Current Events > Title IX report reveals reporting loopholes and manipulation in women's sports

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https://onherturf.nbcsports.com/2022/05/27/powerful-title-ix-report-reveals-reporting-loopholes-and-roster-manipulation-in-womens-college-sports/

For those charged with implementing Title IX, it became obvious that one clear way to close the gender gap at the collegiate level was to require schools to provide equitable opportunities for women and men to play sports. However, USA Today found that schools have been abusing the accepted rules in ways that allow them to comply with the letter of the law while violating its spirit. According to the report, the schools collectively added more than 3,600 additional participation opportunities for female athletes during the 2018-19 academic year despite not adding one new womens team to any athletic program. Schools accomplished this by counting participants in ways that inflate womens rosters:

• Double- and triple-counting athletes: Schools in the analysis created 2,252 womens roster spots thanks to a controversial counting method, permitted by the U.S. Department of Education, which oversees Title IX compliance and allows schools to count athletes more than once if they compete in more than one sport. One common example is in track and field, where an athlete that competes in cross country, indoor track and outdoor track can be counted as three participation opportunities to the federal government.
• Padding womens rowing rosters: Twenty-seven schools presented rosters with more athletes than needed, with teams averaging 87 women more than double the maximum number allowed at most conference championships. Based on roster caps set in federal lawsuits at two Division I rowing programs, USA Today counted at least 838 female rowers more than one-third filled unnecessary roster spots.
• Counting male practice players: At least one of every four womens basketball players reported by schools to the federal government were actually men. Of the 107 schools surveyed, 52 of them counted at least 601 men as female participants who scrimmage with womens basketball teams.

On the money front, the USA Today analysis found that for every dollar that schools spent on travel, equipment and recruiting for mens teams, they spent just 71 cents on women. Over two seasons (2018-19 and 2019-20), that added up to $125 million more spent on men than women. USA Today focused solely on sports with comparable mens and womens squads basketball, baseball and softball, golf, soccer, swimming and diving, and tennis and found that spending on soccer and swimming was roughly equal, while the greatest disparities were found in basketball, where coaches and athletic departments spent 63 cents on women for every dollar spent on men. Some notable spending numbers:

• Of the 107 schools, only two University of Hawaii and University of Toledo spent more on travel for its womens basketball teams; 19 schools spent at least $1 million more on the men than the women.
• Schools collectively spent $8.7 million (39 percent) more on equipment for mens basketball than for the women.
• On recruiting, schools spent $19 million (72 percent) more on recruiting for its mens basketball programs than for the womens programs. For example, Indiana University spent $1.2 million for its mens basketball team compared to $216,513 spent for the womens team.

It's interesting how women's rowing is home to so much controversy. I guess they figured no one would bother looking into if anyone is even on the team.

__aCEr__ posted...

It's interesting how women's rowing is home to so much controversy. I guess they figured no one would bother looking into if anyone is even on the team.

We got close with the Lori Loughlin scandal. But people were more focused on the paying your way into college. And the question about how many other colleges besides USC have fake roster spots on their rowing teams got swept under the rug.