News-Sentinel.com

Too big to count?

The size of college football complicates the Title IX equation.

By Dave Benson of The News-Sentinel

Perhaps no sport inspires a sense of loyalty quite like college football.

What other sport attracts enough people to a stadium to make a college campus one of the top-10 populations in states such as Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio or Tennessee? What other sport inspires fans to bare torsos painted in school colors despite frigid temperatures?

College football also inspires loyalty when it comes to gender equity. As a result, the sport's players, coaches and fans often wear the black hat, or in this case black helmet, when it comes to issues of gender equity in sports.

* * *

To count football or not

One argument betwen the pro-football and anti-football crowds is whether football should count toward Title IX compliance. Those who think football should count toward compliance feel it is a sport like all others. This view is backed by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

"I think when we deal with student athletes, we deal with participation opportunities," said Rosie Stallman, the director of education and outreach for the NCAA. "Really, all we deal with are what opportunities do we have for our male and female athletes? Football is considered an opportunity for competition."

To be compliant, the number of female athletes must be proportionate to their enrollment.

Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation, agrees with the NCAA.

"There are female athletes, and there are male athletes," she said. "There aren't many men who play volleyball. There aren't many men who play field hockey. Why not throw those numbers out? Football is just another sport."

Those who don't want football counted in participation opportunities say football should stand on its own because there is no equivalent women's sport. No women's sport has the number of athletes that a football team does, or needs the amount of equipment that football does, they say.

South Side graduate Angela Goodman backs this opinion. Goodman is the track and field coach at Michigan State University. Her sport actually counts as three because the NCAA divides up track and field into cross country, indoor track and outdoor track. In the school's effort to balance participation numbers, Goodman gets a minimum of 48 women on the roster, while the men's team has a maximum roster of 34.

"It becomes a funding issue," she said. "The NCAA allots 18 scholarships for track and field. Some of the athletes may not be fully funded. Football kind of skews it all. No women's sport has numbers like football. No women's sport has to spend as much on equipment as football.

"I think some things are done to an extreme. We'll never be balanced if football stays in the mix."

A second argument made by those who say football shouldn't count is that football brings revenue to universities. The revenue is used to support other sports programs.

All Big Ten university football programs made a profit in the 2000-2001 school year, ranging from the University of Minnesota's low of $3.02 million to Penn State University's high of $18.8 million. The University of Notre Dame's football program made $31 million in the same school year.

But those numbers are misleading because the Big Ten and Notre Dame benefit from lucrative television contracts and take place in the equally lucrative Bowl Championship Series, which includes the Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar bowls.

Football programs that participate in the bowl series and have television deals make money. Yet there are many more football programs that compete without television contracts than do, and there are many more that don't belong to the bowl series than do.

Around the state, football programs that don't have such deals -- such as those at Indiana State, Ball State, Butler and Manchester College -- lost money in 2000-01. According to Marilyn McNeil, who spoke at the NCAA's Title IX Seminar in 2001, only 65 of the 1,200 institutions that play football make money from the sport.

* * *

Waste not want not

Football's critics contend that some college programs foolishly spend money. They say the money could be put to better use to sustain or start other athletic programs.

Lopiano keeps track of such expendtures on the Women's Sports Foundation's Web site. She preferred not to name programs so she could keep her sources confidential. Some examples:

* One university spent $300,000 putting lights on a football practice field that was never used for football practice.

* A football team stayed at a hotel during a preseason football camp instead of staying in their dorm rooms. The coach said the team would have had to move out of its dorms two days before the end of the camp to accommodate students returning to campus and didn't want the disruption. The team's snack bill alone for 120-125 people at the hotel was $86,000.

* Some football programs pay for nearly 50 hotel rooms the night before home games so team members can avoid on-campus distractions. Teams are fed as if on the road, and rent out entire movie theaters for entertainment purposes.

This was a common practice at the University of Notre Dame during the Lou Holtz era and has been detailed in books.

* One football team spent more than $50,000 to have its meals catered during preseason football camp. The entire travel budget for one of this university's women's sports teams was $22,000.

Grant Teaff is the executive director of the American Football Coaches Association and the former football coach at Baylor University. He has heard the dollars and cents arguments against football and feels that it's a moot issue.

"Football uses more players, so it costs more money to play," he said. "It uses more equipment, so it costs more money to play. The concept of football as a villain is just about a dead horse. There are some folks you can interview and that is their sermon topic. Is there money spent in excess in football? Of course there is. Is there money spent in excess in other sports? Of course there is.

"I think football has handled itself appropriately during these times when it has been the brunt of very unfair procedures proposed by college athletic administrators. Football and the AFCA totally supports Title IX. Nobody supports programs for gender equity on campuses across America more than football coaches. We try to help in every way we can."

* * *

Brother, can you spare a scholarship?

A third issue that concerns football is the amount of scholarships allotted to team members. The NCAA allows schools competing at the Division I level to use 85 scholarships per year on football. Add in walk-ons, and roster sizes often top the 100-player level at some schools.

Critics say the number of football scholarships could be cut. The extra scholarships could be used to expand women's teams or start a new team.

"It's like football has so many scholarships," said Ball State senior track athlete Janee Langhorne, a Northrop graduate. "Half of the people don't even play. Why not pass them to some of the other teams? I don't think it's fair.

"Some of my friends and I have discussed this as well. We don't think it's fair that football gets the scholarships when the team doesn't do as well as others."

Teaff disagrees.

"I've been approached by the proponents of proportionality, and they've said, 'The NFL has a limit of 45 players, why can't you have the same number in college?' " Teaff said. "Yes, they have a 45-player limit, but they have it to infinity. If one guy gets hurt, they just go sign another one. They can do this on and on and on."

Bowling Green State University Athletic Director Paul Krebs was asked if handing out fewer football scholarships could have saved three men's teams at the school from being cut. He doesn't think so.

"Doing so would jeopardize our standing as a member of the Mid-American Conference and would have a much more adverse effect financially on all of our sport programs," he said. "We are committed to competing on the Division I-A level, but more importantly, our membership in the Mid-American Conference is vital to all of our programs except hockey."

There is no simple solution when it comes to football and Title IX.

Morgan Burke has been the athletic director at Purdue since 1993. He has heard the arguments of both sides when it comes to football and Title IX.

"I'm not going to get caught up in the arguments that people of the far right have or people of the far left have," he said. "People have diametrically opposed views of that sport. Let them continue to debate. I'm going to continue to provide opportunities for young men and women."