What Is Higher? What Is Learning?

GREEN BLAZERED MAN (GILL) Mr. President, militant women are out to destroy college football in this country.

ANDREW SHEPHERD Is that a fact?

GREEN BLAZERED MAN (GILL) Have you been following this situation down in Atlanta? These women want parity for girls' softball, field hockey, volleyball...

SHEPHERD If I'm not mistaken, Gill, I think the courts ruled on Title IX about 20 years ago.

GREEN BLAZERED MAN (GILL) Yes sir, but now I'm saying these women want that law enforced.

SHEPHERD Well, it's a world gone mad, Gill.


I read an article in yesterday's paper unintentionally underscored with too much rich irony to avoid commenting.

To first revisit high school civics, James Madison is the Father of the Constitution.

The institution of higher learning named in his honor is cutting ten Varsity teams in order to fall into Title IX compliance.

Madison surely would have felt that a disproportionate number of athletes playing Varsity sports vis-a-vis the general population within an intercollegiate setting would fall outside the parameters of the great document he is credited with siring.

Emotionally, I'm all for equal female participation in college athletics. I fully understand that the percentage of athletes moving from amateur collegiate athletics to the professional level is decimal. And since the over-lofty idea driving amateur sports is that the body fuels the mind, it shouldn't make a difference whether it's a male playing football as long as the offset is a female playing field hockey.

Example - I'll take basketball, using rough numbers. There are approximately 330 Division I schools; a basketball team is composed of approximately 10 scholarship players. Likewise, the NBA is a group formed by 30 teams. Were the NBA to limit its draft to only those players, the chance of getting drafted is less than one-tenth of one percentage point. Not great.

Rationally, however, none of that matters. The NCAA is a for-profit entity interested in one thing: dollar bills. The rest is window dressing.

But back the James Madison, the university. It is a school with a little under 16 thousand enrolled students; its female-to-male ratio is almost 3:1. Under the law, its Varsity participation has to maintain that same ratio. For every male athlete, they must find two females.

Right now, the percentage of female athletic participation is higher than male participation; it's closer to 1:1 instead of the requisite 3:1.

General observations: more male high school athletes than their female counterparts seek participation at the next level; most sports (male or female) are not revenue generators - but if there is one, the likelihood of it being football or men's basketball is great; it's possible to have disproportionate scholarship holders without discrimination as the prevailing motive.

So to fall into compliance, JMU is eliminating 7 men's Varsity teams and 3 women's Varsity teams. The men's teams being eliminated are archery, cross country, gymnastics, indoor track, outdoor track, swimming and wrestling; the women's are archery, fencing and gymnastics.

I must admit their decision doesn't directly affect me. The chances of me catching a JMU contest of any kind are less than me being in next year's NBA draft.

Their mandated decision, however, does affect 144 student-athletes who must transfer to continue their intercollegiate athletic participation and 8 coaches who must look for new jobs.

Where there's blatant discrimination against females pursuing scholarship opportunities, Myles Brand would actually have his own opportunity to do something useful with his existence.

And when female athletics becomes generally as talent-laden and marketable as male athletics, I'll argue it should become equal in every way.

Until then, signing Title IX into law is the stupidest thing Nixon ever did.