Larry Winer wrote:
 
> I appreciate the fact we are having a civilised debate on this issue.
> Football is often the sport that generates the $ for the rest of the sports.
> It is also a high visibility sport. Don't tear down football to build up
> hockey or womens sports. When those sports (Michigan has more dead season
> football ticket holders than live hockey season ticket holders) pack the kind
> of numbers that are seen on Saturday afternoons then we can equate football
> and in football at D1 you need to be at least 2 deep at every spot to be
> competitive and those 85 scholarships are spread over 5 years in football so
> it is not as gross as one may think. Quotas stink and are un-American. Title
> IX has killed more atheltic programs then it has helped. Eliminate football
> and we'll wind up with intramural athletics
 
Why do you need to give scholarships two deep to be competitive?  This would only
be an issue if one school held itself to 50 scholarships while everyone else was
still giving out 85.  If you were to cut scholarships in half and only go one
deep, how would it make it any harder for any given program to be competitive?
Look at it this way; in the pros, the roster limit for football is just over
twice what it is for hockey.  Why is it that college football coaches need almost
five times as many scholarships than their hockey brethren?
 
How do you figure that Title IX has killed more programs than it has helped?  I
don't know of any school that has had to eliminate more than one or two men's
programs.  On the other hand, the number of women's athletic teams has exploded.
 
Ah, the quotas argument.  The part of this debate that I find the most amusing is
that, as I understand the legalities, there is a simple way that schools could
get their football program out from under Title IX scrutiny; they could admit the
obvious and declare that the football (and basketball) team is a business with
the goal of making money (usually unsuccessfully, as Arthur pointed out, but
nevertheless) rather than a part of the school's educational mission.  They won't
do this, of course, because then they'd have to admit the the athletes are
employees and make other concessions to the fact that they are running a
business.  So Title IX is a problem mostly because they won't be honest about
what they're doing.  I find it difficult to get very worked up about their
problems.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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