In athletics, as in every part of our society, we expect equal opportunity. Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 was passed to ensure that women and men received such equality at the high school and collegiate levels.
Recently, the Obama administration rescinded a 2005 clarification on Title IX that allowed student interest surveys to be used as a form of demonstrating compliance with the law.
This move is meant to strengthen Title IX, but what it really does is strengthen a faulty compliance enforcement policy that is hurting men’s minor/Olympic sports programs at the college level, including wrestling.
Proportionality is the name of the game when it comes to Title IX, and this method of compliance is hurting collegiate wrestling programs as well other men’s minor sports teams.
This system of ratios and headcounts is how the Office of Civil Rights (the Title IX enforcement group) and athletic departments are defining “equal opportunity.”
There is a need for reform; not with the law itself, but the way we implement it. Providing equal opportunity means looking at more than the just numbers to ensure the athletic abilities and interests of both sexes are adequately met.
Wrestling is at the forefront of this issue because it is so often the victim of athletic department cuts to meet proportionality requirements. But this is not the way Title IX was supposed to be implemented.
Background of Title IX
Title IX says that "no person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."
Its original intent was to make sure that men and women received equal opportunities in schools and colleges. However, its focus was expanded to include athletics to ensure women had the same opportunity to participate in sports as men.
In that regard, Title IX has been a success. Before the Education Amendment Acts of 1972, only 1/27 girls played sports in high school. There were just 32,000 female intercollegiate athletes and virtually no athletic scholarships for women.
By 2001, one in every 2.5 female high school students played a sport, and there were 150,000 female collegiate athletes receiving $1 million in athletic scholarships.
Where the issues come up is how Title IX is enforced. A three-pronged compliance test was introduced in a 1979 clarification to determine if institutions met Title IX standards.
The three prongs are:
1. The institution’s ratio of male students to female students is similar to male athletes to female athletes (the proportionality test)
2. The institution shows a “history and continuing practice” of expanding women’s athletic opportunities
3. The institution shows that it has “fully and effectively” met the athletic abilities and interests of women
The problem is that proportionality is the only “safe-harbor” standard to avoid further investigation by the Office of Civil Rights, according to a clarification by then-assistant secretary for civil rights Gerald Reynolds.
The “current regulations governing Title IX have created a quota system that arbitrarily limits participation in sports, which harms men and does not benefit women,” according to the College Sports Council (CSC), a national coalition of coaches, athletes, parents and fans dedicated to promoting the student athlete experience.
Because of this, men’s programs are often capped or cut entirely to meet a ratio that demonstrates proportionality. And wrestling is among the leaders in lost programs.
Impact on college wrestling
An NCAA participation report covering the last 20 years (1988-89 to 2008-09) shows how wrestling has taken a hit because of proportionality. Over that period, wrestling suffered the greatest net loss of programs of any sport (106).
In 1983, at the Division I, II and III levels, there were 363 college wrestling teams comprised of 7,914 total athletes, and 48.3% of schools at these levels had wrestling programs.
In 2009, there were just 224 teams fielding 6,522 wrestlers, and only 21% of schools had wrestling programs. Wrestling suffered these losses in spite of the expansion of the total number of DI, II and III schools from 752 to 1,069 over the same period.
In total, 149 wrestling programs were dropped between 1988 and 2009 (56 DI, 35 DII and 58 DIII). Over the same period, just 43 programs were added, almost all in DII and III.
Gary Abbott, director of communications for USA Wrestling, said that this loss of college wrestling opportunities takes away the possibility for some wrestlers of excelling at the next level, in college or internationally.
And even as college programs were cut nation-wide, the sport of wrestling was growing at the high-school level. In 2001, there were 244,984 high school wrestlers, but only 5,966 NCAA wrestlers (according to data compiled by Abbott).
That means that there was one college wrestling spot for every 41 high school grapplers. And according to the National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA), the number of high school wrestlers is up to 260,000 with just 260 college teams to take them in.
