Killing Men's Sports in the Name of Equality

The do-gooders that brought us Title IX in the 70's are now reaping the rewards of their efforts - equality in college athletics which is being achieved not by increasing opportunities for women, but by cutting opportunities for both men and women (from NRO):

The law is now outdated. Women make up a majority of the undergraduate student population nationwide (on some campuses accounting for more than 60 percent of the student body). This presents a unique challenge to Title IX compliance, which calls for proportionality: The ratio of male to female athletes must match the ratio of male to female students. As the number of female undergraduates continues to climb, schools unable to attract enough female athletes to fill the quota are forced to cut men’s teams to make the numbers work.

An outrageous and recent example of this took place at James Madison University, a school where 61 percent of the student body is female. On September 29, JMU announced the largest Title IX cuts to date: seven men’s teams (wrestling, swimming, cross-country, indoor and outdoor track, archery, and gymnastics) and three women’s teams (gymnastics, archery, and fencing) to be eliminated effective July 2007. The cuts will affect 11 coaches and 144 student athletes.

The purpose of Title IX was to promote equality between the sexes. If JMU was discriminating against female athletes, perhaps the cuts would have been justified. They were not. Sports Illustrated reports that before the cuts, JMU fielded 15 women’s sports to only 13 men’s sports and a majority of its student-athletes (50.7 percent) were female. Female athletes were hardly being denied opportunities.

Perhaps most shocking of all, the massive cuts were strictly voluntary and came without any pressure — not as a result of a lawsuit or even complaint. Title IX supporters have speculated that budget concerns were the real culprit and Title IX is being used as a scapegoat by partisans. But JMU Spokesman Andy Perrine confirmed in an interview with Jessica Gavora of the College Sports Council that the cuts were due to Title IX compliance (in a clear nod to proportionality, the cuts increase the proportion of female athletes to 61 percent — an exact match of the female undergraduate enrollment at the school). Meanwhile JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne told the New York Times that money was not a factor on the decision. In fact, the ten sports programs in question make up a measly $550,000 in an athletic budget of $21 million.

Title IX was supposed to be about creating more opportunity to participate in sports, not fewer. And it's typical of affirmative action-type programs in the unintended consequences that are generated once its enacted. These things never turn out the way the starry-eyed dreamers who created them thought they would.