UMass87

Title IX is the easy target because it did and does mandate that sport opportunity be extended to females. Extending sports opportunity to females obviously costs more money than not doing so. That is, of course, true. That is not, however, the only reason. For most schools there is only one program that has opportunity to break even or make money: men's basketball. All the other men's sports cost money just like the women's sports and the women's sports tend to be cheaper because the coaching salaries are generally lower. The fact is that football bleeds huge amounts of money from almost every athletic department that has it: there are far more players, far more coaches, and far higher salaries than in any sport that is not men's basketball.

People should remember than the dictates of Title IX are far less rigid today then they were ten years ago. During the Bush administration it was established that schools could fairly easily demonstrate Title IX compliance WITHOUT having 1 for 1 scholarship equity. For reasons that are unclear to me, most schools have not chosen to avail themselves of the looser regulatory regime.

spdram

yes there is more lax enforcement of Title IX, but it's still the elephant in the room. I'm getting from good sources money was not the issue, it was numbers of participants. ie to meet Title IX, you still need to be in proportion. It's unfortunate the women don't have the level of interest the men do, so the men suffer.

__________________
University of Richmond 2008 FCS Football National Champions!

UMass87

That simply is not true. There is a "three-part test" where the first of three is proportional representation and the third is meeting the needs of the underrepresented gender. An institution need only meet one of the three parts to be in compliance. I was unaware of this letter from 2010:

http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/lis...-20100420.html

which does make it harder to meet the third part than it had been during the Bush administration but the ability to meet the third part is still there.

rogabee

Also what makes it more sad in Richmond's case is the impact in the future it will have on cross-country, which I'm surprised isn't being discussed. Note that Richmond swept the A10 in XC two years ago, winning both the men's and women's titles. However, without track, it will be much harder to recruit for XC, as better recruits will be much more inclined to go where there is both XC and track, and it could harm one of the A10s better XC programs also in addition to lowering the A10 standard in track.

z8-Minutemen

This is a basketball board. Hence: http://www.basketballforum.com

Please, STAY ON TOPIC.

__________________
Dallas Cowboys- 5 super bowls and counting...

UMass Minutemen- 8 tournament appearances, 1 final four. Alumni: Julius 'Dr. J' Erving, Marcus Camby

Northeastern Huskies- 7 tournament appearances. Alumni: Reggie Lewis, Jose Juan 'JJ' Barea

SFspidur

Institutions have very little interest in resting their hopes on Part Three compliance. It's a subjective criterion, and they don't want to risk a judgment against them.

As for XC, the impact is likely to be minimal. In fact, UR's track team is almost entirely made up of XC runners...19 of the 23 members of the men's track team at UR are distance runners. We've basically just recruited for XC and allowed them to continue running track through the rest of the year for training purposes. The plan is to even allow the XC runners to participate in some track meets after the track team is axed, although they can't participate in A-10 or NCAA track championships.

UMass87

You are a blight on the board. Go away.

UMass87

Ya...I've always figured it was that or a typical CYA attitude that administrators develop. I stand by the assertion, though, that this is really a money issue. They could add a women's team or two and the proportion would be the same.

SFspidur

One of the imperatives of the recent UR strategic plan is that the size of the athletic program not grow. It's not just a money issue, which can be overcome with relatively little pain at a school with the resources UR has. The bigger issue in the eyes of the administration seems to be student-athlete slots. With under 3,000 students, we're already devoting a good number of class slots to athletes and the university doesn't really want that to go up any.

At one point, both men's lax and women's crew were on parallel paths, being looked at for upgrading from club to varsity club, with the possibility of full varsity. But somewhere along the way, women's crew was dropped from consideration, presumably because the school decided it didn't want to increase the number of sports/spots. There wasn't a compelling reason to axe another women's sport to make room for crew, but lax had enough appeal that it was deemed worth it to make a substitution.

The official word is that the swapping of lax for soccer and track comes with a $3 million endowment courtesy of those who really wanted lax, to benefit not only lax but other programs. One plugged-in supporter said the number is actually closer to $10 million. So from a financial perspective and given the constraints on total number of athletes, it's the obvious decision. Throw in UR's northeast footprint and the chance to make an impact in a small but rapidly growing sport, and lax is a natural fit.

