BY CAROL SLEZAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
The wrestlers lost. The experts say it’s over. But the wrestlers promise to keep fighting. Shortly after the Supreme Court refused to reinstate the National Wrestling Coaches Association’s Title IX lawsuit Monday, executive director Mike Moyer told me his organization would not be deterred.
”Men’s teams continue to be downsized in alarming numbers all over the country,” Moyer said. ”This decision has inspired us to work harder.”
When it was mentioned that in fact many men’s college sports programs — football comes to mind — continue to enjoy growth in spite of Title IX, Moyer clarified his statement.
”I’m referring primarily to men’s traditional Olympic sports,” he said. ”Wrestling, track, gymnastics, swimming.”
And maybe that’s the problem. These sports simply aren’t as popular as they once were. But why admit that when you can blame their decline on Title IX? The wrestlers’ loyalty to their sport is admirable. But by taking aim at Title IX, they are implying that men’s sports matter more than women’s sports. And that’s not so admirable. I always thought wrestlers were tough guys. So why don’t they take aim at the football programs, which get most of the money in the schools’ budgets?
We know the American public supports Title IX. According to a 2003 USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, 70 percent of adults familiar with the law think it should be strengthened or left alone. Yet there are special-interest groups — and certainly the wrestling preservationists count as a special-interest group — that truly believe the only way to preserve their sport is to eliminate opportunities for women.
Look into opponents’ hearts
Most Title IX opponents are careful to phrase their thoughts in a way that sounds nondiscriminatory. Moyer, for instance, insists he supports the spirit of the law.
”[But] we want women to play sports based on their actual interest in sports, not sports designed to meet a quota,” he said.
There is usually a ”but” and a ”quota.” Because in their hearts, most Title IX opponents believe women don’t want to play sports, or that women’s sports aren’t as important as men’s. The Bush administration seems to believe both are true. In March, the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights announced that schools could survey their female students through mass e-mail to determine if there is sufficient ”interest” to offer a particular sport. (How patronizing of our government.) And if a student doesn’t respond to the e-mail? She may be put in the ”uninterested” category.
As you might imagine, the survey itself is biased against women playing sports. Consider the first ”question” in the government’s prototype: ”If you have no experience, current participation or interests in future participation, please check the box below and click the ‘Click to Complete Survey’ button. Your response will be recorded, and you will have completed the survey. We thank you for your cooperation.” You sense the survey’s only purpose is to ”prove” women aren’t interested in sports.
Strong support from courts
Yet even as the executive branch tries to erode Title IX, the judicial branch seems inclined to preserve it. In the 33 years since Title IX was signed into law, the courts consistently have recognized that Title IX is not the problem. The problem lies with those who refuse to accept it.
”We want to protect women without hurting men,” said Moyer, whose organization challenged Title IX’s proportionality test.
Moyer thinks the proportionality test, which says a school may show compliance with the law if its percentage of female athletes reflects the percentage of female students at the school, hurts wrestling and other nonrevenue sports. He also believes it hurts female athletes. He says that in order to show compliance, schools frequently are cutting women’s sports with smaller roster sizes, such as gymnastics, in favor of sports such as crew, which has a bigger roster. This hurts female gymnasts. Besides, do women really want to row?
What Moyer really wants is for college wrestling to remain viable. The NWCA belongs to the Washington-based College Sports Council, a lobbying organization that apparently has only one goal: to ”reform” Title IX.
You empathize with the wrestlers, but they targeted the wrong villain. Maybe football is the real villain. Or maybe the changing times is the real villain. In any event, it’s not Title IX. And now that the Supreme Court has refused to hear the wrestlers’ case, some are advising the wrestlers to let it go.
”Title IX cannot be blamed for cuts to men’s teams,” National Women’s Law Center co-president Marcia D. Greenberger said Tuesday in a statement. ”It’s high time the wrestlers stopped using this important law as a scapegoat for their own problems.”
But the wrestlers, who filed their lawsuit in 2002, figure time is on their side.
”Title IX has been around for 30 years,” Moyer said. ”We clearly know that it is not going to be changed in 30 months.”
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