If we seem fixated on the quota issue, it’s because the use of quotas to enforce Title IX has caused such damage to men’s athletic programs while creating serious distortions in women’s athletics. If we allow more flexibility in proving compliance, much of what you propose as a new agenda for the law would actually become possible.

Almost 40 years after passage title ix has met the goal of providing access to academics for women, time to sunset it.

(More seriously, good point.)

I understand the basic position you’re espousing, Clarence. Let me speak from my experience in 2009 at the convention for the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport (IAPS), held in Seattle at my alma mater, Seattle University.

(Wendy, as an aside, the people at this organization strike me as the academic types with the jargon-rich speech you lamented last week. Yet, while some of them were the hard-to-decipher ideologues you identified, many others were Title IX reformists such as yourself. That would be an interesting group to research if you don’t already know of its existence.)

One of the best people I met at that 2009 IAPS gathering was Scott Kretchmar (I could have the spelling wrong), a man with extensive experience at Penn State University in terms of Title IX and other forms of athletic department compliance. Kretchmar pointed out to me that Penn State has 29 sports while Texas facilitates 16. Penn State chose to place more of an emphasis on participation while Texas focused on making the sports it supported more profitable and resourced. On one hand, I find PSU’s commitment to fielding more participation-based programs quite admirable, but on the other hand, it’s hard to dispute the comparative financial success of Texas’s athletic department. Without having spent any time in University Park or Austin, I would imagine that the on-the-ground cultural realities at Penn State and Texas are substantially different. Are there enough female athletes at Texas interested in the several extra participation-oriented sports Penn State carries? Moreover, is Texas institutionally invested in and financially served by facilitating those extra sports?

Since college sports are, after all, a business – especially at the big-ticket level – it makes a ton of sense to adopt the focus on giving emotional and real support to women’s sports programs instead of insisting on having 29 sports programs at Texas, just like Penn State. The area/aspect in which Texas might merit criticism is that since its athletic program is one of the few really profitable ones (this before the Longhorn Network even makes its official debut), it should be able to field more than 16 programs. However, the notion of having 29 sports the way Penn State does and then establishing that as a model of Title IX compliance strikes me as systemic engineering.

We should want there to be ample opportunities for women’s soccer players, but that goal should find fruition in the existence of more thriving women’s soccer programs, not more women’s soccer programs which fail to thrive because they’re not emotionally/materially supported.

I laud Penn State and the likes of Mr. Kretchmar for fielding 29 programs and giving them what seems to be adequate emotional support while Texas carries only 16 sports, but in a bottom-line business, it’s clear that Texas isn’t failing the athletes it chooses to support. Both are healthy models, yet in such different forms. Sensible, elastic Title IX reform should allow both Penn States and Texases to exist without requiring one program to be more like the other.

Postscript: As lengthy as this comment has been, Clarence, it’s very much a discussion starter as opposed to a discussion ender. This is where we must begin to hash out differences. I am very much ignorant of how to get to the endpoints/solutions Wendy is advocating (but which I think are highly appropriate).

My point wasn’t to make it sound like a “positive example” that Tech doesn’t have women’s soccer but to show that because they’ve met proportionality, they could back away from from adding that sport while most other schools couldn’t cite those factors as reasons for not doing so. This is another layer in the fallacy of proportionality.

I also wanted to illustrate what you can do when you’re not legally vulnerable to a Title IX suit. I should have been more clear about all of these things.

As for the Women’s World Cup, it’s hard to go against Mannheim Steamroller, especially at home. But I will be intrigued what this Equatorial Guinea side is all about.

Find it interesting that you view Georgia Tech’s philosophy towards women’s athletics as a positive example: “Without the pressure of having to add teams, Tech is better resourcing what teams it has, which helps with recruiting and enhances the student-athlete experience.” Understand the overall point you are making, and while the statement is true, Tech’s decision not to add women’s soccer as a NCAA sport plays into the hands of hard line Title IX advocates. I can imagine them saying, if you don’t mandate it, they won’t do it. Just look at Georgia Tech.

How does Georgia Tech justify not adding Women’s soccer as an intercollegiate sport, when everybody in the ACC, except Tech, offers women the opportunity to compete in NCAA soccer? Given the popularity of youth soccer in this country and in the south, I think it’s shameful that they don’t have a women’s or men’s soccer program (NCAA.) I know the interest is there on both sides: http://t.co/5uzmNwd
What’s their excuse? Would love to see you, or your sports colleagues in Georgia tackle this issue. Other schools may not need pressure on Title IX issues, but Georgia Tech definitely needs to be pressured on this issue, because they’re not “playing the game the right way.”

“Playing the game the right way” is something that coaches like to espouse to their athletes; the same philosophy should be a guiding light to those that lead athletic departments. The missing element in most Title IX discussions is “COMMON SENSE.” Adding intercollegiate soccer for both sexes at Georgia Tech is a no-brainer. Do the right thing!

I would classify myself as very much a political lefty, but this is certainly the kind of meddlesome, doctrinaire government overreach that understandably makes political righties so (justifiably) irritated.

I see strong parallels with affirmative action here. Like Title IX, it had a place and a powerful, meaningful purpose when it was first formulated. Much as quota-based racial policies have needed to be redesigned/rethought, Title IX components have to be re-imagined and reshaped as well.

In the language of Scripture and spirituality, we need to realize that “there are different gifts, but the same spirit.” Timeless values and unchanging social goods won’t keep the same form/architecture over 40 years. That which brought about greater social justice in 1972 might not be conducive to the same flourishing of social justice today.

Adults in positions of NCAA administrative leadership (and in the legal/academic circles of women’s sports and women’s causes) should be able to see this. Alas, ideology blinds otherwise-talented people to real-world solutions. It is the great, persistent obstacle to change in any era.

The point of Title IX as I understand it is to equalize all opportunities, not just athletic opportunities. Georgia Tech is an engineering school. Engineering schools struggle to attract women.

I’m not saying a women’s soccer team at Georgia Tech would solve centuries of societal bias toward women in math and science, but wouldn’t it go a little ways toward dispelling the notion of Tech as a bunch of dudes with pocket protectors? Surely it would be a greater sign of progress for women than a women’s tiddly-winks team at North Carolina.

Finally — not to interrupt, but what are your World Cup picks?