… schools would have to invent it.
An examination of athletic participation data suggests many big-time football schools are sporting large rowing rosters, which can help them stay in compliance with the federal gender equity law known as Title IX.
Michigan reported 132 women’s rowers in 2018. The figures were 110 at Ohio State, 101 at Texas and 93 at Oklahoma. Iowa had a sizable squad at 91. But no school could rival Wisconsin and its eye-popping roster of 176 — almost triple the size of the average NCAA squad.
Women’s athletic advocates say the schools’ out-sized rowing teams bear scrutiny under Title IX.
In most cases, the rosters are inflated by large numbers of “novice” rowers — women recruited from the general student body to give the sport a try. As long as those rookies are still on the roster by the time of the team’s first competition, the schools can officially count them as female athletes.
This isn’t offered as criticism of Title IX. After all, there’s nothing wrong with women getting scholarships to play sports.
What it does go to show is how lazy schools are about meeting Title IX requirements and how that laziness actually winds up hurting the very people it was designed to help.
Advocates say the teams are so large they leave many of the women with little real opportunity to compete, denying women a true athletic opportunity…
She said if the schools are truly committed to women’s athletic participation, they would add a women’s team in a new sport rather than padding their rowing rosters.
‘Ya think? But that would only serve to get away from the real purpose of having a women’s rowing team, which is…
Most of the largest rowing rosters can be found at football schools, a trend that’s likely explained by the added difficulty football schools face in achieving gender balance. Football often involves even larger rosters, averaging 121 players at the game’s highest level. And there is no corresponding women’s sport to balance against it.
“You can’t ever match the football numbers, but rowing is the sport that can bring in the most participants on the women’s side,” said a former athletic director who worked at schools with rowing, speaking on the condition he not be named.
Alabama has 120 women rowers on scholarship. Nick Saban appreciates those ladies doing their best to support Alabama football.
20 scholarships allocated to 120 women? I bet every member of the team is getting 1/120th of a scholarship. Otherwise, these teams could never be a real team.
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Sorry, no coffee yet. I completely whiffed on the math. Thanks, Navin.
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Dude, I can’t even turn on the computer without coffee on board.
29 days. Go Dawgs!
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Lori Laughlin got her daughters into USC through … you guessed it … the women’s rowing team.
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Yeah, I was going to say won’t somebody think of the poor Hollywood actor kids? How else are they going to get into elite schools?
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I heard one of her daughters was kicked out of her sorority at USC because of all of this.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if they all get full scholarship to even things out. It’s men’s baseball and wrestlers that have to slice and dice them.
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According to the NCAA website, women’s rowing has 20 scholarships to give. They slice and dice them just like those other teams do, but the 120 count fully for gender equity purposes.
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I stand corrected.
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In other words, it’s a scam.
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Try having a track team. At least HS baseball players can choose to go pro.
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I was going to say something about powderpuff football but anything I came up with made me sound like a chauvinist or a lecher, and the point of the post was athletic departments using the lazy eye to look the other way, so: Row Tide!
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Row Tide! That’s good work there, GC.
Post of the day!
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120 divided by 20 is 6, to 1/6 of a scholarship, but your point is valid.
I would guess the more likely scenario, though, is that the 10 to 20 real rowers get half scholarships (maybe a couple get a full scholarship), and the remainder is split into even smaller portions for the rest of the group.
Just a guess.
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I would imagine a very large proportion are not on scholarship at all. I don’t think Title IX mandates equivalence of scholarship dollars or numbers; it only mandates equivalence of participants.
So they’re likely dividing up 25 or 30 scholarships and the rest are “walk-ons.”
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This is where you see the negative effects of government forced “equality,” and only a small portion of why Title IX should be revisited. The real reason we must re-examine this statute are the completely unintended consequences of how we saw Title IX begin to be abused by the previous administration as a tool to take away due process and the rights of the accused with their little kangaroo courts. Title IX is also the reason why it is impractical to pay football players in the way many people say they want, because whatever you’d pay the football players who earn money, you’d have to pay women rowers who lose money the same amount.
