Wow, if you read the front page quote you'll read about Title 9 and how it's retarded. It really hits home with me. I was cut from the men's track team on 9/18. Most of the first and second year walk ons were cut. I had already been in the program for over a year before I got hte heave ho. I hate Title 9 and it's proponents with every fiber of my being. However, football doesn't make me too happy either.
It's time for you to join the ranks of the informed.
Title IX is an amendment to create equality. What has gone on in the past year, with AD's disallowing walk-on's is strictly a misinterpretation of the amendment. If you want to call something retarded - call the Athletic Director's in US colleges or those that advise them retarded.
No one wants to see men's sports cut, or to see walk-ons being turned away. I believe that Title IX will undergo some construction soon, and football may be thrown out of the equation. This should allow minor sports men and women to enjoy equal opportunity.
Don't blame Title IX for the problem.
More accurately, IMO, it's the simplest, safest cover-your-a** interpretation of Title IX, as made by a government official several years ago, no less. Pure, simple proportionality without having to evaluate level of student interest is cheap and easy.
For me, this hits pretty close -- I was an unrecruited college runner, so my coach would have had to cut a varsity runner if that ruling came down back in the 1840's when I went to school..
Title IX's big problem is that the same idiots who made it necessary to enact the law are the ones that are now implementing it. Speaking of athletic directors and bureaucrats, that is.
Football, you bet!
It's actually Gender Equity which sprang out of Title IX that has the bean counters running the world in such a bassackwards fashion. I don't think the framers meant to limit men's opportunities, but rather they meant to greatly increase women's opportunities. Then the freakin beancounters came in with their equity indexes and skewed the entire procedure. These people have no soul and have no business whatsoever in athletic administration because they have told one group that they have more value than another. I too was a walk on who would have very little chance in today's DI world of stupidity. As a coach at DIII who doesn't have to worry about that nonsense, I directly benefit from DI and DII's idiocy in this. But, I mourn when schools drop men's programs because it's always the Olympic sports that are taking the hits:wrestling, gymnastics, swimming, and, of course cc/track. They have to be more creative and flexible than that. The wrestling federation has finally filed suit and even President Bush has stated that the madness has to stop. They are facing heavy opposition from women's groups and prominent people like Jesse Jackson (nice to have an adulterer as a spokesman for women's rights, but I digress). They feel as if we want to repeal the progress they've made, but they couldn't be farther from the truth. We could all agree that two wrongs don't make a right. Taking away men's opportunities doesn't create more for women, it just creates even more of a chasm between the two sides because nobody likes to be denied an opportunity. Surely, there is a much more creative solution to the lack of opportunities that women had to endure for decades!?! As the parent of a female athlete I am thrilled about the increased chances for participation. But, as the parent of a 5 year boy, I shudder to think what he may or may not have available to him at the upper levels of Division I should he choose to be an athlete. Coach McDonnell hit the nail on the head. We are an obese society and the lack of quality physical education in many schools combined with the ludicrous interpretation of Title IX in athletics isn't helping matters one bit. Let's hope and pray that common sense will actually become common and better solutions can be reached. Maybe a club system will start thriving to stand in the gap. Comments?
I think the answer is more government involvement. And more money. And higher taxes.
"They are facing heavy opposition from women's groups and prominent people like Jesse Jackson (nice to have an adulterer as a spokesman for women's rights, but I digress). They feel as if we want to repeal the progress they've made, but they couldn't be farther from the truth. We could all agree that two wrongs don't make a right. Taking away men's opportunities doesn't create more for women, it just creates even more of a chasm between the two sides because nobody likes to be denied an opportunity. "
The opposition from women's groups rest with the fact that Title IX does not have to be repealed, but to enforce proper interpretation of the "intent" of the amendment. Guaranteed, if the law were repealed, the AD's/beancounters would be cutting women's sports right and left - and we'd be back to the 1950's once again. The intent was to bring opportunities for women to the standard of men. But football tends to make that impossible.
Either give up the sacred cow of football, or throw it out of the equation and keep the Title IX standards for minor sports.
I do believe taking football out of the equation will happen under Bush, because America is not likely ready to give up it's big blood-sucking leach, the sport of pigskin.
P.S. It is a rare find to identify a leader in our society, self-appointed or elected, who is not an adulterer. Let's not forget that.
Better yet, would it not be easier if we just added women's football so that we have the same # of participants? Yeh, dude, then we would have to have the WNFL as well!
"minor sport"...could you elaborate? come on, pull out the thesaurus and get a new word.
Whatever the equity bean counters decide, I think it would be a good idea to take any sport that brings in money completely out of the equation.
Football is a sacred cow at many schools because it brings in big bucks. For example, there is no question that Notre Dame would have many fewer students, quads, science buildings, etc. if it had no football. When a sport pays for itself like that -- when it's helping to fund the gender equity in other sports -- I don't think it should even be considered in gender-equity equations.
