By Donna Lopiano
Published: July 17, 2000
Envision a political cartoon. A flying flock of golden geese with beer bellies wearing football helmets. One among their midst divebombs to earth with a smoking tail, apparently the victim of hunters on the ground. Staring up at the dying goose are two amazed women clad in basketball uniforms, shotguns raised to the sky. One player turns to the other and says, "How could that happen, we were only shooting blanks!"
Indeed, there is a misperception created by coaches who are paranoid over the possibility of making budget cuts in college football to fund equal opportunity for women in sports. The accusing finger is pointed at the victims, women who have less than 33% of all athletic participation opportunities, 33% of all scholarship dollars, 24% of sport budgets and 18% of recruiting budgets. "If it weren't for them," the coaches say, "we wouldn't need to cut back on football scholarships. If we weaken the golden goose of football, which supports all of the men's and women's non-revenue-producing sports, we'll end up with no athletic program."
Rather than believe this inflammatory rhetoric, let's take a clear and rational look at the facts:
Fact: At about 93% of all NCAA member institutions, football does not pay for women's sports or even itself
Fact: Among the supposedly lucrative big-time football programs in Division I-A, 45% are running deficit programs averaging $638,000 losses annually.
Fact: 94% of Division I-AA football programs are running deficits averaging $535,000 per year.
Fact: 34% of all Division I-A men's basketball programs run annual deficits averaging $250,000 dollars a year.
Fact: 74% of all other Division I men's basketball programs run annual deficits of close to $200,000 per year.
There are no golden geese. There are only fat geese eating the food that could fund additional athletic opportunities for women. Intercollegiate men's football and basketball programs have fallen victim to excess. The "beat the Joneses" mentality has fueled an expenditure war that has resulted in country club locker rooms, indoor football practice facilities (for an outdoor sport that is only allowed to practice from August to December and for 15 days in the spring), expensive videotape production and editing facilities, first class hotel accommodations on the night before home football games, elaborate training tables and team meeting facilities and coaches and athletic directors who spend much of their off-season time playing golf in the very best clubs doing "business" with alumni, at the expense of their athletic budgets. Our best football and basketball coaches get double or triple the salaries of college presidents and Nobel prize winners and their assistant coaches receive more than a school's ve best teachers.
The newest "beat the Joneses" game is ironic. When the U.S. Congress adopted the Student-Right-To-Know Act, the big-time football and basketball programs were embarrassed over having to report graduation rates far below that of other sports and the general student body. Athletic departments began building "academic centers" for student-athletes, which provided free tutors, magnificent computer facilities and plush study quarters while the libraries of the general university were cutting back on book acquisitions and basic services. Athletic directors and college presidents now boast of the very finest academic support programs for our football teams that comprise a small fraction of the general student body.
The cry for equal opportunity in women's sport has not created a financial catastrophe. Rather, it has been a catalyst that has focused public attention on the financial and other excesses of the athletics establishment. Despite the fact that Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments Act required that all secondary and post-secondary schools provide equal opportunity athletic programs by 1978, progress to date clearly sends the message that sport participation is more important for our sons than it is for our daughters. Unless we want to fight the battle of gender equity in the courts, giving precious dollars to lawyers instead of opportunities for our children, we must begin a considered approach to creating gender equity.
Unfortunately, especially in these difficult financial times, our schools do not have the revenue sources to increase athletic participation by 33% in order to give women equal opportunities in sport. Neither is there one easy solution to the dilemma of gender equity. We must begin with a philosophy of what is important. The last thing we want to do is to eliminate participation opportunities for men or women in high school or college. We may have to, but it should be the very last step. After all, providing the considerable educational benefits of sport participation to our students is the only justification for housing sport in our school systems. Otherwise, we would do as the rest of the world does, leave sport to community programs and open amateur sport clubs outside the school and college setting.
Our agenda for action should be as follows:
Work to maximize fundraising, sponsorship and gate receipt revenues in all sport programs. The failure to develop women's sports as revenue producers is no longer acceptable. According to a 1990 NCAA study, there are at least 13 women's programs in Division I that bring in $1.3 million or more per year in revenues and twice that number earning $450,000 or more. Yet, there is a persistent attitude among athletic directors (84% of whom are male) that there is no value to women's sports. This attitude and lack of commitment leaves much-needed dollars on the table.
