Title Ix

Davis Kosen

Officiating Wrestling

Title IX: The College Wrestling Killer?

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to the 1964 Civil Rights Act reads: 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. When this title was introduced, many considered it great. Now it may be hurting many male athletics in college, including wrestling.

According to the Dayton Daily News, wrestling is the eighth-most-common sport to be dropped in NCAA athletics in the past 15 years. Olympic sports have been the first to be cut by colleges. Cross-country leads the list, followed by indoor track, golf, tennis, rowing, outdoor track, swimming, and then wrestling ("Wrestling"). This number is appalling to many wrestlers who see their college counterparts losing their opportunities to wrestle. Boys' wrestling currently has the sixth-highest number of participants in high school athletics ("Wrestling"). With the high number of participants, one has to wonder why wrestling is targeted as one of the most common sports to be cut because of Title IX.

To comply with Title IX and not lose federal funding for sports, schools use proportionality. Proportionality is a way of enforcing Title IX where the college has the same percentage of varsity athletes to overall enrollment, by gender ("USA"). For example, if 55% of a college's students are female, 55% of the varsity athletes must be female. When colleges try to comply with Title IX, they cut teams and/or place roster caps on them. Many times after the team is cut, the school doesn't make a new sport for females ("USA"). According to Brigham Young wrestling coach Mark Schultz, "Proportionality is illegal. It's a quota that's illegal. If 50 percent of the city is women, does that mean that 50 percent of the fire department and police have to be women?" (Schwartz).

People may ask why wrestling is being cut. Because there is no comparative female sport as there is in basketball, golf, and track, wrestling is being dropped. Another reason is that the teams usually have high numbers of participants. Wrestlers comprise one of the largest groups in college sports, so by cutting wrestling a college can cut its proportionality by over 30 athletes (Schwartz). If a college drops their wrestling team, the NCAA makes the athletes automatically eligible somewhere else if they transfer. The problem with this is that most teams are dropped during the spring and summer terms of the year. By the time the athlete is aware that the program is to be dropped, the bulk of wrestling scholarships elsewhere are already given out (Bakken).

Since Title IX has been hurting wrestling, the sport has lost some of its appeal to high school athletes because scholarships are being cut. According to Arundel Coach Bill Royer, "Once a kid gets out of high school, unless he's the cream of the crop, there's not many places he can go and wrestle." (Dinich).

Proportionality should not be used in determining how Title IX is enforced. It hurts males because the mediocre-to-above-average athletes have to lose college athletic opportunities to females in sports that are even appreciated at particular colleges, like crew, lacrosse, and rowing. 64% of high school seniors who CHOOSE to play sports are male. Males are "walking-on" to college teams at twice the rate of females ("Wrestling"). In 1999, a study from DePauw University showed that even with all the new female teams, only 6.7% of newspapers' sports stories covered women's sports (Coulter).

In January of 2002, the National Wrestling Coaches Association, with some help from wrestling alumni groups, sued the federal government asking for proportionality to