Expanding Football Roster Has Title IX, Logistical Issues

[Enhance]

They came out with a part two today that basically keys in on the women's swimming team and whether or not the expanded walk-ons were given a true varsity experience i.e. were they a legitimate part of the team and were they actually contributing to the success of the team. The litigator said there are some indicators that this wasn't fully the case. Specifically:

- the walk-ons did not practice with the team

- the walk-ons did not swim after the first three meets of the season

- they did not get coached by the head coach or their top assistant

- their skill levels were considerably lower than their scholarship counterparts (based off of their high school accolades)

- all of these walk-ons were already enrolled at UNL prior to learning about or earning the walk-on opportunity, so they would've been students anyways

The coach and university defend it by saying they were given ample opportunity to move up if their performances improved, and the walk-on player featured in the article said the experience was still mostly positive alongside getting access to all of the other benefits the full scholarship players had.

So, again, it sort of seems like there's a little something to the story, but would it hold up in some kind of legitimate Title IX investigation and result in some sort of infraction? Probably not? But, I'm no expert.

 

[Mierin]

Football makes the money. Period. Title IX is wack 

This shouldn’t be viewed as a purely capitalist issue. It’s amateur sports in college. The purpose of college isn’t to provide opportunities only for the students who will make the school the most money. Your view can and does apply to pro sports. 

And the good that comes from having women’s college athletics outweighs the cost. There were almost no opportunities for females to play sports before Title IX, even in high school or younger. Title IX is the #1 reason why girls can be involved in sports at younger ages now, and there are a lot of positives that come from being on a sports team that weren’t there for girls before Title IX.

Lastly, I doubt many of the football players would be happy if there weren’t female teams.

 

[BIG ERN]

This shouldn’t be viewed as a purely capitalist issue. It’s amateur sports in college. The purpose of college isn’t to provide opportunities only for the students who will make the school the most money. Your view can and does apply to pro sports. 

And the good that comes from having women’s college athletics outweighs the cost. There were almost no opportunities for females to play sports before Title IX, even in high school or younger. Title IX is the #1 reason why girls can be involved in sports at younger ages now, and there are a lot of positives that come from being on a sports team that weren’t there for girls before Title IX.

Lastly, I doubt many of the football players would be happy if there weren’t female teams.

I never said we had to abolish women's sports, but they don't have to be treated equal 

 

[Ulty]

Football makes the money. Period. Title IX is wack 

I never said we had to abolish women's sports, but they don't have to be treated equal 

Whoa... so your contention is that Title IX is "wack" and female athletes don't deserve equal treatment? Would you care to elaborate?

 

[BigRedBuster]

Title IX doesn't hurt our football program because every school has to abide by the same rules.  Every time something like this is discussed, someone complains and says Title IX is dumb and hurts football.

No....it doesn't.  All the top programs in the country have to go through the same regulations.  

The benefits WAY out way the issues the mens sports have to deal with.

 

[BIG ERN]

Whoa... so your contention is that Title IX is "wack" and female athletes don't deserve equal treatment? Would you care to elaborate?

I disagree with this...Scholarships: Title IX requires that female and male student-athletes receive athletics scholarship dollars proportional to their participation.

Again, I am for women's sports and Title IX has done great things, but I like how no one cares when a men's atheltic is cut and then added for the women just so schools can distribute for football. 

 

[knapplc]

I would say that's a fair question to ask.

Moos brought it up in the past when the topic has come up.  So it's not like they totally came up with this on their own.  So from that standpoint it's fair to say they were following up on the story.  But at the same time I'm not sure when they found out that the athletic department did in fact make some attempt to comply, I'm not sure it was really story-worthy.  My guess is that they thought it would get some people riled up enough to make it a story if they ran with it so they did.

These two paragraphs from the article support this. They're pushing for a problem where there doesn't seem to be a problem.

Paragraph 1:

Indeed, in that and several other ways, the Huskers' new walk-ons last year weren't always treated as true members of the Husker swimming and diving team. Nonetheless, Ellis much enjoyed and appreciated the chance she was given to continue swimming in college, work on her skills and bond with teammates.

Leading that sentence off with "nonetheless" belies the rest of the sentence. Her take is that things weren't 100% across the board, but she liked her experience.

But that's not the premise they're aiming for, so they largely ignore that, with this gem:

Paragraph 2:

But a World-Herald examination of the details behind the move show it didn't always go all that swimmingly, raising questions about how committed the school was to creating true varsity athletic experiences for more women.

What I would have liked to have seen is WAY more input from both walk-ons and varsity swim team athletes, and way less from Title IX suits. Because the experience of the student-athlete is what's most important, at least to me.

But something the article doesn't really do at all is acknowledge that this was all slapped together in a few months.

Another excerpt from the article:

The expansion of Nebraska's women's swim team last year was actually undertaken with football in mind...

Frost was hired December 2nd, 2017. I'm sure he expressed his intent to expand the roster during contract negotiations, meaning if Moos was on board with that, he had to figure out how to expand other teams for Title IX compliance NOW.

The Swim Team's season started 9/28/18, ten months after Frost was hired. They had to go out and get those student-athletes in a few short months. Maybe they were already enrolled at UNL, but if not, they had to alter or adjust their college plans to accommodate this new opportunity.

This article is judging the merits of an expanded Title IX compliance, rather harshly, based on its first year, on a plan that was slapped together in a few months.

Maybe give UNL a couple of years to get this ironed out before judging the situation, eh OWH?

 

[knapplc]

I disagree with this...Scholarships: Title IX requires that female and male student-athletes receive athletics scholarship dollars proportional to their participation.