Similarly, there are real revenue possibilities in all sports even if they hold limited possibilities as spectator sports. Alumni giving back, booster groups, proceeds from summer camps and other fund-generating avenues must all be explored. Often, it is much easier to endow a tennis or golf scholarship program through major gifts than it is to earn gate receipts. If we step back and take a broad view of our sport "business" operations, we will find that we have "put all of our eggs into one or two baskets" -- football and basketball at most schools. Good business mandates a diversification of our product line. We must constantly develop new products and put them into the marketplace, hedging against a fickle spectating public or poor win-loss record. We need to keep our football and basketball programs strong while we explore the possibilities of other revenue sources.
Reduce administrative and other expenses that do not directly affect the student-athlete. We can no longer expend $25,000 to recruit one student-athlete to a basketball team. Recruiting budgets of half a million dollars or more can no longer be afforded. Steps have been taken in recent years to reduce recruiting expenses. We must go further and the NCAA must lead this reform. The interinstitutional nature of intercollegiate athletics demands that everyone follow the same rules and recruiting limitations so no one institution has unfair advantage.
College presidents must sign disarmament treaties. Over the past 10 years, athletics budgets have grown at a pace double and triple that of inflation. We have seen a proliferation of clerical and administrative personnel and the cost of benefit programs and operating expenses associated with their work. Personnel costs are the number one expense in collegiate athletics. We must follow the example of private industry when faced with declining profits: pare down expensive staffs. Create a lean and mean infrastructure.
The NCAA has taken a first step of putting a cap on coaching positions. If we eliminate the labor and time intensive off-campus recruiting system, we will be able to institute more cuts in many sports.
Similarly, athletics cannot continue this game of "beating the Joneses" in building grander locker rooms, weight rooms, practice facilities and athlete academic facilities. Granted, it will be difficult if not impossible to do this by virtue of national legislation. The NCAA cannot begin to design legislation to halt this game. However, this is a task that can be accomplished at the conference level. Eight to 10 college presidents can grapple with these issues. If every major conference made a commitment to Presidential review of cost escalation activities, we would surprise ourselves at what could be accomplished.
Reduce the standard of living of the big-time men's sports when athlete and coach benefits clearly do not affect the student-athlete experience. Do we really need to keep the football team in a hotel the night before a Saturday home game and provide them with a $25 dinner and $15 breakfast? Do we really need magnificant computer rooms and study facilities reserved just for athletes and not open to the rest of the campus community? Yes, it will be a little harder for coaches. But are we in the business of educational sport so that kids can gain the benefits of playing or is putting on a technically controlled performance for alumni more important?
If we have to cut sport opportunities, don't cut men's sports. Rather, establish squad limits. Do we really need 125-150 football players? Are 50 "walk-on" football players more important than providing the opportunity for women to play on a team at all? It may be a tough decision, but it is where we express our values. For every player reduction achieved in the men's program, it is one less player participation opportunity that must be created for the women's program to achieve gender equity.
Will trimming a football team to 80 or 90 players kill the "golden goose"? No. The goose will be sleeker and quicker and make more money. Pro football has a 45 player limit with a taxi squad. Doubling that 45 provides more than enough athletes to retain the current quality of the game and to allow for injuries. Right now, most major athletic conferences have rules that limit football travel squads for away games to 65 players.
If we have to reduce scholarship budgets, don't reduce the number of athletes we can help or reduce scholarships for athletes who qualify for need-based aid. Over the years, there have been numerous attempts to adopt a system of need-based aid for athletics. Four factors have prevented the adoption of such proposals:
- a belief that merit as well as need should be considered in all scholarship programs
- concern that the latitude in judgement permitted at the institutional level in the packaging of need-based aid would result in differences in total amounts that would create recruiting advantages
- concern that rich institutions would create packages with more nonrepayable grant aid than loans and work study money thereby creating recruiting advantages
- eliminating differences in institutional packaging would require an enormously expensive national financial aid administration program, the benefits of which would not exceed its cost.
