CSC Chairman Eric Pearson on the “No Brainer” Quota
Earlier today, National Review Online ran a piece by College Sports Council Chairman Eric Pearson about the rollback of the model survey option for Title IX compliance by the Obama Administration. It’s called, “The ‘No Brainer’ Gender Quota.”
The long-term impact of the recent rollback is that colleges will continue to eliminate men’s teams in order to comply with Title IX’s gender quota. In the 2008–09 season, NCAA schools sponsored 9,560 teams for women and 8,465 teams for men. Look for that gap to grow in the future. And don’t expect many women’s gymnastics or tennis teams to be added: Their small rosters of highly experienced athletes are much less helpful than rowing teams, which have giant rosters filled with novice athletes who are able to “walk on” without any experience in the sport.
Even more alarming will be the effect on our secondary-school system. Look for the gender quota to appear soon at a high school near you. In 2008–09 about 4.4 million boys and 3.1 million girls participated in high-school sports. To make those numbers 50-50 could well require benching more than a million boys. Unfortunately for the next generation of boys, school administrators looking to avoid being sued by gender-quota activists will view cutting down the total number of male students playing high-school sports as a “no brainer.”
If it makes any difference, feel free to read the same article over at National Public Radio.