The Super 32
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Title IX
by Randy Simpson
Wrestling's worst enemy: Title IX states that discrimination based on sex is illegal. The application of this law has been left up to the Office of Civil Rights, which has determined, in a nutshell, that colleges who have more male athletes than female athletes are in violation of Title IX and must change their ways. Well, it doesn't take an expert to figure out that, due to football, most colleges would be in violation. And here's the rub: the OCR doesn't care HOW the institution gets into compliance - add women's badminton, drop wrestling - both are fine with them. Just so the numbers add up. Take note that the OCR doesn't care about Interest. If you offer women's softball and have 30 roster slots open, but only 20 women try out, you only have 20 women. On the other hand, if you have a wrestling team with 30 open slots, and 30 men on the team, you are still in violation of Title IX, according to the OCR. Even though the number of opportunities were the same, the interest level wasn't as high with the women. It doesn't matter. The OCR also doesn't care about Opportunities. If you offer 10 men's sports and 13 women's sports, you might still be in violation of Title IX if you have fewer female athletes. In addition, the OCR doesn't care that high school boys greatly outnumber girls when it comes to sports participation. So how could colleges possibly be expected to have the same number of women participants as men, when the numbers aren't equal in the pool they are drawing from? Statistics prove that women don't try out for athletics nearly as often as boys. Intramural numbers reflect that boys are about eight times as likely to participate as girls. So why force it? If women want to play sports, they should play. Make sure we offer a wide enough curriculum of athletic opportunities for women to play. And when another sport shows significant development of interest among women in the high schools, then by all means, the colleges in that state should be looking to add it. But why force the numbers? Let things happen naturally. Let's implement Title IX the right way - start with pee wee programs, adding more girls sports at that level, and let it gradually work its way up to high school and college. That's how soccer in this country grew. But we should never, EVER take opportunities away from boys, just because girls aren't participating as much. The great irony is that Title IX states you cannot discriminate based on sex - but when a college drops a wrestling program because it involves males instead of females, that is exactly what they are doing! This is an enormous problem for our sport. Syracuse is the latest victim of Title IX, having recently announced that they are dropping wrestling. There are now less than 100 Division I schools that offer wrestling, and those numbers are decreasing dramatically every year. At the rate we're going, there might not be a Division I Wrestling Championship in five years. Does that scare you? It scares me! Do you want to do something about it? Contact your congressmen, write to the president, write letters, get groups organized, start petitions. Let your elected officials know that this isn't how we want things to be. We need to approach Title IX from a positive position of adding girls' opportunities at a young age, and NEVER accept dropping a men's collegiate program because of some quota. Randy Simpson, Head Wrestling Coach, Capital University (and wrestling columnist)
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