FB: Empire 8

[pumkinattack]

Re:  Elmira & football w/29% male enrollment

Title IX???

Not a criticism of the law, but the way it's applied they'd have to add 2-4 female sports (if not more) in order to add football.  It's not a 5yr lookback, they can't add male enrollment after the fact and hope to get into compliance.

[AUPepBand]

Re:  Elmira & football w/29% male enrollment

Title IX???

Not a criticism of the law, but the way it's applied they'd have to add 2-4 female sports (if not more) in order to add football.  It's not a 5yr lookback, they can't add male enrollment after the fact and hope to get into compliance.

Pep is not clear how Title IX is applied to D3 colleges. Can anyone give a quick overview for Pep?

[pumkinattack]

Its all colleges (any that receive a nickel of federal funds).  There's a three pronged test, but the big one is proportionate participation opportunist, which means both athletic slits and, more importantly vis a vis football, budget dollars spent.  I follow it because I'm interested in seeing more DI lacrosse, but the big universities spend so much dough on big football that they've already got like ten women's sports (typically including women's lacrosse) to offset it.  While D3 football budgets are much smaller and less disproportionate, I'd think at 29% makes Elmira would need to get male enrollment up first.  It is still expensive to run an 80+ roster with ten games and travel.  Richmond, which is IAA (will never adopt BCS/FCS), had to drop two men's sports (including soccer) to add lacrosse, because even there FB is such budget buster.


http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX

[Bombers798891]

Re:  Elmira & football w/29% male enrollment

Title IX???

Not a criticism of the law, but the way it's applied they'd have to add 2-4 female sports (if not more) in order to add football. 

No. It's a common misunderstanding that the only way to be in compliance with Title IX is through proportionality. If the school "has a history and continuing practice of program expansion that is responsive to the developing interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex" or meeting the interests and abilities of the female student body on campus, they'd be in compliance, even if "there are disproportionately fewer females than males participating in sports."

Of course, since most schools don't have that history--if they did, they'd probably already be in compliance--and fully meeting interests and abilities would be time-consuming and expensive, it's much easier to just focus on proportions. But in the era of shrinking budgets, getting in proportion often means cutting a men's sport rather than adding a women's sport.

This not only cuts back on the schools expenses, but it gives the people upset about the sport being cut something else to blame. "It's not the school's fault, you understand. It's this law. We HAD to cut this men's sport" Well, no, you didn't. You chose to.

The last enrollment figure I saw for Elmira was 1,358, with roughly 978 being women. It's entirely possible, especially with the upcoming addition of women's X-C giving them 10 sports for women for Title IX purposes (I don't think cheerleading counts for that), that they've fully met the interests and abilities of the female student body on campus and may already be in compliance.

[pumkinattack]

Yes, but it the courts, they've applied all three tests most recently and also apply proportionality to mean dollars spent.  That's the killer.  It's not the %, necessarily, but if the court interpretation is going to be, and it has been lately, $ spent, try reconciling the costs of a football program. 

And Elmira is already adding men's baseball. 

I'm all for them adding it, but it's really hard these days.  The interpretation being $ is, IMO, a very liberal (not politically, but meaning wide) interpretation of the language. 

Edit:  Funny point about Cheerleading.  There's a suit involving Quinnipiac who is trying to count cheerleading for this purpose.  Not sure where it is today. 

[Bombers798891]

Yes, but it the courts, they've applied all three tests most recently and also apply proportionality to mean dollars spent.  That's the killer.  It's not the %, necessarily, but if the court interpretation is going to be, and it has been lately, $ spent, try reconciling the costs of a football program. 

And Elmira is already adding men's baseball. 

I'm all for them adding it, but it's really hard these days.  The interpretation being $ is, IMO, a very liberal (not politically, but meaning wide) interpretation of the language.

But regardless if proportionality is applied to roster spots or dollars spent, it's still just one of the three options a school has. If Elmira can show they've fully accommodated the interests and abilities of the 978 women on campus, they can spend whatever they want on football.

Elmira could also be taking the long view and hope that adding baseball and football will drive up male enrollment outside of the athletes on the teams themselves, thus making the proportions of female-male students less unbalanced. I don't know enough about if this really works at the D-III level, but I know many colleges believe athletics can drive enrollment.

According to the women's sports foundation, "The only monetary requirement of Title IX deals with the area of scholarships" which would not be affected by football.

"Funding for women's and men's programs does not have to be equal, but a significant disparity in funds does suggest that institutions could be found non-compliant in other program areas. "

http://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/en/home/advocate/title-ix-and-issues/what-is-title-ix/standard-language-of-title-ix

[AUPepBand]

When Pep was just a pup, he wanted to be a sportswriter. But as time passed, it became apparent that a sportswriter needed also to be adept at law, particularly with pro sports, and now, even more so, college athletics. Law was neither Pep's interest nor forte. Now Pep Jr. has married a George Washington University Law School grad who did her undergrad work at Vanderbilt and Pep is thinking he can't run from the "law" anymore.

Thanks for the input, pa and 798891.....+K

On Saxon Warriors!

[ExTartanPlayer]

One point worth noting here, although it wouldn't totally offset the budget-balancing, is that adding football probably would increase male enrollment to some extent, possibly adding 50-100 more males than would otherwise attend school at Elmira.  I'm no expert on the ins and outs of Title IX, so take this with a grain of salt.