Again, I am for women's sports and Title IX has done great things, but I like how no one cares when a men's atheltic is cut and then added for the women just so schools can distribute for football. 

I don't think that's the case at all. There are some Title IX nutters out there who think it's great that men's programs got cut, but they're the minority. The vast majority of college sports fans don't want to see any program cut.

 

[Ulty]

I disagree with this...Scholarships: Title IX requires that female and male student-athletes receive athletics scholarship dollars proportional to their participation.

Again, I am for women's sports and Title IX has done great things, but I like how no one cares when a men's atheltic is cut and then added for the women just so schools can distribute for football. 

People do care about this. It's a bummer that we can't have more sports. It sucked when UNO dropped their wrestling program moments after winning a national championship. It sucks that schools aren't able to fund more sports across the board and have to make tough financial decisions. No one pretends that a women's rifle program or bowling balances out the size and weight of the football program, and everyone appreciates the revenue that football does bring in to help fund all other sports (men's AND women's). 

What would your solution be?

 

[Born N Bled Red]

The decline of wrestling, or any sport for that matter, is unfortunate. However, it is not fair or accurate to blame Title IX.

While I agree Title IX is not the sole contributor for the decline in wrestling programs, to suggest that is has not had a major impact is not realistic either. Here is a great article from Forbes on the issue. From a 2005 article in "Accuracy in Acedemia,"

NCAA statistics show that men’s cross country leads the list of most dropped programs in the last 15 years at 183. Indoor track (180), golf (178), tennis (171), rowing (132), outdoor track (126), swimming (125) and wrestling (121) are other men’s programs that have been cut mainly because of current Title IX enforcement, Pearson said.  https://www.academia.org/wrestling-with-title-ix/

Another interesting article from Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristidosh/2016/03/17/the-future-of-collegiate-wrestling-isnt-at-division-i-level/#12cb18f82fcc

 

[Mierin]

I disagree with this...Scholarships: Title IX requires that female and male student-athletes receive athletics scholarship dollars proportional to their participation.

Again, I am for women's sports and Title IX has done great things, but I like how no one cares when a men's atheltic is cut and then added for the women just so schools can distribute for football. 

The men’s athletic programs that are cut don’t make money either, so what is the argument that there should there be more of them than women’s sports?

 

[Ulty]

While I agree Title IX is not the sole contributor for the decline in wrestling programs, to suggest that is has not had a major impact is not realistic either. Here is a great article from Forbes on the issue. From a 2005 article in "Accuracy in Acedemia,"

NCAA statistics show that men’s cross country leads the list of most dropped programs in the last 15 years at 183. Indoor track (180), golf (178), tennis (171), rowing (132), outdoor track (126), swimming (125) and wrestling (121) are other men’s programs that have been cut mainly because of current Title IX enforcement, Pearson said.  https://www.academia.org/wrestling-with-title-ix/

Another interesting article from Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristidosh/2016/03/17/the-future-of-collegiate-wrestling-isnt-at-division-i-level/#12cb18f82fcc

Good info, thanks. Schools could have kept these programs if they also provided equitable opportunity for women, but it wasn't financially feasible in most of those cases. It is very unfortunate that so many programs got axed. In fact, it is more than unfortunate, it really sucks. But it is also unfortunate that women never had the same opportunities as men did for so long. Keeping an inequitable system in place would not have been the correct answer.

 

[knapplc]

While I agree Title IX is not the sole contributor for the decline in wrestling programs, to suggest that is has not had a major impact is not realistic either. Here is a great article from Forbes on the issue. From a 2005 article in "Accuracy in Acedemia,"

NCAA statistics show that men’s cross country leads the list of most dropped programs in the last 15 years at 183. Indoor track (180), golf (178), tennis (171), rowing (132), outdoor track (126), swimming (125) and wrestling (121) are other men’s programs that have been cut mainly because of current Title IX enforcement, Pearson said.  https://www.academia.org/wrestling-with-title-ix/

Another interesting article from Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristidosh/2016/03/17/the-future-of-collegiate-wrestling-isnt-at-division-i-level/#12cb18f82fcc

The premise of the phrase "because of current Title IX enforcement" kinda implies that those programs deserve to exist more than women's sports, does it not?

And that is not the case. Men have no greater rights to play sports than women.

 

[BIG ERN]

People do care about this. It's a bummer that we can't have more sports. It sucked when UNO dropped their wrestling program moments after winning a national championship. It sucks that schools aren't able to fund more sports across the board and have to make tough financial decisions. No one pretends that a women's rifle program or bowling balances out the size and weight of the football program, and everyone appreciates the revenue that football does bring in to help fund all other sports (men's AND women's). 

What would your solution be?

I have stated several times that a scholarship doesn't have to mean a full-ride. I think we could start there, even though many would cry foul on that notion. You want to be on the bowling team at Nebraska? Ok great we can pay for 1/4 or 1/2 of your schooling...idk how people see that as a bad idea. The reality is that football is king (by a massive margin). We can talk about fairness, but that is straying from the reality of the situation. Football just requires a lot more scholarships so we try and fit in random women's sports to equal that amount while cutting those same sports for men. The way it sits there is no easy solution unfortunately. 

 

[knapplc]

Football just requires a lot more scholarships so we try and fit in random women's sports to equal that amount while cutting those same sports for men. The way it sits there is no easy solution unfortunately.

But that's the easy solution. Just cut men's sports to compensate for Football's massive scholarship load, and balance it out with scholarships for women.

Why is that a bad thing? Men have no special right to have sports teams.