Not many people will talk about it, political correctness being the plague it is. But privately, college athletics experts, pro and con, admit that Title IX interpretations have much to do with current problems of program maintenance and elimination.
When “equal” assistance is demanded for women’s sports to balance the scales, guess which gender is likely to close locker rooms. Football with its 85 allowable scholarships, of course, is the flash point. More on that later.
In the forefront here of late has been the Kansas University cancellation of men’s swimming and tennis programs. All sorts of well-intentioned emergency efforts have been and will be expended to resurrect the tank and net corps. Unless somebody comes up with more than $2 million pretty fast, sayonara.
Criticism of KU, athletics director Bob Frederick and even chancellor Bob Hemenway was watered down just a bit football-moneyed Nebraska also dropped men’s swimming, then Iowa State eliminated men’s swimming and baseball operations. KU is not alone in its struggles.
Right now, things won’t soon get better.
Consider this statistic about college sports from none other than Cedric Dempsey, the NCAA executive director (whose agency begins a $6 billion basketball tournament contract with CBS in 2003):
Of the 976 institutions of higher learning in the United States, only 48 generate more money than they spend on sports. That’s not even 5 percent, folks. The relatively new gender equity facets may not be all to blame, but they’re important.
The Title IX law mandates that college sports programs must reflect the proportion of women to men in the student body. Take little Baylor of the Big 12, for example. About 55 percent of the Baylor enrollment is female so the sports roster has to reflect that (55-45). The Waco school has shaky football status but still has to award 85 scholarships to try to keep up with the “other eleven,” including struggling Kansas.
Administrators say they have no quarrel with a Title IX equity setup if you can begin AFTER the football grants are set aside. That isn’t the way it goes. If KU, Baylor and such award 85 scholarships for football alone, they have to match that for women’s activities. So if there are 185 men’s scholarships (football included) and your gender ratio is 50-50, you have to award 185 packages for women. Take out football, and it would be 100-100.
Since football is supposed to carry the biggest load, though men’s basketball currently does that at Kansas, the costs soar. Who gets cut? Men’s sports, like swimming, tennis and baseball.
At Kansas, men’s basketball currently brings in something like $4 million a year. Women’s basketball goes about $1 million into the red. Little wonder everyone’s nuts about finding ways to get more paying customers into the football stands.
You’d think schools like Texas and Texas A &M with their huge stadiums and popular football programs would have it made, right? Let’s look at figures from Texas A & M for 1997, the last full rundown I have handy. They’re still symbolic.
TexAggie football in ’97, before a stadium expansion, generated $14 million, about 70 percent of the athletic income at College Station. A profit of $7 million resulted. Men’s tennis brought in $3,000, women’s swimming $2,000, every other sports except men’s basketball created red ink.
A&M’s $7 millions profit fell to about $800,000 since 17 other sports lost $6.2 million. Total Aggie revenues for 1997 were $20.4 million due to ticket sales, television, contributions, sponsorships and NCAA and Big 12 rake-offs. Yet when all the costs were factored in, there was a net loss of $200,000 in 1997.
One of the problems that year was a 48-scholarship male-female disparity. The Aggies had to go to such venues as an equestrian team, archery and bowling to make up the difference. Kansas State, by the way, now has an equestrian setup and even with the hay barns, grazing fields and eager veterinary students, that’s gotta cost a little.
Emotions rise understandably when programs are cut invariably they’re men’s but there are hard facts about finance, gender equity and such that too often are overlooked or ignored.
I’d like to predict things will get better; right now I don’t believe that. As for KU swimming and tennis, anybody got $2 million in petty cash stashed under the mattress?
Kansas basketball has a lousy way of getting smacked in the face early in key NCAA tournament games. It needs to concentrate more on being the smacker rather than the smackee.
Take 1991 to start the NCAA title game. Duke’s Bobby Hurley alley-oops Grant Hill and KU was immediately on the ropes. In 1998, Rhode Island with that doggone Cuttino Mobley startled KU early and a second-round loss resulted. This year, Illinois’ Frank Williams intercepted and cruised to a hoop and Kansas soon was toast.
About time for the Jayhawks to take the initiative, huh?
