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Where the Boys Aren't
September saw the continuation of a couple of disturbing trends which will continue to grab headlines in the college sports world. As athletic programs grapple with shrinking university and state support and, often as a result, Title IX compliance issues, non-revenue generating men’s sports (and women’s) are taking it on the chin.
The announcement by the University of California, Berkeley, that it is eliminating four intercollegiate sports, particularly baseball, sent shockwaves throughout college sports. UC Berkeley administrators said they decided on the cuts after considering a variety of factors, including cost, student diversity, impact on donations and compliance with Title IX. The other sports dropped were men's and women's gymnastics and women's lacrosse. Men’s rugby will lose its funding and will move to club status. The cuts will save the athletic department an estimated $4 million a year.
As reported by John Powers of the Boston Globe: to achieve gender equity amid enrollment shifts and reduced revenue, colleges have been chopping men’s sports, with at least half a dozen on the endangered list and others facing extinction. Such is the problem as athletic departments try to comply with federal Title IX regulations while cutting budgets in daunting economic times.
As an example, Powers cited wrestling, which boasted nearly 400 teams in 1972, but has since shrunk to 224 last year, with only 86 at the D-1 level. While more men (244,267) than women (182,503) played college sports last year because of football, there were more teams for women (9,560) than for men (8,465). In 1982, the average number of teams per institution was 9.1 for men and 6.4 for women. Last year, it was 8.9 for women and 7.9 for men.
The change reflects the numbers game that schools play in order to meet the proportionality requirement that has become the favored method to comply with Title IX.
According to Powers, most schools have stayed in compliance by adding numbers-rich women’s sports such as rowing (with its average squad size of 50), soccer (25) and lacrosse (23) to help balance football (103) and by focusing on roster management, capping the size of men’s teams while increasing women’s.
Assuming the trend continues athletes who compete outside of the remaining sanctioned sports will no doubt have to look elsewhere in order to continue their athletic careers at the collegiate level. Many will turn to smaller schools where the revenue demands are far less than at the big time programs. In these sports, the highest level of competition will no longer reside at Division I, but at Division II & III.