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Playpen. Thanks.
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Everything I said is germane. The issue isn’t gaming the system, it’s that there’s a system to be gamed through the creation and haphazard application of Title IX, up to and including the gross miscarriages of justice we began to see occur starting around 2009. The last didn’t happen before that, because the shift came as a directive from the previous administration. That’s not a partisan issue, that’s a matter of fact.
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Unless you’re arguing that Alabama has 120 women rowers because of Obama, it’s not germane.
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Not what I’m saying at all. It’s about Title IX, the abuses and excesses of government intrusion to “make things fair,” which is what it all comes back to.
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And that’s a topic for the Playpen, not this message thread.
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Fair enough.
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https://www.omaha.com/sports/football-schools-like-alabama-clemson-michigan-use-massive-women-s/article_03d2e53d-1a19-5d2e-a752-5472a2532342.html Excuse me….didn’t YOU post this on this thread? Irvin is commenting on what’s been posted as the intro to the thread. Just sayin.’
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The women’s world cup winners like Title IX
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The goddamned Germans got nuttin’ to do wit’ it!
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Horseshit. His post was about the college sports.
“That government that governs least, governs best”…HDT
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“That government which governs least, governs best”. HDT.
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I wondered how long it would take for someone to make an ignorant comment about Title IX. Not long apparently.
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I wondered how long it would take for someone to make an ad hominem attack defending Title IX without addressing a single one of the legitimate issues raised.
Not long, apparently.
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Just looked – UGA shows 30 women on the rowing varsity. It doesn’t show if there are additional novice rowers/coxwains.
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UGA has a club rowing team, not an official school-sponsored athletic program. Based on the numbers, it seems that Equestrian is our ground for balancing out Title IX
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Beat me to it.
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Since you brought it up: A woman called a “Cock-sun” yelling “stroke” at a bunch of other women? That’s sexist and sexism is wrong.
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You, dear reader, are looking for equestrian.
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What do the horses, who are doing all the heavy lifting, get out of the deal?
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Room and board
#notaplantation
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Not enough. They’re the glue that holds the team together.
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Neigh. Just….neigh.
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He’s just a hayter.
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Now we’re just beating a dead horse.
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I only know about Wisconsin and that’s because my cousin rowed there. The coach reaches out to all former swimmers who are attending Wisconsin, and tries to get them to come out for the rowing team. Rowing is mostly muscle and very little skill.
My cousin stuck with it ended up being a solid member of the team. Scholarship? Nope. A few scholarships went to the girls who rowed on HS and were recruited. My cousin met great friends and played a Div I sport.
I bet this is coming from parents of HS rowers who don’t want half of the competitive team to come from the novice team. They feel like their spots are being taken by athletes who didn’t invest in the sport early on.
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That’s about what I thought…many opportunities for participation, not so many scholarships.
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Interesting. “Soccer” (or in this case rowing) parents going “all-in” for Little Jenny. Travel teams, private coaches…..your theory wouldn’t surprise me in the least. This is why I have been adamant to my wife that I do NOT wish to actively encourage our kids to play on those really serious competitive teams or steer them towards concentration in a particular sport.
Somehow the myth that all “scholarship” athletes are getting full rides to college largely still exists…..I had to break it to my mother-in-law that shoving one of our daughters into concentrating on a single low-profile sport where we would dedicate much of our time and money was a dumb investment in the sense of chasing a scholarship. She’s one of the people that thinks all these schools have to pay crappy female golfers full athletic scholarships. Sorry grandma, that upper 80s / low 90s score may get us books and a couple grand at some out of the way place (if they can even do that)……..I’m not spending 4yrs of my life and way more money chasing something she may or may not even like more than any other sport.
