Title IX 'proportionality': a senseless rule?

From the Athens Banner Herald:
By Dick Bestwick

"If there is one thing that has consistently troubled me over the years, it has been the tendency of many individuals and organizations to enact rules or regulations that they then enforce inconsistently, if at all. I've always believed we are far better off with fewer rules and regulations, and fair and consistent enforcement of the ones we have. I also believe rules should make sense. It usually follows that when rules aren't enforced, they likely don't make sense.

"A case in point is the federal Title IX rule of "proportionality" decreeing schools should have the same percentage of female participants in athletics as the percentage of females in the student body. The rule also applies to the amount of money spent for men's and women's teams...more"

Any fair review of Title IX would show that it has had a very positive effect on the participation by women in NCAA athletics. On the other hand, that same review would show a very negative effect on participation by men.

The usual line taken by the supporters of Title IX, as currently enforced, is that the real culprit in the reduction in numbers of male athletes and the loss in variety of men's sports in college is not Title IX, but the reluctance of athletic administrators to spend their perceived vast sums of cash on anything other than the traditionally supported, 'positive-revenue' male sports (especially football, but also basketball and hockey, in some places), along with the minimum number of female athletes/sports possible to balance out the male sports. In other words, every school could have a men's gym team or men's wrestling team if only the schools would shell out enough money to pay for even more female sports to 'even it all out'.

This all sounds very reasonable until you perform a little 'thought experiment' to test it. If Title IX really is not the problem, if the problem is actually the distribution of funds, how would college athletics administrators distribute their funds if they were not constrained by Title IX? Again, any fair response to that question would admit that there would be more male athletes and more men's sports in the NCAA than are now funded. Therefore, the 'problem' cannot be the distribution of funds, but Title IX itself, as currently enforced.

Happily, Title IX regulations already include a solution. From it's inception, Title IX has allowed for schools to comply by using one of several tests, only one of which is 'proportionality'. Title IX also allows an individual school to canvass its student population to see if the school is providing adequate athletic opportunities to fit the interest of its students. Unfortunately, despite a Justice Department opinion allowing this provision of Title IX to be used, to date the NCAA has taken the decision that its members may use only the more restrictive 'proportionality test'.

The original authors of Title IX claimed that, if it could be shown that men's athletics were being harmed by Title IX, they would immediately amend or overturn the law. To date this has not happened - mostly out of the (not completely unreasonable) fear that a large portion, or even most, of the progress women have made in athletics would be lost if changes were made in Title IX. Yet, as every year passes, more and more schools drop sports - both men's and women's - in order to comply with Title IX under proportionality. The time has come for people of good faith on both sides of this issue to come together to fix the problem.