Proportionality or equality? The wrestling world is scrambling to save itself from a radical legal interpretation of Title IX By Jon Schwartz Daily Sports Writer This past April, Brigham Young University cancelled its wrestling and gymnastics programs, effective at the conclusion of this year. The program will be the 19th Division I wrestling team cancelled since 1990. Athletes who chose to compete for the university are now searching elsewhere for a chance to wrestle again. The reason? Title IX and its proportionality interpretation. A 1972 amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX was implemented to give women equal rights in universities receiving federal financial assistance. In doing so, it drove universities around the country to adhere to the standards of the law or face the consequences. But the standards are the controversial part. The buzzword around the country's wrestling population is proportionality, a term which describes one of three ways for a school to comply with Title IX. By far the most difficult way to achieve compliance, it is an interpretation of the law thatstates that the percentage of women in the university must equal the percentage of women in the different departments of extracurricular activities. And the activity most carefully regulated is athletics. It's difficult to find a wrestling coach that is against Title IX. Most are willing to admit that it is a great law with fantastic possibilities. It is equally difficult to find a single person involved with college wrestling who would support proportionality. "Everyone's for equal opportunity," Michigan wrestling coach Joe McFarland said. "But even the women would agree that they don't want to see men's sports cut." A lot of people are wondering why the other restrictions that Title IX requires are not always followed. J. Robinson is the wrestling coach at Minnesota and one of the heads of an organization called Simply Common Sense, a group striving to convince the masses about the harmful consequences of proportionality. One of his concerns is that, if the quotas of Title IX were imposed on other departments at the universities - as the amendment implies - the entire system would be in jeopardy. Robinson explained that there are not a proportional amount of professors and that there isn't a proportional amount of deans. "If it is so great, why isn't it being implemented in the university across the board?" he asked. "Until it impacts them, administrators don't really care about it." Laying the blame Most individuals hurt by the restrictions attribute the problem to Norma Cantu, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights in the United States Department of Education. They claim that Cantu instigated the interpretation of Title IX focusing solely on proportionality. "Proportionality is illegal," Brigham Young wrestling coach Mark Schultz said. "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?" Title IX has made some ground breaking steps in creating opportunities for women. The fact that many schools have either reached proportionality, or are close, shows positive change from the way things were, not too long ago. The United States women's soccer team winning last year's World Cup was a big step for women in today's sports world. But on the other side, scores of men around the country thirst for the old days, when no such concerns existed. And these men are standing behind the victims of "progress," the men's wrestling programs around the country. "The policy interpretation of Title IX actually goes against Title IX," Schultz said. "It's incredible!" One group of these men, the Iowans Against Quotas, is trying to convince the country of the illegality of proportionality. Eric LeSher, president of the IAQ, will not rest until the proportionality interpretation is removed from Title IX. The goal of LeSher's program is to convince the next president of the United States to reappoint someone to Cantu's position, someone that would not perpetuate the discrimination he feels Cantu has. So far, the organization has presidential candidates Gary Bauer, Steve Forbes and Alan Keyes signed onto its petition. George W. Bush's campaign Website states that the GOP front-runner "opposes quotas and racial preferences," convincing LeSher that Bush would also help out the IAQ's cause. But Democrats Bill Bradley and Al Gore have refused to join in the cause. Bradley spokesperson Tony Wyche explained the candidate's position. "His view is that we need to do what we can to elevate women's sports. Title IX has been very effective at doing that. He is not going to support any elimination of Title IX." Why wrestling? But why is wrestling always the offering of universities looking for proportionality? Syracuse University also recently cut their program, and wrestling coach Scott Miller said the reason is because it is easy to oust. There is no comparative female sport, as there is in tennis and basketball. Also, the teams are extremely large - one of the largest groups in college athletics. By axing wrestling, he said that a program can cut down its proportionality by 35 athletes. But just because Miller understands why wrestling is facing the brunt of the cuts, it doesn't mean that he agrees with it. In fact, when the Syracuse program was cut after the '96 -'97 season, Miller wasn't even there. He was coaching at Campbell University, far away in North Carolina. But when he heard that the program was put on life support with a minimal budget until 2001, he couldn't stay away. "I wanted