How They Cut Wrestling At Nebraska-Omaha
Yesterday, ESPN’s Outside the Lines did a report on the recent elimination of football and wrestling at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. The school took the action as part of its planned move to Division I. At the time, the school said that the move would help with Title IX compliance in the future (click here for our initial reaction to that announcement).
Here are a couple of thoughts:
- It’s hard to think of a more heartbreaking example of the sort of damage that eliminating a team can do to student-athletes and coaches. If a team that wins three consecutive national titles can’t be safe, then no team is safe.
- There are a number of other elements that are all too familiar to us here at the College Sports Council, not the least of which is how actual student-athletes get written out of the conversation once their teams are under threat. The end always comes like a bolt out of the blue.
- Over and over again, gender quota advocates say that football is the problem when it comes to Title IX compliance. If they had their way, we’d see more football programs like the one at Nebraska-Omaha go the way of the dodo bird. As we’ve said in the past, football isn’t the problem. Using gender qutoas to enforce Title IX is the real problem.
- Finally, while Title IX wasn’t the whole reason behind the elimination of these two teams, it certainly contributed to the calculus involved in the decision. Without the pressure from the de facto quota system, both programs might have been able to survive.