Play Ball!!!...Spring Sports are underway

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Spring is here or very near in most areas of the country and the college spring sports season is underway. Below is a listing of the sports being contested this spring for a NCAA Division I national championship and the number of competing institutions. Enjoy the games and the sunshine!</p>

<h1>of colleges competing in Division I, Sport</h1>

<p>MEN</p>

<p>293 colleges, Baseball
289 colleges, Men's Golf
264 colleges, Men's Track & Field
260 colleges, Men's Tennis
56 colleges, Men's Lacrosse
22 colleges, Men's Volleyball</p>

<p>WOMEN</p>

<p>308 colleges, Women's Tennis
304 colleges, Women's Track & Field
272 colleges, Softball
234 colleges, Women's Golf
86 colleges, Women's Rowing
81 colleges, Women's Lacrosse
32 colleges, Women's Water Polo</p>

2

<p>Why don’t they count men’s rowing? It certainly is as competitive as the women.</p>

3

<p>As shown above, the most actively played spring sports on college campuses are baseball for the men and tennis for the women. Below are the latest rankings for each of these sports as applied to the USNWR Top 30 national universities. If anyone wants to post about other sports, then please do so. </p>

<p>National Rankings according to USA Today/ESPN (as of March 3, 2008) </p>

<p>Rank , MEN’S DIVISION I BASEBALL</p>

<p>2 , U North Carolina
7 , Rice
11 , Vanderbilt
12 , UCLA
14 , U Virginia
24 , U Michigan</p>

<pre><code> 341 Division I teams are ranked
</code></pre>

<p>Fila ITA Rankings (as of February, 2008) </p>

<p>Rank , WOMEN’S DIVISION I TENNIS</p>

<p>1 , Georgia Tech
2 , Northwestern
3 , Stanford
5 , U North Carolina
8 , UCLA
9 , UC Berkeley
11 , USC
12 , Vanderbilt
14 , Notre Dame
15 , Duke
20 , Wake Forest
25 , U Michigan</p>

<pre><code> 308 Division I teams compete
</code></pre>

<p>Fila ITA Rankings (Fall, 2007 rankings) </p>

<p>Rank , WOMEN’S DIVISION III TENNIS</p>

<p>1 , Washington & Lee
2 , Amherst
3 , Willliams
4 , Emory
5 , Carnegie Mellon
8 , Pomona-Pitzer
9 , Tufts
15 , Johns Hopkins
16 , Wellesley
19 , U Chicago
21 , Wash U
23 , MIT
25 , Vassar</p>

<pre><code> 365 Division III teams compete
</code></pre>

4

<p>Yes, Men’s Crew should be included, along with swimming and diving.</p>

5

<p>The sports listed above are decided upon by the NCAA as the ones that will have national championships. Others, like men’s crew, will not have an officiall NCAA championship. Swimming and Diving is considered a winter sport.</p>

6

<p>Title IX has gone way too far.</p>

7

<p>I’m not with you on that. Don’t blame the women. Blame the spineless athletic directors and college administrators who don’t have the will to save the men’s sports.</p>

8

<p>^ I don’t blame the women. I agree with you that the administrators are so worried about lawsuits derived from Title IX legislation that it is one of the main driving forces eliminating men’s sports. They say it’s not a quota system, but they treat it like it is.</p>

9

<p>I enjoy your contributions and most often agree with you on many things, but you are dead wrong on Title IX. I conducted between 20-30 Title IX athletics investigations, at the high school and post-secondary levels, when I was in OCR. I served as my regional office’s resource person on the issue. I liked doing Title IX, and I was just about the only one in the office that did, most staff ran away from a Title IX athletics complaint, because of how much analysis the issue required. It is among the most complex and time consuming issues that OCR handles. </p>

<p>It has long aggravated and depressed me that most people just don’t understand how compliance is being determined for the interest and abilities section, which is what you are talking about. Title IX, in part, requires recipients to provide equal athletic opportunity for members of both sexes and to effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of their male and female students to participate in intercollegiate athletics. There are three ways that an institution can demonstrate compliance with the interest and abilities requirement. All of them are equal, and neither the Federal Government or the Courts prefer one to the other. If anything, the Federal Government, regardless of administration in power, prefers that colleges come into compliance with the third standard because it has less impact on men’s sports. However, it’s up to the recipient to determine how they will comply. Most colleges do come into compliance with third part of the three-part test. </p>