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I agree. I used to read the Your Kid’s Not Going Pro blog. It’s amazing how many parents stop worrying about Junior learning math and instead focus on teaching him how to throw a curve ball.
But I do encourage my kids to play golf. It’s the one sport they can play for life. And it’s one of the few you can suck at and still enjoy.
I also encourage my daughter to play golf for the same reason I pole vaulted in high school. I was the only guy around. All I had to do was show up at a track meet, clear 3 feet, and it was another gold medal for me. I didn’t get any scholarship offers, but my trophy case looked pretty impressive.
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4 years? Try 10. I see it with all sports, male and female, every season, year after year and it’s getting worse. Mommies and Daddies living vicariously through their prodigies has always been a thing, but… I manage facilities for a 7 high school district and I can tell some stories that will make your blood boil or laugh out loud about overzealous parenting and coaching, and how this small section of a school district’s demographic thinks your tax dollars should be spent. They’re crazy and they don’t care about YOUR kid, unless he plays for their team.
Having said that, it’s endemic to all the non-scholastic programs, including band and drama.
Oh BTYW, title IX is a thing at the middle-high level. A big thing.
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Clemson has been recruiting regular students to the rowing team since at least 06. These schools could at least provide an equestrian roster to stockpile. It’s the gentile thing to do.
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Gentile or gentle? Either way I dunno buddy. We eat a lot. Gollee Wilbur.
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Gentile
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Genteel
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No, I was referring to non Jews. 😉
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Lol
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Sorry, Ed. Mares-only.
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I think Real Sports on HBO did a piece on this some years back.
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even the best intention-ed laws and maybe especially the best intention-ed laws have the most unintended consequences. Just totally rewrite Title IX and fix these problems but too many school administrators make too much money applying these byzantine rules and regulations and the last thing they want is clarity and simplicity because it would put them out of a job. Several other solutions for this. The most obvious is take all revenue positive sports out from under the Title IX provisions. The football program is not spending taxpayer money it has a product that more than pays for itself. At UGA this probably means take football, men:s basketball and women’s gymnastics get out from under the Title IX analysis and then even out the numbers of scholarships. Another option is declare all sports non gender specific(maybe transgender is the right term….I truly don’t know anymore) and allow both sexes to compete on the football ,basketball, gymnastics,baseball ,equestrian,soccer,and softball teams. It is not what I recommend but it is equal and fundamentally fair. In my limited experience this cure(Title IX)was and continues to be as bad as the problem, I wish lawyers,administrators and bureaucrats understood what Hippocrates was explaining to Doctors thousands of years ago ….but they don’t .
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I’m not waxing the girls’ basketball teams’ balls.
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“She said if the schools are truly committed to women’s athletic participation, they would add a women’s team in a new sport rather than padding their rowing rosters.”
That’s lazy thinking. It’s not that simple. How many women’s sports and how many men’s sports does your hypothetical college opreate? How many ‘applicants’ does the college have for the sports? How many of the women are actually experienced scullers, as compared to scholarship hunters? It happens ya know. Is Ole Siwash U winking and nodding along with the scholarship hunters?
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Experienced scullers? Did you not read the whole article? They’re pulling warm bodies from the general student population to bump up the numbers.
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I didn’t read the whole story, but what you said is what I mean. I danced around the point because I didn’t want to get flamed, but: maybe (heaven forfend) there aren’t as many women interested in sports as there are men, and the heavy hand of the feds is distorting things. I object to the thinking that the solution is adding more sports. They’re pulling from the student body just to get numbers up.
I can’t divine what’s in people’s minds, but my cynical side says there are women on campuses getting full scholarships who aren’t really scullers, or field hockey players, etc.
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How many high schools in Alabama do you figure have women’s rowing programs?
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Right! So where’s our disagreement?
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That’s a trick question, there are no high schools in Alabama
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All of them in about an hour if it helps football, 😉
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Given Bama gets something like half (more?) of its students from out-of-state places like Maryland and Pennsylvania, I’m not sure it matters?
