Larry Winer wrote:
 
<another diatribe about Title IX>
 
First off, you're posting to the wrong list.  I just noticed the footer
that your message came through Hockey, which is for discussion about the
lists.  You want Hockey-l.
 
Second, you live in a dream world.  Without Title IX, women's athletics
would never have gotten off the ground in a big way.  Who here really
thinks that athletic departments run by male jocks would have ever given
them the time of day without legal prodding?
 
All Title IX says is that a school must divide its scholarships up in
proportion with its student body.  No one has ever told them that they
have to give 85 of them to football.  You are dead wrong, Mr. Winer;
football is just like women's field hockey.  THEY BOTH LOSE MONEY, and I
guarantee you that field hockey doesn't lose nearly as much money as
football.  The idea that football deserves such a large share of the
revenue because it supports the rest of the athletic program is a huge
lie at all but handful of schools.  That's one handful, not two.  So
blame football for hogging the scholarships and the cash and stop
blaming programs that are not guilty of what you accuse them of.
 
I love Title IX, and not just because it provides equal athletic
opportunities for women atheletes.  I very much enjoy the spectacle of
watching the NCAA hoisted on its own petard.  I haven't read any of the
decisions very closely, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the rulings
might have been different if the NCAA claimed that its athletic
programs were for professionals and were designed as money making
operations.  But of course, they can't do this because of all of the
reasons that they need to lie to themselves and call the athletes
amateurs.  Having described college athletics as part of the educational
system, they absolutely come under the anti-discriminatory guidelines of
Title IX.  It is the same as if they tried to reserve a higher
percentage of the slots in the general student-body for men than that in
the state's population.  (I know that this is steering us very close to
a discussion of affirmative action in general.  If anyone wants to
continue in this direction, let's do it privately.)
 
The amount of interest shown by the outside population does not affect
the make-up of physics classes.  The number of fans drawn should not
affect the opportunites for each sex to participate in athletics, at
least not if it's about amateurism.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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