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Division I cranks up a sports ‘arms race’

It's time we face the facts. Division II and III schools, the poorest colleges and universities, are not dropping men's sports. It's the richest Division I athletic programs that are cutting men's swimming, gymnastics and wrestling programs.

Whenever a men's sport is eliminated, educational institutions blame Title IX and women's sports. They say they can't afford to add women's sports programs as required by federal gender equity laws and keep men's Olympic sports.

What's wrong with this contention is the fact that there are plenty of new dollars going into Division I college athletic programs that could fund both women's sports and men's Olympic sports. What the public doesn't know is that the new money is being used to fuel the arms races being fought in college football and men's basketball. NCAA research shows that of every three new dollars going into college athletic programs over the last five years, two go to men's sports and only one to women's sports.

The $1 to women's sports is not closing the significant gap in expenditures on men's and women's sports; the majority of the new money going to men's sports is pumping up the already bloated budgets of men's football and basketball.

The problem is not Title IX. The problem is college presidents not putting a stop to the embarrassing waste of money occurring in football and men's basketball. There are no fiscal controls in place. Alumni at private colleges and state legislators in the case of public institutions should be calling for investigations of misuse of funds.

Just because the football and basketball teams bring in money at the gate doesn't mean they have a right to spend it however they wish and to waste it. All revenue generated by institutional activities, from tuition to income from student musicals and athletic events, is institutional funds. Boards of regents and trustees have a fiduciary responsibility to oversee these funds and ensure the public that these nonprofit educational institutions are fiscally responsible.

For example, the following are true stories of practices at Division I institutions that have recently dropped men's sport programs:

 A university spent $300,000 putting lights on a practice football field that was never used for football practice. The football coach wanted to show his recruits how many practice fields had lights. In his four years at the institution, he never used the field.

  A football team was housed in a hotel during preseason football camp instead of the university dormitories that were normally used, because the team would have had to move out of the dorm rooms two days prior to the end of training camp in order to allow regular students to move in for the semester. The coach didn't want the disruption. The snack bill alone at that hotel during training camp was $86,000.

  A football team spent more than $50,000 last summer to have meals catered during training camp. The entire travel budget for a women's team sport at the institution was $22,000.

  A university dropped its men's swimming and diving program, citing economics. That same university found the means to renovate the outdoor track; renovate the indoor track, including installing hydraulic banked turns; build a multifield baseball complex with heating elements under the soil to keep the grass growing year round; add a row of skyboxes to the football stadium; and install state-of-the-art turf in the football stadium.

  One private institution in Division I spends 31 percent of its institutional budget on athletics.

  A football team pays for nearly 50 hotel rooms on the night before home games so the coaches can baby-sit their players. Players are fed as if they were on the road and have been known to rent out entire movie theaters for entertainment purposes. Three charter buses are hired for two days to transport the team to and from the football field, three miles from campus — for all home games.

  During spring workouts that occur during regular classes, football players are fed three meals a day because they are practicing. Yet the baseball team at this same institution is allowed to spend only $15 a day per player on road trips while the sport is in season.

  Following a season in which a football team won seven games, the head coach treated his entire staff and their wives to a trip to the Bahamas.

  Three weeks before announcing it was dropping two men's sports, a Division I-A institution announced that it raised the salary of the men's basketball coach to $1.1 million.

These expenditures are simply not right. Add to this that 75 of the 300 NCAA Division I schools pay their men's basketball coaches $1 million or more per year and it is easy to conclude that Division I is very much "out of control" when it comes to expenses for intercollegiate athletics. Note that there are only 48 athletic programs among the 900-plus NCAA member institutions that bring in more revenues than expenses (i.e., operate at a profit).

Schools should be expected to retain all men's sports programs while they bring women's sports into compliance with Title IX. Remedying discrimination does not mean bringing formerly advantaged men's sports down to where women's sports were — with no opportunities to play. Affording current men's sports programs and new women's sports programs will require belt-tightening in Division I.

College athletic programs should be willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that male athletes in Olympic sports have programs. If necessary, the NCAA must legislate across-the-board expenditure limits and insist on a cessation of the arms race to make this happen. Neither the NCAA nor its member institutions shows any signs of doing either.

If institutions of higher education are going to act irresponsibly, continuing to discriminate against women's sports, dropping Olympic sports and operating chosen teams like professional sports teams with million-dollar coaches and excessive expenditures, then the IRS should take away their nonprofit status and tax them like commercial sports enterprises. Maybe this is the kind of pressure that must be brought to bear in order to force educational institutions to control their expenses. It's about time the media did some good investigative reporting to reveal the real extent of financial waste and put pressure on college presidents to clean up their acts before the government does so.

Title IX is a good law. We need to keep steady on the course of ensuring that our sons and daughters are treated equally in all educational programs and activities, including sports. As important, we have to protect sports participation opportunities for our sons by making it clear to high school principals and superintendents and college presidents that excessive expenditures on one or two priority men's sports and failure to control spending in all sports is unacceptable for educational institutions accorded nonprofit tax status.

Donna A. Lopiano is executive director of the Women's Sports Foundation.

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