<p>An institution is in compliance with the three-part test if it has met any ONE of the following three parts of the test: (1) the percent of male and female athletes is substantially proportionate to the percent of male and female students enrolled at the school; or (2) the school has a history and continuing practice of expanding participation opportunities for the underrepresented sex; or (3) the school is fully and effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex. </p>

<p>In 2005, the current administration issued new guidelines for coming into compliance with the third part. They have been pretty much ignored by colleges because they are seen as eviscerating the intend of the statute, which is to ensure that colleges provide women athletic programs, assuming they have such programs, that represent their interest and abilities. </p>

<p>The decision to drop some men’s sports is in large part to ensure that dollars keep on flowing to football and basketball, and to a lesser extent because of a lack of interest in particular sports. Some schools, Rutgers is a recent example, have come to realize that they have sports programs that far and away exceeded their ability to pay for them. These school imply, either directly or indirectly, that they are dropping the men’s sports to come into compliance with tittle IX when in fact they are doing it, in large part, to regain control of out-of-control athletics programs. </p>

<p>Compliance with the interest and abilities section is a very complicated issue. It is hard for the investigators since many colleges are sui generis in the issues they present, and the investigative approach is so different than other non-discrimination issues. The press and most commentators usually get it wrong. The Women’s Sports Foundation hasn’t help the larger issue of understanding Title IX by consistently talking about the amount of dollars allocated per sex. This wrong. Title IX doesn’t require equality in the number of teams or the number of dollars spent. It requires non-discrimination, which is something quite different.</p>

<p>I’m happy to continue this discussion if anyone has questions.</p>

10

<p>I imagine it is complicated to determine if a “school is fully and effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex.” Politicians should not be so vague when making laws…they pass 'em without thinking thru unintended consequences and means for compliance, despite the feeling that it’s the right thing to do.</p>

<p>What does “underrepresented sex” mean? In most schools these days, the “underrepresented sex” is male. Does it mean underrepresented in terms of sports/activity participation? How do universities determine interest level? Do they take a survey of the student body?</p>

<p>I agree with you that some schools are cutting “minor sports” programs to save more expensive football and basketball programs due to lack of funding.
Money is always an issue.</p>

11

<p>The problem with crew is that schools have the men’s teams to have a championship and are in compiance we can assume so it’s just the NCAA not having the money or time to hold the event. Seems unfair.</p>

12

<p>^ Rugby too.</p>

13

<p>Underrepresented refers to the athletics program. Say the undergraduate student body at UNC, for example, is 40% male and 60% female, but the number of opportunities to compete in the athletic program are 60% male and 40% female. In this scenario women would be regarded as the underrepresented sex. </p>

<p>In order to meet the first part of the three-part test you would expect that 40% percent of the opportunities to compete (add up all the athletes on the mens teams and the womens teams) would be male and 60% female. Based on this example, and it is an example only, I haven’t bothered to look up the actual UNC data, UNC will not be in compliance with prong one. Realistically, UNC, or at any school that has a football team will not be able, nor should they bother to try, to comply with prong one. </p>

<p>Prong two usually only applies when you have recently added teams to meet the needs of the underrepresented sex. There are very few schools that can meet this test although if they have done so and have a plan in place to add more teams for the underrepresented sex they may be found in compliance. </p>

<p>Prong three is the usual basis for compliance since it is highly doubtful that the UNC women have enough interest or ability (did they compete in hs or on a club team in the sports for which female students they are interested in?) to make up additional opportunities to come up to the 60%. So if the school has demonstrated that existing athletics program reflects the actual interest and ability of their female undergraduates then they are in compliance. Even if there is interest and abilities, Title IX requires that the sport(s) be competed in the college’s normal competitive region.</p>

