Rumor has it: Blame it on Title IX
By Brian Hansen, sports editor
Posted on October 5, 2006

Blame it on the government. Blame it on a poorly worded archaic law from 1972. You can even blame it on the famous, now suddenly notorious “Madison ratio.”

Just don’t blame it on the Board of Visitors, or President Rose, or athletic director Jeff Bourne.

The “it” in those statements is the cutting of 10 programs — seven men’s and three women’s — from JMU’s athletic department in order to become Title IX compliant. And while my sympathies are with those athletes who will no longer be able to participate in their sport here at JMU, I do find it necessary to say that it isn’t the university’s fault.

The fact is that JMU was out of compliance and all it would have taken is one person to file a suit against the university and JMU could have lost a lot more than 10 sports programs. Madison could have lost federal funding, and at the very least, would have had to make the same cuts, anyway.

Where everything really went wrong was with the wording of Title IX. When first passed, Title IX was a noble piece of legislation that sought to even the playing field between men and women. No one can argue that it hasn’t done great things for athletics. Women now have far more opportunities than they did when the law was enacted.

However, in 2006, the law only succeeded in hurting the athletes and athletics departments. Out of compliance for JMU did not mean that athletic participation was in favor of men by a 2-to-1 ratio. Their lack of compliance was actually a ratio that slightly favored women. The athletic participation at JMU favored females with women participating at a 50.7 percemt rate. 51/49! That’s what constituted a lack of compliance for JMU. Last time I checked, 50/50 was a pretty fair ratio.

Enrollment at JMU, however, sees women in the majority at a 61 percent to 39 percent ratio and thus, there needed to be a 10 percent increase in female participation — or rather in this case, a 10 percent reduction in male participation.

The big kink in all of this is a football team, which has no female equivalent to counterbalance the 91 athletes it claims. So despite the fact that before the cuts, JMU offered 13 men’s sports and 15 women’s sports, again a pretty fair split, seven male sports had to go because of a piece of legislation that is out of date.

So in the end, Title IX, which sought to provide equal chances among genders, actually forced a university to makes cuts to an athletics program, despite the fact that the university provided plenty of opportunities to both genders.

All of this inevitably leads to the question: How do we fix Title IX? I have two possible solutions. The first would be to just look at the number of sports that each college or university provides. Make sure that males and females are provided equal chances to participate in sports. Thus, JMU would be in compliance by having 13 male sports and 15 female sports. Obviously, someone will still need to oversee that all sports are given their fair share of funds too. Ultimately, the result would be to rid Title IX of the proportionality requirement and just force colleges to provide equal chances.

The second would be to exclude football from the proportionality requirements of Title IX. Therefore, you are eliminating a sport that has nothing to balance out its high participation numbers.

However you look at it, some work needs to be done on the Title IX legislation so that men like Bourne and Rose don’t have to make the tough decision to eliminate 144 student-athletes and 11 coaches from the university.

Brian Hansen is a senior SMAD major with a concentration in print journalism.