to be part of the solution," he said. "I wanted to come in and do everything that I could. If this program goes, who's safe?" But Syracuse is not alone. The school is joined by Notre Dame, Miami (Ohio), many other schools in getting rid of wrestling and other non-revenue sports. In the last 30 years, more than 450 wrestling programs have been eliminated. That figure far surpasses the number of cuts in any other sport during the same time period. But there are two sides to every story. Conceding to Title IX and then admitting to having done so is taboo among athletic directors around the country. But appropriate or not, critics of the choice are demanding that the truth - their truth - come out. "We made a decision based on budgetary restraints," Fred Skousen, Advancement Vice-President at Brigham Young said. "It was obviously not something that we wanted to do." But the fact remains, that in order to meet those budgetary issues, men's sports are being dropped and women's sports are being added. Money or in ..terest? The cause for the budgetary concerns are often called into question. LeSher does not agree with the logic that the sport is not viable for many universities because it runs revenue losses. "They're using money as a scapegoat," LeSher said. "Very few athletic programs are profitable for a university. If profit was the problem, there would only be a few football and basketball programs. "I wish that they would call a spade a spade." Robinson was not quite so calm in his analysis of the administrators standing behind their "budgetary issues." "They're cowards," he said. "They're afraid that if they say that Title IX is the reason, then the women will get after them." Robinson is vehement in pushing his argument for abolishing proportionality. He asserts that the issue is not about absolute equality in sports programs, but rather, interest. When proportionality came to prominence as the sole interpretation of Title IX, the part of the amendment stating that a university is in compliance if women's interests are being met was ignored. And Robinson strongly feels that interest is not the same. He cites intramural sports as an example. At Minnesota there are 48 men's intramural teams. There are 12 women's squads. Robinson also claims that he had to work hard as a coach to make his program eligible for success. He had to deal with limited budgets and equally limited respect for his program. And at the same time, he had to establish record good enough to warrant additional funding. As he sees it, women's sports such as basketball evolved from nothing into revenue sports. The university saw a need for women's sports to counter the successful men's basketball programs and therefore, created them. "In the olden days," Robinson said, "you had to pay your dues. How did men's sports evolve? Shouldn't women's sports evolve the same way? "I've paid my dues. They haven't." The lost truth But lost in the two sides of this story is the truth. While everyone involved claims to be disclosing the actual reasons for the problems, there are simply too many reasons and too many sides - "too many truths" to find a single one. Jane C. Meyer, Director of Education Outreach for the NCAA, doesn't see proportionality as a problem. She claimed that proportionality is only one way to meet Title IX's requirements. She claimed that there is no correlation between program cuts and the amendment. "If they say it's because of proportionality, that's an individual decision based on the university," Meyer said. Another example is the situation at Brigham Young. Jeff Reynolds, a representative of athletic external relations at Brigham Young, tried to use the fact that Utah is hardly a hotbed of wrestling talent as a reason for choosing it as a sport to cut. "In Utah, we have one school district which is renowned for wrestling," he said. "Utah is primarily a basketball and football state." In his defense of the program, Schultz asserted the exact opposite opinion, before even hearing Reynolds' statement. Schultz claimed that the state actually boasts impressive wrestling figures, and was shocked to learn Reynolds' reasoning. "I don't understand why BYU would drop wrestling because Utah has one of the highest per-capita rates of competition," he said. Syracuse athletic director Jake Crouthamel gave another reason for cutting wrestling and men's gymnastics - one that did not stand up to deeper investigation. "We looked around the country at trends in colleges and what was happening on the high school level," he said, continuing on to explain that there had been some participation falloff in high schools. But since 1990, the National Federation of State High School Association tracked wrestling competition figures increasing every year. In the year before the decision to cut wrestling was made, there were 8,677 high school wrestlers across the country. In the year after the cut, there were 8,900. Upon being informed of the NFHS figures, Crouthamel denied ever having mentioned participation trends in high school. There is no ultimate truth to solve the problem. In matters of opinion, no black-and-white answer can be given to make sense of personal choices. But as the search continues without an answer, the discrimination that Title IX aimed to solve will remain a prominent figure in college sports in the eyes of those affected. JESSICA JOHNSON/Daily While Michigan's wrestlers have avoided the troubles from proportionality, others have not been so lucky. Originally on page 13A in the 1-27-2000 issue of the Daily.