Neither Title IXnor football is the problem.
The problem is status-quo largesse.
Everyone has to make a ton of money, be the best, strive to be #1, etc, and thereby “earn their keep”.
Bullcrap. Make it modest—50-70k head coach, 20-30k or volunteer assistant coaches, travel by bus to only neighboring states for meets, stay in dorms or crap motels with negotiated group rate, end athletic scholarships.
Track is the simplest thing. Make it an expense and minimize it, for the betterment of the individual students. Have open intra-school meets regularly from which the traveling team is selected, anybody can participate. Train the best 100 who want it.
No big deal. But oh, no, that’s unacceptable.
F the admin, F the system, F them all. They will end up with nothing, and they deserve it.
Also, stupid students. Organize a club, do intramurals, do it yourselves. So hard, I know. WHATEVER.
I used to love training alongside the team esp in the fall at the old track, while the band practiced in the adjacent lot and the football team on the adjacent field. It was quintessential college, fall season in the Big 10, leaves turning, school sweaters, cheerleaders practicing outside the indoor facility. Beautiful.
Now it’s all dead. Sterile new facility that is never open, has smaller stands than a HS. “Center of excellence” pampering the whiny special ones. No vibe, no atmosphere, no point.
They—YOU—have destroyed something iconic, something special, something classic—they through greed and largesse, you through complicity and blind obedience of authority.
The destruction accelerates.