Title IX Compliance- Brian Kochheiser

One of the parts of Title IX that I find so interesting is how it impacts not only females but males as well. Athletic Directors around the country are constantly faced with difficult budget and compliance decisions that affect many student athletes. Athletic department budgets are very tight, and many of them don’t even make money, so there are always discussions every year about how to bring in revenue and balance the budget. Unfortunately, when balancing the budget and coming into Title IX compliance, many non-revenue men’s sports teams face cuts to their budget or are completely cut to fall into compliance. I believe that it is important to give female athletes the same opportunities, experiences, and facilities/ equipment as male athletes. At the same time, male athletes in sports that produce little to no revenue should not have to be cut in order to fall into Title IX compliance. One interesting component to Title IX compliance is football. Football eats up a lot of scholarships and resources because of how popular the sport is nationally. College football gives schools great publicity and marketing that influences applications and enrollment. The term “Flutie Effect” was coined after Doug Flutie completed a miraculous hail mary pass as Boston College beat Miami. After the game, applications and enrollment at Boston College skyrocketed, hence why it is called the “Flutie Effect”. Because of things like this, college football should not apply to Title IX compliance because of the revenue that it can bring the university and because there is no comparable female sport that can have that many scholarships. Not factoring football into Title IX might be a good way to keep some non revenue teams around!