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I see his point (I think). They are both right and wrong to an extent without knowing more…….yes, it’s lazy and disingenuous to simply stack a rowing roster but she’s also coming from a somewhat selfish point of view as well in that she is advocating for a future unidentified base of women that may or may not have the need / want to go to Alabama to participate in XYZ sport. Sort of along the same lines as asking why we need an engineering school at UGA when there has always been a good one at Tech, but a question with (obviously) less importance and impact as this is amateur sports.
Hers is kind of a if-you-built it-they will-come theory while the school meanwhile is actually providing opportunities for women ALREADY ENROLLED, albeit in a weird way. These are extra-curricular activities ostensibly, right ? The truly appropriate thing to do would be for Alabama (or anyone else) to identify the most participated high school sport in their state or in the region that they don’t currently offer and add that. May be a hard find. But you can’t totally convince me she’s right / school wrong unless you (1) show me some of the current call-up rowers who would wish to play something else but are stuck in rowing or (2) a demonstrable need for the state flagship to add a particular sport because of its current popularity. Keeping aside Title IX hurdles, an example of that at UGA would be Men’s lacrosse. The state of high school lax in Georgia has moved up the national hierarchy at lightening speed over the last decade and the flagship does not have a men’s team (and could easily buy their way into success if they wanted).
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I just don’t see the love of sports among as many women as I do men. The sexes are different and that’s OK. Not sure why government wants to force the issue.
Maybe an easy fix would be to make the football and basketball players employees, with school requirements. Pay them, then let them pay their own way to school. Then there’s no scholarship number to try to keep up with on the female side. And those that are truly student athletes (i.e. non revenue sports) can get equal scholarships for both men and women.
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Crew used to be (maybe still?) one of the clever side doors into an Ivy.
My cousin rowed in HS and parlayed that into a spot on the Cornell Crew Team. As soon as she was enrolled and confirmed that they wouldn’t kick her out, she quit the team and hasn’t been in a boat since.
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I knew a guy who pulled a similar move with the soccer team at Brown.
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Having a daughter who swims, I see plenty of love of sports in girls and women. Quite frankly, girls in swimming tend to far outnumber boys, at least here in Indiana. So I think there are plenty of sports that women and girls love, they’re just different sports from what I and my guy friends tend to like.
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It’s not about the individual passion. It’s about the collective numbers. ESPN caters to men. Sports bars cater to men. Because women don’t generate the same numbers of fans and the same amount of interest that men do. Mens sports leagues generate exponentially more revenue than womens sports leagues do.
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Your comment seems to go to viewership, as opposed to participation. I don’t disagree that people care to watch men’s sports more than women’s. But Former Fan’s comment seemed more geared towards participation, of which there is tremendous interest by women. It’s just in sports that you and I aren’t likely to watch.
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It’s not about either. It’s about revenue.
Now, the pursuit of revenue when it comes to sport is not the be all end all, as sport provides great teaching moments and life skills to all participants regardless of gender.
Let’s stop pretending women’s sports outside of women’s college basketball and the wome/ World Cup every four years makes enough revenue to pay for itself. They don’t. The WNBA continues to be a money loser propped up by the NBA’s massive revenue. Almost all women’s college sports are propped up by the revenue from men’s sports, specially football.
With regards to Title IX, I have no issue with a 1:1 scholarship ratio when it comes to the non revenue sports. Or even for some of the revenue sports like men’s baseball and basketball. But football should not be counted against the men’s scholarships when football is the only reason why any women’s sport outside of basketball exists on campus.
Reframing Title IX in this way would all men’s sports that have been jettisoned at most schools, like wrestling, to come back, and it would go a long way to promote equity, as opposed to “equality.”
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It applies to both. Some girls are passionate to compete in sports. Most aren’t. And less girls care to compete than boys do.
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“I just don’t see the love of sports among as many women as I do men.”
The world cup champion women’s soccer team was getting plenty of love at that tickertape parade.
