Don’t kill it; make it work

Published 5:09 pm Monday, July 26, 2010

Last week a judge ruled that competitive cheerleading does not count as an official sport under Title IX, the federal gender-equality education law.

While the cheerleaders duly garnered the headlines, it was actually Quinnipiac University volleyball team players and their coach who sued the school after their team was axed. So the more accurate headline would be: “Judge rules NCAA-approved volleyball team cannot be replaced by non-NCAA-sanctioned cheerleading squad, no matter how competitive.”

In other words, if universities want competitive cheerleading to be a varsity sport, they need to go through the proper channels for declaring it so.

Which is not to say that the groundbreaking 1972 law — which did, by force, open up athletic opportunities for female high school and college students — doesn’t need modern-day tweaking. It surely does.

Dumping it altogether, as some conservative columnists and bloggers advocated last week, is not the answer.

The main problem is the complicated “three-prong test” used to determine compliance at the collegiate level. Unfortunately, years after Title IX’s implementation and interpretation, the “quota-like” mathematics of compliance were/are being used as justification to dump sports for boys and men. Which is a bastardization of a law meant to maximize opportunities for all.

Critics of Title IX like to blame it for all the woes in college athletics. But the big money involved in college sports has hurt althetics more, especially when Title IX is used as a scapegoat.

The sport of wrestling is a classic example. Cut by many colleges to achieve the proper numbers for Title IX compliance, the sport costs very little, in terms of scholarships, equipment, etc. On the other hand, it makes no money. No one wants to buy and wear wrestling gear with the university logo. So the sport is cut, ostensibly “to comply with Title IX.” (If Phil Knight were interested in wrestling, it would still exist at the University of Oregon.)

(And as life would have it, high school wrestling programs still thrive, often with one or two female members.)

Outside of big football and basketball programs, college athletics don’t make money. College sports, like high schools sports, were never designed to be money-makers. Athletic opportunities in school are supposed to be about education — what one learns and takes away from participating in sports — not about preparing for a career in pro sports.

Just as high school athletics are important in and of themselves — even, or perhaps especially — if it never leads to a college scholarship.

Refocusing on actual student-athletes, rather than on the athletes who will use schools to go pro, might be a good starting point.