Furthermore, collegiate wrestling opportunities are not reflective of the demand. Look at Florida, a strong wrestling state without a single collegiate program, or Washington, which does not have any DI programs (even CT has one and Washington is a stronger wrestling state than we are).
This trend of cutting minor sport programs, like wrestling, is a hard one to reverse for several reasons. The major problem is proportionality; institutions have ratios and headcounts that they have to match to comply with Title IX.
Since the average college female/male ratio is 56/44, that means that more than half of college athletes should be female, which puts males athletes in general at a disadvantage because men are, in general, more likely to be interested in participating in athletics than women.
J Robinson, head coach at Minnesota, cites intramural sports, which are entirely interest-driven, where men outnumber women as much as four to one, in an article published in the Chronicles of Higher Education.
Aggravating this problem is college football. Football is a problem in this situation because it has no female equivalent; while you can balance men’s and women’s soccer, to balance football usually means cutting other programs.
Add to that the fact that these teams have the largest rosters, spend the most money and use the most scholarships, and you can see how the combination of proportionality and football spells trouble for keeping or adding wrestling programs.
The wrestling community’s response
The wrestling community has not sat idle and watched its college programs fall to the wayside. In 2002, the NWCA, in conjunction with the CSC, launched a lawsuit against the Office of Civil Rights, challenging the three-prong test.
The intent was to change the regulations “so schools [would] be required to provide student-athletes of both genders with equal athletic opportunity based on interest.”
The case was dismissed due to lack of standing (even if they won, it was not guaranteed that any programs dropped would be reinstated), but it paved a way for challenging the proportionality test, rallied the wrestling community and allied the NWCA with the CSC.
In 2009, in the wake of announcements that eight more schools would cut their wrestling programs, the NWCA created an action plan to help save those programs and keep others off the chopping block.
Their first move was to spread awareness within the wrestling community that these programs were being cut and others could be in danger. Next, the organization outlined a ten-point action plan, which included:
• Educating Boards of Trustees on the important role of wrestling in maintaining or growing enrollment at small, private, enrollment-conscious schools during tough economic times
• Helping improve retention and graduation rates
• Working with alumni groups to raise funds
• Identifying at-risk programs and assigning them an experienced mentor to help strengthen the program
• Creation of the College Coaching Academy, in which coaches will develop their CEO skills to be better able to fight for their programs
The plan also included institution-specific courses of action for the eight recently dropped programs (Norwich, MIT, Carson-Newman, Lawrence, Portland State, Rose-Hulman, Wagner and Delaware State). Of those programs, only Norwich has been salvaged.
Arizona State was prepared to drop their wrestling program as well, but fundraising efforts by boosters saved the Sun Devil grapplers. The program raised $8 million in less than two weeks and is now fully endowed.
But money is not always the solution. Marquette University’s wrestling program financially supported itself for seven years, with the school paying for incidental costs. But it was still cut to meet the proportionality quota.
And Princeton turned down a $2.3 million grant to save its wrestling program, which may indicate that the money was a less important factor than meeting proportionality ratios.
So money can’t always buy wrestling programs, but proportionality issues can quickly bring down the ax. How can this problem be solved? NWCA executive director Mike Moyer and the CSC believe it’s time to end proportionality as a method of compliance and find a “more faithful interpretation [of Title IX] that helps women without hurting men.”
Changing how Title IX is applied
A 2003 clarification from the Office of Civil Rights said that “nothing in Title IX requires the cutting or reduction of teams in order to demonstrate compliance with Title IX” and that such actions were a “disfavored practice.”
However, that same office stated that the proportionality prong was favored as the only “safe-harbor” standard for an institution to avoid further scrutiny. And proportionality often leads to capping or cutting of programs, because it’s easier and cheaper to give the chop to wrestling than it is to fund and field new women’s programs.
"They're basing whether discrimination happens based on a numerical quota that doesn't reflect on interest, but on actual enrollment. It allows for the elimination of opportunities for men, rather than the creation of new opportunities for women,” Abbott said in an article on Sherdog.com.
What the Office of Civil Rights and athletic departments need to do is find a different way of complying with Title IX’s intent, one that relies less on ratios and more on the interests and abilities of the student body.
