COLLLEGE PARK - Did college athletics replace one caste system with another?
University of Maryland athletic director Debbie Yow thinks so - in the last generation, programs have gone from an all-male orientation to one in which some men's teams are short-changed.
Yow brings a unique perspective to the 15-member panel that Education Secretary Rod Paige named last summer to strengthen enforcement of Title IX, while at the same time "expanding opportunities to ensure fairness for all college athletes."
Critics fear that the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics won't consider cutting a major expense, football scholarships, in order to aid minor men's sports, which have taken the greatest economic hit as schools have overhauled athletic programs to comply with Title IX.
Yow is the commission's only woman who oversees a football team that plays in one of the six conferences that dominate the Bowl Championship Series - in essence, the leagues that run major college athletics.
Her own playing days predate Title IX, the 30-year-old federal law that jump-started women's athletics by prohibiting sex discrimination in education.
Having worn wrestling hand-me-downs for the Elon (N.C.) College basketball team in 1971, however, Yow empathizes with the majority of her men's teams. Because of funding guidelines, they lag far behind the Atlantic Coast Conference competition and, in some instances, more closely resemble Division III.
"I have one chance to take care of these guys," said Yow, whose Maryland program is among the 20 percent found to be in compliance with Title IX. "I can't be shy, I can't mince words. I have to be clear on the message, because this opportunity is not coming around again. If we don't get this straightened out, through this commission, it's not going to get straightened out."
The debate hasn't generated as much publicity as the one regarding Augusta National Golf Club's all-male membership, but there are high stakes in an issue that finds a focal point in the broad-based Division I athletic program that sits closest to Capitol Hill.
Earlier this year the Terps joined the handful of colleges to play in one of football's major bowls and win an NCAA men's basketball championship in the same year. It has two top 20 soccer teams, and strong traditions in field hockey and lacrosse raise its stature when women's programs are graded. On the facility front, the $108 million Comcast Center will move Maryland to the head of the line.
The situation couldn't have been more drastic a decade ago, when the Terps were squeezed on one side by a domino effect of funding shortfalls that began with the 1986 death of basketball star Len Bias, and on the other by a lawsuit charging non-compliance with Title IX.
In 1990, then-athletic director Lew Perkins floated dropping gymnastics, men's golf and men's and women's tennis as a means to combat a budget deficit that had grown in part because of NCAA sanctions over basketball and declines in interest and revenue. Instead, a four-tiered system was devised. Golf, tennis and track and field were assigned to the lowest level, without scholarships.
In order to comply with Title IX, Maryland added a women's golf team in 1999. All of its women's teams are "fully funded," capable of offering the maximum allotment of scholarships allowed by the NCAA. Its lowest-tiered men's teams, meanwhile, were basically left there. With donations up and the deficit dwindling, Maryland now has money to allocate more scholarships for those teams, but doing so without cutting other men's sports would violate Title IX.
"We've come full circle," Yow said. "It's the haves and the have-nots in reversal."
Title IX requires college athletic programs to meet one of three yardsticks. The lone quantifiable measure is proportionality, which requires that opportunities reflect the enrollment's gender breakdown. According to the General Accounting Office, colleges have added more than 3,800 women's teams since it became law. At the same time, some 400 men's teams have been dropped.
The head of USA Swimming said, "Our sport is slowly transitioning from a healthy balance of participants to a predominantly female sport." Wrestling had 152 Division I teams in 1980; last winter that count dropped to 86, despite a boom in membership at that level. Soccer's growth aside, Florida State and Georgia Tech don't have men's teams. Programs with rich legacies, like UCLA swimming and San Jose State track and field, are gone.
"It's a quota system," said Indiana's Sam Bell, the president of the U.S. Track and Field Coaches Association. "There's no other place in the country that could do something like this and have it be accepted. Could this be done in music? In drama? In elementary education, where women predominate? I doubt it."
The commission will finish its report in January, and then pass along its recommendations. Yow backs several proposals that would prop up teams that through the years have been labeled everything from minor to non-revenue to Olympic.
She wants the NCAA to boost the scholarship level for select women's teams. Opponents might balk at aiding dynasties like Cindy Timchal's lacrosse program here, but there's precedent, since most women's teams are already allowed more scholarships than men. Yow also favors altering the Title IX accounting, taking out walk-ons and factoring in high school participation rates.
According to figures compiled by USA Wrestling, one in every 41 high school wrestlers finds a spot to play in college. Conversely, for every girl who rows in high school, there are 2.59 opportunities to continue in college. That sport is capped at 20 scholarships, and Yow said that Maryland will add it as a way to legally provide more scholarships for her men's teams if the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics doesn't offer another solution.
Donna de Varona, the co-founder of the Women's Sports Foundation, sits on the commission. She said, "Talk to women who have been in the trenches, and there's great fear. From the beginning, there's always been a move to undermine Title IX. At the start, we heard 'women aren't as interested.' Thirty years later, we're still hearing that. I don't think we're getting all the input we need. The people I want to hear speak aren't getting the opportunity."
The commission's fourth and final "town hall" meeting in San Diego this week will hear from Donna Lopiano, the national director of the Women's Sports Foundation. She argues that college athletic programs can't provide everything for everyone, and that if athletic directors want to add scholarships for men, they can always take them from football.
"Football is the elephant in the middle of the road that no one wants to talk about," Lopiano said. "Everyone in the business knows that you don't need 100 scholarships for football, and that you don't even need 85. What hurts is not Title IX, it's that schools don't have the money to do everything they want. There's nothing wrong with having a multi-tiered athletic program. An institution can't be the best at everything.
"This commission is not focusing on the problem, and I doubt it will. This is a fiasco. I think the commission is a set-up. If I were on the commission, I would quit. I would worry about my integrity."
Yow said a drop in football scholarships would affect another minority, African-American males. She acknowledged that while it would be politically incorrect for a man to take the lead on the commission, that's one charge she doesn't have to face.
"If someone wants to take a potshot and say, 'Hey, she doesn't care about women's athletics,' most people aren't going to buy that," Yow said. "I owe what I have to opportunities that were created by Title IX in college. I'm very aware of that. I want that to continue for women in the future, while we're also fair to the men. Enough already. Enough programs have been dropped. We need to figure this out."
Terps funding
Maryland funds its men's and women's teams at different levels. The figures below show the NCAA's maximum scholarships allowed and the level of Maryland's funding for the 2001-2002 school year, rounded to the nearest tenth. N/A denotes that Maryland and/or the NCAA do not sponsor the sport.
MEN WOMEN
Sport NCAA UM NCAA UM
Baseball/softball 11.7 6.4 12.0 12.0
Basketball 13.0 12.0 15.0 14.0
Field hockey N/A N/A 12.0 12.0
Football 85 84 N/A N/A
Golf 4.5 2.7 6.0 4.9
Gymnastics N/A N/A 12.0 12.0
Lacrosse 12.6 12.5 12.0 10.5
Soccer 9.9 9.4 12.0 11.9
Swimming 9.9 3.9 14.0 7.0
Tennis 4.5 0.5 8.0 7.0
Track/cross country 12.6 2.8 18.0 12.6
Volleyball N/A N/A 12.0 12.0
Wrestling 9.9 4.66 N/A N/A Totals 173.6 138.7 133.0 122.3
Source: University of Maryland