To sort of agree with D-III Coach, when I read the Times story my rxn was boo-f%^#ing-hoo. Nobody has a God-given right to compete for a Division I team, no matter how hard you work. Sure, it sucks that most ADs would rather cut walk-ons and let their coaches recruit foreigners, but guess what? There are 324 Division I schools and roughly a thousand others in D-II, D-III, the NAIA, and elsewhere. You can get at least as good an education at those schools, you can find plenty of competition, and you can get on with your life instead of bashing Title IX.
It's funny because there is a women's pro football league right now in effect. Maybe that will be the ultimate fix--there will be an incresingly higher demand for women's football and colleges will start having teams...
Who knows, but I do agree (and I am a female) that in the meantime, the "equal # of scholarships" rule should apply to each sport INDIVIDUALLY. So the same number of men's track team members get scholarships as do women's track team members. Since there is no women's wrestling team, the men get X scholarships in that sport and the women obviously get none.
I have seen guys get cut or at least get their scholarships cut from my team and have seen good friends have to leave while less deserving females keep their money, and it is because of Title 9. I agree that it MUST be amended. Women are given plenty of opportunity to compete in sports now; it is no longer a big issue. So let's quit punishing the men!
DIII coach, you might want to check your facts on this one. It does not only apply to D1 -- just ask Mark Guthrie at UW-La Crosse how much his roster has changed in the recent past.
Face it folks, the good old boys who still run college athletics will never let anyone touch football. That means this fight will (and should) keep going ad nauseum.
If the incompetent boobs we call football coaches can't find a way to survive on 40-44 scholarships, let's keep carving away. The reason they "need" 80+ full rides is they are pretty lousy judges of talent.
Flame away.
runnerchic777 wrote:
It's funny because there is a women's pro football league right now in effect. Maybe that will be the ultimate fix--there will be an incresingly higher demand for women's football and colleges will start having teams...
This is not a first for women's pro football. Leagues started and folded in the 70's. It didn't resolve a thing.
Who knows, but I do agree (and I am a female) that in the meantime, the "equal # of scholarships" rule should apply to each sport INDIVIDUALLY. So the same number of men's track team members get scholarships as do women's track team members. Since there is no women's wrestling team, the men get X scholarships in that sport and the women obviously get none.
And what is your rationale for this theory? Can men have a wrestling team and women have syncronized swimming - how will you "equate the scholarships" for that?
I have seen guys get cut or at least get their scholarships cut from my team and have seen good friends have to leave while less deserving females keep their money, and it is because of Title 9. I agree that it MUST be amended. Women are given plenty of opportunity to compete in sports now; it is no longer a big issue. So let's quit punishing the men!
Elaborate on "less deserving". Who keeps the record on that? Who is punishing the men? Women's teams, those that play - are they punishing the men? or is it the a-hole AD's that took something good and misinterpreted?
Nobody wants their to be inequality. And for those who think football makes money, guess again. Maybe 10 teams in the whole country - the rest are monetary losers.
Flame? Are you kidding? I'd like to have a big bumper sticker on my car that says "I hate football". Talk about getting the finger on the ride to work! I absolutely love the comment on "blood sucking" pigskin.
This whole Title IX thread reminds me of a comment I once heard. Go back in time to the integration issue of the '60's. Basically, the feds said "You have to allow people of any color into your school. Access must be equal." If the football people had been in control, their answer would've been, "Fine, then we'll close the school. If nobody gets an education, that's also 'equal'". The problem isn't with Title IX, it's with the fat bastards who don't want to share their 9/10ths of the pie.
What really pissed me off was when that McFly lady from Monmouth State said that men stay on teams for the "social aspect." That's the biggest load of horse shit I have ever heard in my life. Obviously, this McFly lady has never been around competitive college athletics, and if her fat ass has, it sure as hell hasn't been in the last couple of decades. With comments like that it is apparent that she knows jack shit and should be tossed out on the street. If anyone stays on college teams for the free crap and the social aspect it is women. Good God there are so many girls at my school that do sports "for fun" or because they "like the girls on the team and like eating in the special cafeteria and like the free massages." Men stay on teams because they want to get better and max out their potential, be as good as they can be. 99% of womens sports and 99% of the women that "compete" in them are an absolute joke. WNBA, we got next. What a bunch of crap.
Barbarian:
I don't find your generalizations to be true. I ran collegiate x-c and track and have also coached men and women. They want the same things.
They want to be better, they want to be part of something that requires discipline, skill. They both want to win. They both have something to gain from athletics.
Women may overall have a different approach to competition, but they desire it and want to succeed.
Generalizing based on one team doesn't make a very good scientific/psychological study.
And the athletic director is partially correct. Most men do want to be on a team for social reasons, but duh, so do most women. Let's face it, belonging to a team with goals and aspirations is what sport is all about - the entire purpose of having sport teams is to work together for a common goal, no different than chess club, glee club, chorus, quiz team, band, book clubs, etc.
TMorgan wrote:
"minor sport"...could you elaborate? come on, pull out the thesaurus and get a new word.
Okay. How about "non-revenue sport"? Give him a break.
What about DI-AA schools that are anything but profitable but still exist and are the reason programs like wrestling get cut?