College Sports- What's more important?

All right---leave your biases at home

An equitable opportunity to participate in their given sport for the women or each sport must financially meet their own expenses to survive?......

 

Well, way back in the seventies when I played in high school and Title IX was set in motion the law was perceived as this: If you offered boys team in a particular sport then you must offer a comparable sport for women. ie: football in the fall for boys, and field hockey for girls, softball for girls, baseball for boys, etc. Now that has changed to % of population. If a college has a female population of 54% to 46% of men, then 54% of the sports must be offered to women and only 46% for the men. Correct me if I am wrong, but is this not how the NCAA interprets the rule, and why men's sports are having to be cut out?

 

You nailed it sugarjet .....

The problem really revolves around 1 sport .... football.

It requires so many athletes and so many scholarships, that it unbalances any comparison between the equitity between men/women. It's also the cash-cow of college athletics. In some colleges, the profit from football pays for all other sports that the university offers. The only other sport that is routinely in the black is men's basketball. Most other sports operate at a loss.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. Some Universities run Women's basketball at a profit, and some are running baseball at a profit. It both cases, the money involved is insignificant compared to football.

I have no problem with Title IX ..... if you could eliminate football from the equation. There was an article I read over on HSBaseballWeb that was looking at the women's rowing team at the University of Syracuse (I believe). Women that tried out for the team were automatically given full scholarships to college while the men's wrestling team's at many Universities (about 300 at last count) have ceased to exist.

Braves ... If you use the "survival test", we could eliminate college athletics above the club level.

 

NCBB, I agree with everything you said except this. Football doesn't REQUIRE scholarships, it is a huge bribe. What does Division I football get for scholarships, something like 88? Out of a 100 man squad, what is that, 88% on scholarship? Now Division I baseball, 11.2? Out of a 40 man roster, what is that, 28%? Yes, I know football pays the bills, but it also costs bunches of money. My son is at Pfeiffer and the major donors to the school have said if they start football they will take their money elsewhere. Not sure what that has to do with this, but thought it was an interesting commentary.

 

Over the years, it's occurred to me that there are a handful of topics that seem to resist a solution with which most Americans can agree; and this one is "Top 3" in that category for me. On the one hand, if I were the father of girls, I'd be grateful for the dramatic advances in women's athletics that I think Title IX has fostered over the years. On the other hand, as the father of a college baseball player, I hate the limitation it imposes on "Olympic" sports in its effort to provide gender equity.

From a college baseball enthusiast's perspective, what I do think deserves a great deal more attention than it's currently receiving is the sport's scholarship payout relative to what I strongly suspect is a growing TV revenue line.

For quite some time now, Division I programs have been limited to a total of 11.7 scholarships. Over that period of time, my sense is that there is a growing amount of TV airtime devoted to college baseball. If this is true, then TV revenues from college baseball are growing...but the scholarship payout is not. The implication, of course, is that a growing disparity between college baseball TV income and the sport's athletic awards is going to prop up other expenses of the athletic departments'.

For the college baseball player and his family, this trend is patently unfair. If college baseball TV revenues are growing, the sport's scholarship payout should grow at essentially the same pace. Otherwise, the baseball players and their families are subsidizing the expense of other sports.

If the athletic departments are looking for an inequity that can and should get fixed, that's a great one to begin with.

 

For my two cents worth: There is nothing wrong with gender equity, however there are a couple of problems with the equation, Men's Basketball and Football. Neither is truly "just" a college sport. They both are tremendous revenue streams and are run more like businesses with budgets that even shame many private companies. Therefore you cannot expect true equity until these two are removed from the equation and then issue scholarships based on % enrollment or 50/50 or what ever formula.

 

I love it. Very intelligent responses.

It is my opinion that many of the Football programs are operated like the movie industry...creative bookkeeping. They appear to be losing money...but in reality..are they?

Basketball has become the true cash cow...lower overhead + a bigger TV contract.

I believe Prepster, as usual, brought up a very interesting point. With many college baseball programs participating in television revenue should their scholarships increase exponentially( look up that word NC)?

 

Braves ....

"Exponentially" implies an unlimited ceiling. Since there is a maximum team size, I don't believe that it's appropriate in this context. I would instead define the term "grow to a reasonable level". I believe 30 full's is a reasonable level, but I'm biased towards baseball

 

No... "it describes a rate of increase which becomes quicker and quicker as the thing that increases becomes larger, particularly when it describes baseball scholarships"..according to Mirriam TBR Webster.......but 30 scholarships sounds about right

 

Braves ...

I said "implication", not "definition" ....