on and see if you can play tight end." Sure, it's a stupid mentality, but don't blame the women who choose not to put all their scholarships/opportunities into one sport. The same old white men who put the women in their place for years are now doing it to the men. The women cried about it until something was done, but the present men buy the old boys rhetoric blaming title IX and keep the heat away from where it belongs. As long as you young guys whine about the problem like it is women stealing your opportunities, you are falling into line like nice obedient sheep following the shepard's lead.
Title 9 was great rule when it came to mind but its day should be over. Look how many wrestling programs it has destroyed. Bottom line is it has been bad for track too or at least unfair. More scholarships for girls than guys. Now if I am at a party hey thats the odds I am looking for. I have seen bad basketball schools that have no beeswax being in Div. 1 give girls Scholarships that had never run track in high school. They did this because they could not find enough girls that even wanted to run on the team. All so they could comply with title 9 and play bball.
Regardless of whether the 1:59 guy deserved to make the team or not is not the point. The point is that because of title 9, he didnt get a chance.
While title 9 has helped women's sports tremendously, it hurts a large number of male athletes. Like the DII Coach said earlier, he had to have three more girls than guys. That was not scholarships, that was number of athletes. This has nothing to do with finances as having a couple more runners hanging around, especially if they dont travel, will not affect the overall athletic budget.
The solution is to simply take football out of the equation. Here at Florida, where the athletic association is not short for money, there are three varsity womens only (volleyball, gymnastics, and soccer) to make up for football. Additionally, the womens cross country team will take mediocre high schoolers and carry 25 while the guys team is luckly to have 15 runners.
I once heard a well informed person in pro-sports say that college football and basketball players should just be employees of the university.
If that thinking held true for all college sports -- a job given to the most qualified -- almost all runners would be out of their jobs. The bottom line is revenue. The other sports generate revenue while smaller sports do not.
Don't blame the women. Don't blame the ADs. Blame all of us who aren't helping further the sport yet sit here whining about why it's dying.
How can the main components of the men?s sports program be taken out of the equation? It is the first order problem. So you are saying to give 100 extra scholarships to men?s programs and millions of USD in costs and simply not count it as if it did not exist. You are just too blind to your own interests. You can not fight them so ignore them. Remember Football receives special treatment under Title 9 in the cost of a football program can not be the reason for it?s cancellation..
And I forgot with the new rules for D1A Football attendance there is more pressure for low performing schools to spend more money on the football program to boost attendance. The money has to come from someplace so it is going to come from mostly mens programs because that is all there is left. I am happy title 9 is there just so some sports diversity will continue on. It is not so long from now that men will be asking for protection from women?s programs if men's college enrollment continues to fall.
Title IX was created with good intentions. The problem now is how it is being interpreted. Many universities suffer because of the rule. Even schools that have plenty of money to fund teams have to cut men's programs because of lack of interest on the women's side. I wish there was a way it could be adjusted to reflect interest, not just raw roster numbers.
As far as the lack of interest in WATCHING women's sports, it is true that most men aren't avid fans of most women's sports. But many women are, and they make up half of the population. As for track, no one wants to watch unless they are runners themselves. People think it's boring. But runners enjoy watching other runners compete, men and women alike. This is true for various other sports, expecially at the collegiate level. Male athletes actively support their female counterparts. The fans at the women's basketball games at my school generally outnumber the fans at the men's games.
Furthermore, the lack of interest in watching women play sports is unrelated to their right to play them. You don't play for the audience, you play for your team, at least at the college level. As stated above, no one watches cross country meets. Running is not a revenue sport. This does not mean the programs should be cut. If we cut programs based on the size of their fan base, we probably wouln't have any programs aside from football and men's basketball. Obviously, this is not where we are trying to go. Whether or not people watch your sport, you should be able to play it, whether you are a male or a female, a football player or a runner.
Such is true but the whole 100% of the 50% of the population does not watch sports or much less women's sports.
The kid was working with the cross team to build his endurance as rper the direction of the coach. He was not an official member of the team.
I've worked with a lot of athletes over the past 30 + years from elites to mugs and i tell you this kid would have given him a solid leg on a relay (1:50-1:51) as early as his junior year. This was not a big time D1 program, but big enough to win NE's a number of times and their strength is Indoors. thus, this could kid have been an impact athlete. Minimal, but an impact none-the-less. And tell me....where does a 400, 800 even 1000m college guy do it on his own?
ray wrote:
That's the point. what we tend to do in this country is compensate.... Equality would have the best person geting the job or the scholarship or whatever, with EQUAL RIGHTS for all.
When did playing a sport in college become one of the constitutional "rights"? Last I checked, the basketball players were abnormally tall, the football players weighed close to 200 lbs and over, and the gymnast had petite little bodies - no chubby girls there.
Basically, college sports are not some kind of constitutional "right". If they were, we would see people with cerebral palsy out their on the field, and wheelchair races at the track.
More schools need to focus on the 3rd, rarely used way to be compliant with Title IX. There is a way to show that you are compliant by showing you are meeting the desire of your student body. I don't know the exact wording (look it up if you want to) but I doubt any school would be out of compliance if they looked at this compliance method. Men are more interested in competing in college than women are. This is a fact. I would guess that about 95% of all state boys XC runners have a desire to compete in college (maybe not in XC, but in something) where I would guess that that is closer to 50%(if that) in girls. As a college coach that recruits both men and women, I can attest to this fact. I can think of several girls XC state champions that had no desire to run in college. I can't count the number of all state girls I have contacted that told me they did not want to run any more. Girls deserve the SAME opportunity boys do, no more no less, but with the current system there is no equality.