<p>Moreover, if school cannot demonstrate compliance with prong three, OCR will often draft settlement agreements that let them build a program starting with intramural and proceeding to club and then to varsity. There have been occasions when a Division I school has been allowed to compete at the Division III level until they build up the sport. In one case that I investigated, albeit at a community college, I found compliance with the interest and abilities requirement even though they had two teams for men and none for women. This happened because they honestly tried to have a women’s athletic program but could not get women to come out for sports they said they were interested in.</p>

<p>The Title IX regulations were issued in 1977. The basic guidance governing Title IX athletics was issued in 1979. Colleges should have been in compliance with the law years ago.</p>

14

<p>Thanks for that and I understand what you’re saying, tsdad. However, how is compliance with “prong three” tested and confirmed?</p>

<p>

Of course. I think it has become more prevalent now due to the higher proportion of female students and activism. And, as you mention, funding…the elimination of men’s sports due to lack of funding, but painting the reasoning under the Title IX umbrella. </p>

<p>Call me sexist and a pig, but my feelings go out to the crisis among young men in our society. No one seems to be looking out for them.</p>

15

<p>tsdad, this is interesting. Is it your experience that “spineless athletic directors and college administrators” are to blame? Do they lack the will to save men’s sports?</p>

16

<p>tsdad,
Thanks very much for the explanations and the detail. Football is clearly the elephant in the room as these teams invariably are the largest in numbers of student-athletes and, of course, all are male. I think that the problem has been for colleges having a football team and their subsequent actions to cut some non-revenue men’s sports like wrestling or tennis or whatever and also the creation of many women’s teams to get some parity in the participation numbers. Right? Personally, I’d be ok with women having fewer numbers if there were equal numbers in sports that both sexes want to play, but I don’t know too many women that advocate the creation of a women’s football program. :)</p>

17

<p>Title IX does not require an equal number of teams only a number of opportunities to compete that meet the requirements of the interest and abilities section depending on whether the school is coming into compliance with prong one, two, or three. If they are going for prong one compliance, there often will be less men’s teams because of the huge number of men in football (and don’t get me started on how we can figure out who counts).</p>

<p>Schools like prong one because it’s easy, they can use it to drop men’s sports, and there are lots of tricks they can play at very low cost. For example, add a women’s cross country team if you don’t have one and make all the women on indoor and outdoor track compete. You can add 50 women right there. Use the same track coach and give them a few thousand more a year. Or add a crew team for women. You can add maybe 75 more athletes depending on how many boats you have. Some schools are adding women’s equestrian, which has lots of numbers, and the athletes are responsible for their horses. Bowling is a favorite, and while the additional competition opportunities are small, so is the cost.</p>

<p>Are ADs spineless? You don’t get to be an AD by being spineless. Barry Alverez spineless? Not likely. Athletic departments are often the tail that wag the University dog. Not speaking of my current employer. ADs aren’t spineless but they have very good political sense. Want to cut wrestling, baseball, crew because they are too expensive? Blame it on Title IX.</p>

<p>One short story. I was investigating a Title IX complaint filed by the members of a women’s gymnastics team (talk about a dying sport at many colleges along with fencing and rifle) at a public in Virginia. The school intended to add softball instead, which, unlike gymnastics, was competed in their conference. They also proposed to drop men’s lacrosse. I offered to give them several more years to come into compliance if they retained that sport.</p>

<p>The attorney representing the the school, who was a member of the Virginia AG’s office and a doctrinaire conservative (hired because of that and his views on Title IX), told me essentially to mind my own business. They wanted to get rid of lacrosse since it wasn’t a conference sport. Of course the Virginia and DC papers had lots of subsequent articles on how Title IX had ruined opportunities for men.</p>

<p>Interest and abilities get all the publicity but for me even more important is the non-discriminatory distribution of athletic financial assistance. But that’s another story.</p>

18

<p>See [Additional</a> Clarification of Intercollegiate Athletics Policy: Three-Part Test – Part Three](<a href=“http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/title9guidanceadditional.html]Additional”>http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/title9guidanceadditional.html)
and the two pdf documents in the right hand corner of the web page. This is so stupefying that it is hard to know what they are talking about. The directions that previously existed were minimal. Basically they required colleges to periodically survey the underrepresented sex as to their interest and abilities.</p>

<p>I have not been able to get through this. The Big 10 schools have ignored it.</p>