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You don’t realize that this is a really bad example for your argument.
The Women’s World Cup made about $140M this past year.
The Men’s World Cup made about $2B.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Idiots like Rapinoe talk about “equal pay,” without having any clue to what that actually means. First of all, the women’s team actually makes far more of a percentage of what they earn than the men do. The men simply out-earn them, which is why, even though they lag in percentage, they still make more, from the World Cup. But then we find out this week that beyond the World Cup, the women’s team actually does make more, in totality, per year than the men’s team does. So what are the idiots whining about, really? I think we know.
Not bad though, for a team of champions who couldn’t beat a Texas all-star soccer team of 15 and under boys.
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You sound fun…
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And yet, find anything in my argument that’s wrong. 🤷🏻♂️
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More fun by the minute.
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Saying more nothing by the minute. Question: If you have nothing to say Lone Star, why say anything at all? Unless it’s just narcissism?
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On a barely related note, I highly recommend the book “The Boys in the Boat” about the University of Washington rowing team in the 30’s that beat all the elite eastern schools and competed in the 1936 Olympics. There was an “American Experience” about it as well. I couldn’t care less about rowing, but it’s a great book and story.
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I agree with this recommendation. Read it on vacation a few years back. Best book I’ve read in a long while.
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This law was written in the early 70s. Gender equity was a real issue then. This law has been effective for white kids mostly. Copied from the aauw.org website:
To comply with Title IX, a school’s athletics program must do at least one of the following:
Provide athletic opportunities to male and female students in proportion to their overall enrollment at the institution
Demonstrate a history of continually expanding athletic opportunities for the underrepresented sex
Demonstrate that the available opportunities meet the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex
The last two are difficult to do compared to the first one. Therefore, we have rowing rosters with 120 athletes on it. The law could use a re-write, but if you have a wife or a daughter that is involved in sport, it’s likely because of this law.
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Title IX is bullshit. We all know it.
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No, it’s not, but this take certainly is.
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So a 120 member rowing team makes sense to you? D, JD.
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The vast majority of schools have about 65% to 75% women students. So schools shouldn’t have schollies, or even sports, for women – because its “bullshit”. Got it.
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That’s not what Title IX states. Nice strawman, though.
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Just looking at all the women’s sports at UGA I am wondering what sports need to be added I have no problem adding a sport but it seems like we have pretty much all our bases covered so to speak. Maybe add Lacrosse for women. Not being an asshole here but what sports are we going to come up with that adds an extra 85 scholarships to women’s side. I played rugby on the club team back in the early 90s. We played all kinds of clubs and no schollys. Is the answer to have less men’s sports? Maybe E sports will be the answer.. I genuinely have no idea how this shit should work. That probably qualifies me to be the next AD
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“I genuinely have no idea how this shit should work. That probably qualifies me to be the next AD.”
LOL. It’s funny because it’s true.
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ESports are not under the NCAA umbrella. Schools can give unlimited scholarships there, but it wont move the sports needle.
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The amount of revenue and viewership that e-sports have begun to generate is substantial. And the promoters that “produce” those tournaments have managed to lasso in big-name sponsors like Coke, Intel, Mercedes. The value of the property is over 1.6B.
There was some tournament in Poland last year that was viewed by 46M peeps.It’s slightly bizarre.
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I vote for Lingerie Football.
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You are a Chauvinist and a Lecher. Please see my comment @ 7:25.
Also, Girls programs are very competitive too, and unless you want to see the female version of Trinton Sturdivant in red and black bra and panties you might want to reconsider…. OMG what if Coach Yoculan decided to have her play center!
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I watch women’s softball and basketball because they are competitive athletic games where you can cheer for individuals, just like in men’s sports. How many extras can we get legitimately to back up those team’s depth, along with the depth of our women’s swim and gymnastic teams?
