Expanding Football Roster Has Title IX, Logistical Issues
- Thread starter Mavric
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BigRedBuster
Active member
knapplc
Active member
Well, you're not necessarily wrong, but ostensibly they're here to provide an education. You're correct in that money has become a HUGE factor in the whole discussion. And that's a societal indictment, and is an overall net negative on our country. But that's a long other story.
To the financials you cited up there, which I believe are from 2015, you're missing Beach Volleyball, which operated at a net loss of $110,196, which cuts into (in my opinion) Volleyball's net profit of $450K. They are the same program, just different labels. The Beach program is used by Cook as a training tool for his court team.
In 2015 the revenue-losing women's sports cost the Athletic Department just under $12 million. The revenue-losing men's sports cost just over $5.7 million. The net profit from the Athletic Department (not counting licensing & whatnot) was $16 million.
So we can afford these sports, as is, and run a profit. We're one of very few schools in America who can say that. So, for Nebraska at least, the discussion about financials is kind of moot. We can afford whatever women's programs we want.
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BigRedBuster
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4skers89
New member
When Title IX was introduced they should have created women's football. One of two things would have happened.
1) It would take off as a sport.
2) Complete failure from everyone's perspective but maintained as a sport simply to balance out scholarships. Eventually it would become evident that Title IX wasn't providing additional real athletic opportunities for women and that football is unique in terms of roster size so it should be partially or fully exempted from the scholarship numbers. The revenue generated by football should help mitigate any feelings of unfairness. From there the scholarship numbers could be easily balanced in an equitable manner among sports. Women's basketball should offer the same number of scholarships as men's basketball. Same for track, volleyball, wrestling, swimming, gymnastics, rowing, tennis, soccer, lacrosse, men baseball and women softball, men ice hockey and women field hockey. Schools would be free to choose which sports for each gender they participate in. If they don't want women's basketball but have a men's basketball team then they need to add one or more women's sport that offers the same number of scholarships as basketball. When Title IX was introduced it was obtuse in the name of equality by not acknowledging the obvious fact that in terms of participation, men play football and women play volleyball and the two sports have vastly different roster sizes. I would argue the same point if volleyball had a much larger roster size than football and some women sports were cut to accommodate Title IX.
I don't see any problems with what the university is doing to balance out football walkons.
Cdog923
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Landlord
Banned
Somewhere in between the assertions in your first and second post is where the nature of this lies with some amount of uncomfortableness for me at least. I don't doubt that the walk-on swimmers are enjoying themselves and getting a benefit. And that's a good thing for them. But that has nothing to do with whether or not a thing is good. Because it seems the extreme on the other side is to suggest that our Athletic Department has created a completely artificial facade in order to serve the football king.
Neither of those is a true assessment of the situation but wherever it lies somewhere in the middle makes me at least a bit uncomfortable. Moos is wildly more cutthroat and aggressive as an AD than any I've experienced in my life. It brings about some great results, but it also makes me wonder if we start playing more and more fast and loose with our mission statement.
I'm not defending OWH, but maybe UNL could/should have figured out a non-patchwork potentially rule skirting solution from the very start, figured out a pathway to do it right and responsibly, and told football they'll have to be patient as doing something like this right with integrity will take some time.
I think it would be unreasonable for someone to read through it all and NOT see some red flags. How couldn't you? Our football team wants to double its roster, so the AD tells the swim team to go find a bunch of women on campus who aren't qualified, say that they're on the swim team but not let them practice with or be coached by or share a locker room with the swim team? Of course that's just one way to frame it, but of course there are red flags here.
Side note, to those criticizing or bemoaning the existence of Title IX; could you ever possibly imagine a scenario where our athletic department tells the football team or the men's basketball team to shrink their roster by 20% in order to accomodate the wishes of John Cook and his expanding volleyball roster? Would there ever be a time that a men's sport was instructed to (possibly) artificially inflate or deflate its roster and the quality of its players in order to serve a women's sport?
No, of course not. And that's why we need Title IX. Because it's obvious even to a lot of administrators who follow the rules of it that women's sports aren't respected or thought of as equals, even if they are treated as such by the rules.
Born N Bled Red
New member
Umm, I believe there have been conversations like. Boy, we really want this guy to play football for us, he's also pretty decent at track/baseball/wrestling. Do you think you could check him out and potentially make room for him on the roster? He'd really like to play both... let's be honest, at Nebraska almost all sports come secondary to football. Not trying to downplay your point, but at NU, l believe nonfootball sports are taxed by football in someway.
BigRedBuster
Active member
I might be wrong. But, I'm pretty sure that if a player plays football and runs track, their scholarship still be counted in the 85 and also wouldn't have any affect on Title IX issues.
Born N Bled Red
New member
This comment really wasn't about number of scholarships... more addressing the idea that a male sport wouldn't be asked to make roster adjustments in the name of a better football team. It happens, just not to the extent it did for the affect womens teams.
Mierin
Donor
One issue with this is women shouldn’t be penalized because one of the men’s sports has 160 players in it. If that’s the choice we’re making, and of course it is now because it makes $, that shouldn’t mean the women’s sports should have to be the same.
The number of athletes is far more important than the number of sports. We make sacrifices on the # of men’s sports because we choose to have football.
knapplc
Active member
4skers89
New member
The other strategy schools should have taken when Title IX was introduced was to eliminate the football program or at least threaten it. Everybody loses then.
Landlord
Banned
Why would you take a strategy where you lose?
I'd like to see you pitch that to Churchill on D-Day. "Hey uh, you know what you should do is just not fire back at the Nazis. Or at least threaten to not fight at all."
Decoy73
New member
Without NU football there’s no BIG money. There’s no Adidas apparel contract, no nice facilities and other than maybe MBB and VB, likely no other sports. But the OWH implies Frost and Moos are the villains here because they want a bigger roster to possibly get a competitive advantage. That’s the problem I have with Cordes and his article. Look, what Frost wants, Frost gets IMO, if he truly believes it can help us win a conference title someday. That’s his job!! As far as other sports go, just be glad there’s football. And quit your b!^@h’in about 20 walk-on spots.