There is a simple, less expensive way to trim scholarship costs which are the #2 expenditure item in athletic budgets in Divisions I and II. Currently there are two types of NCAA sports with regard to allow financial aid: head count and equivalency. In head count sports, any player receiving any aid, even one dollar, counts as one full scholarship against the team limit of 95 (soon to be 85) in football and 15 (soon to be 13) in basketball. The head count system in football and basketball in men's sports and basketball, volleyball, tennis and gymnastics in women's sports, has resulted in most players on a team benefitting from a "full ride" scholarship that provides tuition, required fees, room, board and books even though there is considerable variance in athletic ability between the starter and the bench sitter.
All other men's and women's sports are equivalency sports in which the total number of scholarships allowed for the sport multiplied times the value of a full scholarship can be spread among any number of players. For example, in Division I women's swimming, the limit of 14 full scholarships can be spread among 20 or more athletes. The very best swimmers get full rides and those who aren't as accomplished receive partial scholarships.
If we need to cut scholarship support of student-athletes, let's make all sports use the equivalency system. As is now the case, athletes are allowed to receive need-based aid in addition to athletic aid without the need-based aid counting against athletic scholarship limits in sports other than football and basketball. In football and basketball, need-based aid counts against the sport limit. By using the equivalency principle, we could reduce sport scholarship limits significantly without hurting those student-athletes in greatest need. Dropping football scholarships to 50 or 60 grants in Division I spread among any number of athletes would fund two or three new women's sports. On each team, the best athletes would still receive full scholarships. Lesser skilled athletes would receive partial grants. This is preferable to the current system where the ninety-fifth player on a football team (that plays no more than 50 players per game) receives a full grant. The current head count sport system with gh numbers of full scholarships encourages stacking the bench. We simply cannot afford the luxury of stacking the bench in this economic climate and when gender equity has not been realized.
Sport administrators have not embraced these solutions and college presidents have been unwilling to tell them to comply with the law. Worse yet, the United States Office of Civil Rights has not actively enforced the law. It is possible, however, for parents, players and coaches to find satisfaction through the courts. There have been few lawsuits filed despite the fact that every court case has ruled in favor of players or has been settled out of court in favor of players.
The reasons? Coaches of women's teams -- the people who understand to what extent their programs are being unfairly treated -- fear for their jobs and their futures should they suggest that their programs are not getting a fair shake, much less take their bosses to court. Second, female athletes and their parents do not understand their rights under the law though recent extensive media coverage of Title IX appears to be changing this. Athletic directors, 84% of whom are male, have not been eager to share this information because their programs are not in compliance. Third, parents of players who do know the law, fear that their daughters will suffer retribution if they take their school administrators to court. Last, there is great reluctance on the part of institutional administrators to confront the problem because they do not wish to take participation opportunities away from boys and give them to girls. Apparently, they still believe, from years of accepting no athletic opportunities for women, tt it is a "right" for boys to play sports and a "privilege" for girls.
Two new factors have come into play that increase the possibility that institutions will be taken to court. First, as part of college budget cutbacks, many institutions have, for the first time, tried to eliminate women's teams (along with men's teams) in an effort to trim athletics costs. Cutting a women's team appears to be the "straw that breaks the camel's back". Female athletes and their parents, faced with the elimination of the few participation opportunities they do have, have simply had enough and have pursued court action. Second, a recent Supreme Court decision has established that plaintiffs may receive damages if intentional discrimination is proven. Now there is a financial incentive for attorneys to be more interested in Title IX cases. Parents with daughters and grandparents with granddaughters -- alumni and donors to our institutions -- are stepping forward with their attorneys to ensure that their daughters are not shortchanged.
Our aspirations for our children are not different based on their gender. Participation opportunities and the value lessons of sport are equally important for both men and women. It is time for higher education to lift its head from the sand and demonstrate its commitment to gender equity in sport. There are solutions to this problem if we are determined to find them.