In the 50’s, my sister was a star guard on our women’s BBall team in HS and their team was much better and more competitive in HS championships than the men’s. We attended every game and after it was over, there was a mass exodus because we didn’t get excited about watching our men’s team take a dump on the court. My sister later got a scholarship in music and didn’t have a chance to go further in sports.
Go Title IX!
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Colleges would literally give a tree a scholarship to hit their Title IX numbers if they could prove it was female. Today who knows, maybe the tree only has to feel like it is a female. I think they generally go both ways.
Separate football from the NCAA and pay the players salaries as defacto professional athletes and employees of the schools. After football operational expenses, turn over the rest to the AD for the non revenue sports. Then sort out the Title IX counters without the football team that is paying for everything to begin with. The rowing numbers will be a lot more realistic.
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There are strictly female trees, dude, so there is still some hope for your plan.
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Like Bluto, I’m sick and tired of cynical athletic directors screwing up the best laid plans of our altruistic politicians. It’s certainly not the government’s fault if mandates have unintended consequences. Title IX 2.0 here we come!
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Yes, because everyone knows if Title IX didn’t exist, athletic directors would have no incentive to be lazy and cynical.
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Not my argument. But I’m sure we’re just a few more titles away from regulating the laziness and cynicism right out of them.
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Not trying to be snarky…what unintended consequences do you see? I agree that there are several.
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Title IX is about forcing equality on a situation that is inherently, naturally, not equal. It’s about quotas. So schools create new and inventive sports for females. They cajole female non-athletes into being on teams. And they eliminate male sports. Because in the world of Title IX, a male high school champion wrestler and a female who might like to try rowing (along with her entire sorority) cancel each other out. Strike the male and welcome the female and things are fair. But let the male athlete compete while leaving the female (who is indifferent) alone, and things aren’t fair.
At K-12, schools with even less funding than colleges just go straight to eliminating things like general PE classes in order to fund girls sports. And the girls sports added tend to be specialized and upper class like tennis, golf, and swimming. So wealthy female tennis players get more opportunity. Poor female students (who tend to exercise less than richer students) have their PE classes cut.
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If more unisex individuals who self identify enroll, how will Title IX apply? Can’t Saban just “confirm” half his roster identifies as female? Asking for a confused friend.
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You’re onto something. I used to identify as a straight white male. Now, I’m a transblack translesbian. I check all kinds of boxes.
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Not so sure I would admit that publicly, even just on a blog.
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That’s just how stunning and brave I am.
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The irony: All of the handwringing about Title IX to make sure enough women play sports in college. Meanwhile far fewer men even ATTEND college period and no federal or political action to solve that injustice.
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The fact is, neither or are “injustices.” Sometimes choices are just choices. The idea that anyone “must” go to college is in and of itself, false. This false axiom has seen a decline in skilled labor that is killing the competitive market for plumbers, carpenters, mechanics, AC repair, etc, driving up prices for those services because there are fewer and fewer people able to do those jobs with each passing year. All you need to start an apprenticeship in those jobs is a high school diploma.
We’ve seen, time and time again, the surest way to avoid poverty in the United States is to graduate college and do not have children out of wedlock. You do those two things, and you can avoid poverty. I would argue as vast majority of people with college degrees with a ton of student loan debt are actually poor, regardless of what their salary is, but especially if they got some kind of useless soft-science or gender studies degree.
Maybe if we first allow people to make the choices they want, and then make adjustments if need be, we’d be in a better place culturally, instead of imposing ad hoc rules on everyone, even when they do not apply.
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I was being facetious with the “injustice” part. That word only applies when certain inequalities can be used to someone’s advantage.
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This is what happens when you have a mandated system rather than one where the schools are at liberty to pick what and how much they want based on what the public wants to see and the schools want to provide. They would provide everything they could that wasn’t a net loss for them.
These kind of policies prevent far more quantity athletes than they help especially at the smaller schools.
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It exists because universities accept federal money.
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Is that supposed to make a difference?
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