Well, as stated above, some men’s rosters now have to be limited because schools have to have as many opportunities for women (proportionally) as for men. If women at a school don’t want to play basketball or soccer, there may not be as many playing on those teams so then the men’s teams might have to be smaller. Some schools have dropped some male sports (swimming, track) because they can’t add any more women’s teams and are out of balance (and money).
It is not unusual for a school to offer 15 men’s sports and 18 women’s just to get the numbers closer and scholarship dollars closer. Some women’s teams get more scholarships than men’s (gymnastics, rowing, volleyball) to equal things out.
Title IX is a wonderful thing and really has forced college athletic departments to close the gap.
Title IX accomplished some laudable goals --that is an absolute certainty–but it is also a bit of a joke–i.e the law of unintended consequences. Not everything should always have to be exactly equal on paper —you will see ridiculous oversize womens’ rosters just to meet a metric and many mens sports have taken hits because of it. I am not a fan of Title IX.–typical government overreach and hugely inflexible and bureaucratic. It has also been used as a threat to coerce colleges in other ways.
The problem is that the money sports on the men’s teams command so much that it is potentially impossible to balance that against the women’s programs without reducing the men’s equivalency teams. Title IX sets the requirement of equal opportunity, which I would hope nobody would challenge as unreasonable. The unfairness is a result of investing exorbitant resources on men’s basketball, football, etc.
I get what @skieurope is saying, and agree that this is not the place to debate the merits/efficacy of Title IX. That said, the important point for this board is that because of the operation of Title IX’s requirement of equitable distribution of funding for men’s and women’s sports, coupled with the huge distortion caused by football on the men’s side, men and women operate in very different recruiting worlds. It is important to remember that when we are discussing these issues. There are going to be some commonalities for sure. But a lot of things are going to be very different as well.
I didn’t intend to send this down the title IX rabbit hole. I just wanted to point out that getting a “slot” can involve much more than just academic or athletic ability. Sometimes there are things behind the scenes that would cause an otherwise “recruitable” student athlete to not be a prospect at one school but very much a prospect at a better school. You have to cast a wide net sometimes.