More emphasis should be given to the other two prongs of compliance, especially “fully and effectively” meeting the interests and abilities of both sexes. And this is where those student interest surveys can be invaluable.
They cannot, as the 2005 clarification tried to use them, be the sole determinant of compliance. However, the Commission on Civil Rights said that the model survey “currently provides the best method available” for measuring student interest and that it “provided a flexible and rigorous assessment.”
Jessica Gavora, CSC’s vice president of policy, said that “students…are more than capable of expressing their interests, and especially when it comes to extracurricular activities on campus their voices should be heard.”
Input from student populations is essential in determining their interests and abilities, and thus, demonstrating the third prong of compliance. To bolster an institution’s case when using this prong, administrators can turn to some of those numbers they used in proportionality testing.
But not the headcounts and ratios; rather, they can show that the money spent by the school on women’s programs and men’s programs is proportionate.
CSC executive director Eric Pearson said that “fair access to facilities and equivalent funding for their teams, travel budgets and recruiting budgets” is what women’s coaches care about, in terms of equality, not the proportions of male and females athletes.
That may mean that big football teams need to spend a little less or cut a few scholarships to ensure that minor sports programs aren’t lost. But as long as it’s done across the board, the playing field stays fair. And it helps athletes in other sports realize their dreams and their potential.
Regardless of how it gets done, the bottom line is that proportionality needs to go, whether it’s completely removed as a method of compliance or it loses its status as the only “safe-harbor” of compliance.
There are other ways of demonstrating Title IX compliance; government officials and athletic administrators need to find and use one that promotes the most opportunities for the most athletes of both gender.
Reformation is the solution to the issues with Title IX, but there are several things the wrestling community and college programs can do to preserve themselves in the meantime and for all time.
Strengthening college wrestling
First and foremost is continued and increased support. Fans in the stands and money in the bank can make it difficult for an administrator to send a wrestling program to the guillotine. Attend local collegiate matches, make a donation or participate in a fundraiser.
High interest levels will increase available opportunities, so grassroots development and the continued growth of wrestling at the high school level will drive up the need for college wrestling programs.
Strong alumni support also keeps wrestling programs thriving, while current coaches and athletes who represent their program and school with dignity make a strong case for their team’s preservation.
“You have to entrench every single program on campus so it’s indispensible to that community,” Abbott said.
To those who love and participate in the sport, wrestling programs are already indispensible. The wrestling community needs to rally athletic administrators to that way of thinking and continue to fight against the axing of programs so that schools can meet proportionality.
Title IX is not about equality in numbers. It is about equality in opportunity. No sport embodies that concept better than wrestling, one of the only sports where males and females train and compete together at the youth and high school (and sometimes college) levels.
Any and all who are interested can find a spot on a wrestling team. Now if only we could find a way to ensure that same equality of opportunity in college athletic departments.
Resources: Visit these websites/articles for more on Title IX, proportionality, student interest surveys, the cutting of men's sports programs and saving college wrestling and other minor men's sports.
-College Sports Council
-Joanna Grossman: Saving Title IX: Recent Developments Spell Good News For The Federal Statute Prohibiting Sex Discrimination in High School and College Athletics (FindLaw)
-Shannon Blosser: Wrestling with Title IX (Accuracy in Academia)
-NCAA Participation Report, 1998-89 to 2008-09
-John Irving: Wrestling with Title IX (New York Times)
-Adelaide Blanchard: Obama administration makes change to Title IX regulation (The Badger Herald)
-Allison Kasic: A Step Backward on Title IX (Minding the Campus)
-NWCA Plan of action for dropped wrestling programs
-National Organization for Women: Impact of Title IX
-Jake Rossen: A Different Kind of Fight: Title IX and MMA (Sherdog.com)
-Save ASU Wrestling
One of the best-written, best-researched articles on Title IX and its implications for college wrestling I've ever read. Very well done. I just posted a link to your story at College Wrestling Examiner, and let others know about your article, too. Thanks for doing a great job -- Mark