So here's a question for those who know more about lax than I do. I've read that the average roster size for men's lax is 45. Why on earth is it so high? It answers the question why we had to cut multiple other programs in order to offset, but I don't get the need for that many players. The average roster size for women's lax is closer to 25-30.

z8-Minutemen

1st of all, what's a blight?

2nd of all, I have a positive green rep value of 137,816. I seem to be well liked on this board, contrary to what you are suggesting. I feel this thread should be deleted for the good of this board. At least give an OT: in the title. It helps the board run smoother...

__________________
Dallas Cowboys- 5 super bowls and counting...

UMass Minutemen- 8 tournament appearances, 1 final four. Alumni: Julius 'Dr. J' Erving, Marcus Camby

Northeastern Huskies- 7 tournament appearances. Alumni: Reggie Lewis, Jose Juan 'JJ' Barea

rogabee

That's refreshing news. Thanks SF...without being able to go to track meets after the team is cut it could potentially have killed the program down to a midlevel A10 program. I would love to see Richmond keeping pace up front. (Also SF, I'm an old XC alum who keeps track of A10 track and XC, so I did realize that Richmond track was almost exclusively distance, though I didn't realize the proportions were quite that big in favor of the distance runners.) Some recruits may still want to go to a conference or regional meet however for track, and you may lose a quality recruit once every 3-4 years.

However, I do expect somewhat more of a hit than some are planning though. Yes, they'll be able to compete in competitions (likely as an official club team), but not having the ability of going to conferences, NCAA regionals, or other major championships is a selling point to some recruits. Also don't think that teams won't be negatively recruiting Richmond XC now either about lack of administration support for their runners as a whole. Negative recruiting doesn't happen much in the minor sports, but it definitely will here...and I could see it making a difference, though likely minor.

Best of luck to you guys in your time of transition for the program. I hope it works out.

UMass87

SFSpidur - Only having gone to big schools I had never considered the problem of a significant fraction of the students being student-athletes. Here's the percentages for UR:

male: 14.2% (194 out of 1358)
female: 10.5% (175 out of 1658)

compare that with UMass:

male: 3.1% (314 out of 10038)
female: 3.0% (291 out of 9656)


data from: http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/GetOneInstitutionData.aspx

Given that UR apparently already uses the third prong test (underrepresented gender demand is served) it would seem it really is about keeping the percent of student-athletes down.

SFspidur

UMass87...actually, UR does not not use the third prong. The measure of proportionality is participation slots, not number of student-athletes, so an athlete who participates in XC and indoor and outdoor track counts as three participation opportunities. UR has many more women than men competing in multiple sports (and this will increase further once men's track and field is gone), so here are the numbers to look at.

Participation Opportunites: 249 female, 227 male...52.3% female
Student Body: 1659 female, 1358 male...55.0% female

We're not exactly there but the generally accepted guideline is within 3 percentage points, so we meet that. It's not a formal standard though.

rogabee...One important thing to remember is that UR cross country is non-scholarship, so we're really recruiting a special kind of student-athlete who can compete at the top of the A-10 without a scholarship. While our XC men are very solid, the year they won the A-10s was really a one-time deal. There was a group of three rising seniors the year before who decided to redshirt their fourth years (at their own expense minus financial aid of course, since we're non-scholarship) and return for a fifth year. With their extra year of training and the quality of the incoming class, they saw the opportunity to pull it all together for one good run at the conference championship, and they got it.

So I really don't think it will impact us all that much as far as XC recruiting. We've long been essentially just an XC team, and with the fantastic job our coaches do in targeting kids who will fit the UR program without money and our tradition using that model, I think they'll continue to do well.

z8-Minutemen...happy with the title now? (It's not updating in forum index for some reason though...)

JHG722

Go away.

__________________
Temple Owls football and basketball

BU Terriers hockey

ur2k

I think the title was sufficient for folks to know what the topic is about... Nothing to see here, please move along