Do the Research wrote:
Men are more interested in competing in college than women are. This is a fact. I would guess that about 95% of all state boys XC runners have a desire to compete in college (maybe not in XC, but in something) where I would guess that that is closer to 50%(if that) in girls. .
Could you give us the Analysis of Longitudinal Data study on this "fact". Do you have the figures that represent this "fact" for the entire U.S. and covering all division 1, 11, 111?
no, I didn't think so....I think you should march to Washington with your "facts" and start a repeal on Title IX. You go boys!
This is a good thread. I'm a former DI runner who is now doing graduate work in the sociology of higher education. I have a couple of specific comments:
Do the Research: The "three prongs" of Title IX compliance read as follows: (1) Whether intercollegiate level participation opportunities for male and female students are provided in numbers substantially proportionate to their respcetive enrollments; or (2) Where the members of one sex have been and are underrepresented among intercollegiate athletes, whether the institution can show a history and continuing practice of program expansion which is demonstrably responsive to the developing interests and abilities of the members of that sex; or (3) Where the members of one sex have been and are now underrepresented among intercollegiate athletes, and the institution cannot show a continuing practice of program expansion such as that cited above, whether it can be demonstrated that the interests and abilities of the members of that sex have been fully and effectively accommodated by the present program. [44 Fed. Reg. at 71418]
The "first prong" - proportionality - is considered the "safe harbor" as it relies on quantitative rather than qualitative data and was the factor used in landmark Title IX cases such as Cohen v. Brown University. Prongs 2 and 3 are very difficult to prove and require considerable amounts of time and money for data collection and analysis. Thus the "first prong" has become the de facto basis for Title IX compliance.
16x: Yes, there have been studies done in which it is shown that men have a greater interest in participating in intercollegiate athletics than women do. HOWEVER, as is true with all experiental research, lots of caveats apply. How was the study designed? How were the data collected? How and where was the sample drawn? What type of research instrument was used? Was the study administered properly? What were the statistical parameters applied to the results? It's possible to "prove" pretty much anything you want if you design your study in a certain way. I'm not sure we can say that women as a population are any more or less interested in intercollegiate competition. The interest level could vary by college, or even by class years within the same college (and then you'd have to account for any social or environmental factors that may have had an impact on that change).
I think the INTENT of Title IX was good (and yes, it was not written specifically for athletics but education in general) but the execution has left MUCH to be desired. I hate to see it blamed exclusively for the demise of XC and track in colleges and I really hate to see it pit men versus women. I think there are a myriad of other factors contributing to the elimination of non-revenue sports, and I'd like to see coaches from all those sports work together to raise public awareness of the issue and to change the culture of athletics on their campuses.
graduate student wrote:
16x: Yes, there have been studies done in which it is shown that men have a greater interest in participating in intercollegiate athletics than women do. HOWEVER, as is true with all experiental research, lots of caveats apply. How was the study designed? How were the data collected? How and where was the sample drawn? What type of research instrument was used? Was the study administered properly? What were the statistical parameters applied to the results? It's possible to "prove" pretty much anything you want if you design your study in a certain way. I'm not sure we can say that women as a population are any more or less interested in intercollegiate competition. The interest level could vary by college, or even by class years within the same college (and then you'd have to account for any social or environmental factors that may have had an impact on that change).
Any links to this type of study? I would like to back up my claims, made through personal recruiting experience, but wouldn't know where to start looking for sociological data.
JXZ wrote:
The second thing is there a quality distance runner in the US that can not get a scholarship? It seems like it is the 15:30 5k guys who are whining the loudest.
Here's a little perspective on how it works at a good D1 program (at least what I saw, grad. 2 years ago). Some girls who run like crap in college but had a decent (not anywhere close to being competitive relative to what a guy has to run) time from high school get FULL scholarships because the coach has a little bit to gamble with. Guys get less scholarships, so you have some really good guys, sometimes even national class or close (speaking from persoanl experience here, not an exagerration) getting a lot less if any money. How's that helping anything? Obviously my sister and I had the same upbringing, etc., yet if she had gone where I had with comparable running credentials for a female, she would have had all her school paid for, while I've got 30k in debt. Now that's progress! By the way, if I hear another woman talk about how opressed they are, I think I'll puke because women are now more educated than men. p.s. Yes, A.D.'s are the practical problem, but any reform on Title IX is blocked by feminist groups, not some A.D. lobby.
Does anyone know if there are fewer mens track teams and fewer men athletes now than before Title 9. When I last looked up that data a few years ago there were more football teams and more track teams and more male athletes than before Title 9.
Do the Research wrote:
Any links to this type of study? I would like to back up my claims, made through personal recruiting experience, but wouldn't know where to start looking for sociological data.
Let me try to find them for you (I was trying to think where I saw them as I was writing my message). I saw these studies (there weren't many, if I recall) a couple of years ago in connection with a class I was taking. I have to work tonight so won't have a chance to follow-up on this until tomorrow afternoon.
Well there are more male runners and teams now than before Title 9. Oh and a lot more women's team and runners now than before 1981 and of course before title 9. I think title 9 went in to effect in 1972 or 73 but it was about a decade before it was applied to athletics.
I don't think us men have much to bitch about.
Womens Teams
1981 (417) 4612 runners
2001 (928) 12003 runners
Mens Teams
1981 (650) 8966 runners
2001 (858) 10840 runners
Nice post.
Why didn't we hear all of this TRUTHFUL info. pertaining to UMD weeks ago?
I understand the perdicament up at UMD.
Question, does Grandma's Marathon kick any money towards you guys and girls, the St. Scholastica, and the Duluth, Esko, Carleton, Proctor teams?