*Edited: I see that Bombers essentially already made this point.

[sjfcards]

I had not considered the Title IX aspect of an EC football team. A really good point though. Does anyone know EC's current breakdown of existing sports?

[D3viewer]

How about Naz adding football ? Wow. Right down the street from Fisher. Bigger than EC and maybe Fisher. That would be some recruiting battles w SJF if they got going.

[pumkinattack]

I don't really care to continue arguing this, but I never claimed that proportionality necessarily meant % of female/male enrollment.  The first two prongs have always failed males in the courts, there's simply no case law supporting males there (which is fine,it is what it is) the third prong has nothing to do with scholarship dollars. (So that women's foundation quote is irrelevant). However the DOE for the past 20+ years has looked at "equal treatment" and its been applied by looking at total funding for male vs female vis a vis enrollment.   I'm happy to argue against the politicians in this area and you could argue that Men are underrepresented at Elmira, but he reality is they'd have a massive uphill battle in adding football and not either fighting the govt or somehow balancing it off. 

And it's vastly overstated to suggest that institutions are happy to cut sports.  Hobart felt real pain financially in cutting baseball when bumping lax to DI w the only alternative being vastly adding funding cost to women's athletics.  I happen to know someone in the administration at U of Richmond and they don't take dropping men's soccer lightly and know they're losing money in the short run (but believe its the best answer for the continued success of that institution and can't afford to just double down, like the NBA luxury tax).

As much as I love more football programs, I also have to question what the real benefit of more upstate, marginal schools adding football.  The future dilution has already been noted, as has the wretched graduation rate at Utica (imagine benkwitt and three or four of those guys adding depth elsewhere if UC FB didn't exist, for example).  There's 300 Odd FB programs in D3 now and overall enrollment (certainly amongst males) in college is declining.  What's the point other than diluting the quality of D3 FB and letting every Jonny participate?  It's not like college football is somehow underrepresented already.  Expansion for the sake of expansion reminds me of x-games and NASCAR fans insisting that their activities be defined as sports so as to be part of a broader group of "athletes" rather than just be content with the rate skill/talent required to do what they do.  It's the perverse homoginization of the world in order to "include" everyone which has the perverse effect of diluting genuinely, unique talent.

[Mr. Ypsi]

D3 football is nowhere near 300 - I don't think it has even reached 240 (and that counts NESCAC, which in football, is glorified intramurals, since they play NO ONE except themselves.)

[pumkinattack]

Who cares, that's 25,000 odd kids playing solely at the D3 level.  Probably 10% is little more than glorified club sports to bring students into the school with a false sense that its competitive with the rest and will never be supported by the institutions. 

Hobart would've been in that bottom 10% 25yrs ago, but at least they had a history of playing it the predates the 20th century.  I seriously question the motives of any institution that attempts to add football at this point.  It's not like the growth rate and younger ages supports it and the current trajectory with greater science around head trauma is probably going to reduce the supply even more.   If its just a marketing tool for these institutions, fine, but give up all federal fundig includinng subsidized student sebt if your going to push costs far in excess of inflation and so cravenly market to underage kids.

Everyone I work with is ok with their kids playing pee wee level FB and love watching it, but will do everything in their power to keep their kids from playing at HS-and that includes a few who played college FB.

[D3viewer]

Who cares, that's 25,000 odd kids playing solely at the D3 level.  Probably 10% is little more than glorified club sports to bring students into the school with a false sense that its competitive with the rest and will never be supported by the institutions. 

Hobart would've been in that bottom 10% 25yrs ago, but at least they had a history of playing it the predates the 20th century.  I seriously question the motives of any institution that attempts to add football at this point.  It's not like the growth rate and younger ages supports it and the current trajectory with greater science around head trauma is probably going to reduce the supply even more.   If its just a marketing tool for these institutions, fine, but give up all federal fundig includinng subsidized student sebt if your going to push costs far in excess of inflation and so cravenly market to underage kids.

Everyone I work with is ok with their kids playing pee wee level FB and love watching it, but will do everything in their power to keep their kids from playing at HS-and that includes a few who played college FB.

Interesting...in my town everyone has their kid play pee wee because they think their kid will be the next HS superstar.

[AUPepBand]

Who cares, that's 25,000 odd kids playing solely at the D3 level.  Probably 10% is little more than glorified club sports to bring students into the school with a false sense that its competitive with the rest and will never be supported by the institutions. 

Hobart would've been in that bottom 10% 25yrs ago, but at least they had a history of playing it the predates the 20th century.  I seriously question the motives of any institution that attempts to add football at this point.  It's not like the growth rate and younger ages supports it and the current trajectory with greater science around head trauma is probably going to reduce the supply even more.   If its just a marketing tool for these institutions, fine, but give up all federal fundig includinng subsidized student sebt if your going to push costs far in excess of inflation and so cravenly market to underage kids.

Everyone I work with is ok with their kids playing pee wee level FB and love watching it, but will do everything in their power to keep their kids from playing at HS-and that includes a few who played college FB.

D3viewer:  Interesting...in my town everyone has their kid play pee wee because they think their kid will be the next HS superstar.