On Title IX and NCAA men’s volleyball

Been thinking about this for a while. The Cody Kessel interview kind of crystallized it a little. When I was first drafting out that post, I originally included a massive aside discussing this. I took it out in favor of putting in its own post so as to not take away from Cody’s interesting discussion, and also because I think it’s a topic that quite merits its own post.

The difference in esteem and popularity between men’s and women’s sports is something in which I’m quite interested. Very broadly speaking, I generally enjoy women’s sports more than men’s (the reasons why are a great many in number and not altogether relevant), so I’ve never really paid much mind to the idea that Title IX has a downside. And even now I’m not so sure. Cody wasn’t the first person I’ve seen suggest that it’s the death of men’s college volleyball, and he surely won’t be the last.

If you’re unfamiliar, Title IX is the United States law that specifies, essentially, that any athletic opportunities offered by schools (high school and college) must be offered equally to each sex. The true meat of it is a tad more complicated than that (because it needn’t be 1-to-1, tit for tat), but that’s the essential gist. And the word to key on is ‘opportunities,’ which does not mean ‘teams.’ Check around on various schools’ athletic websites, and you’ll notice that just about all of them offer more women’s sports than men’s. It may seem unequal, but here’s the catch:

Yup, football throws a bit of a spanner in the works. It has a considerably larger roster than any other sport, men’s or women’s. I don’t get football. Never have. Suspect I never will. Really don’t get the national obsession with it. But, eh, I’ve made my peace with it. I certainly have other sporting mistresses to which I can devote myself. But like it or not, “get it” or not, it’s here to stay and it tips the scales waaayyy over on the boys’ side.

I did watch the football national championship game this year. Remember how the quarterback for Notre Dame and the dude with the fake girlfriend wore the same jersey number? That’s actually really common in college football, because teams at larger universities will often have over a hundred freaking guys on their roster.

There’s no analogue on the women’s side. The women’s sport with the largest roster is probably softball, and it has its own analogue with baseball on the men’s side (though plenty of schools, not least my own alma mater, sponsor softball but not baseball). Then there are the sports in which there’s no reason men but not women or women but not men should participate, which are thankfully quite a few, sports such as golf, tennis, track and field, and swimming and diving.

But, football. Those 100 opportunities and 30-something scholarships (I think) have to be matched by something on the women’s side, so that’s why there are more women’s sports at most schools (The exception of course being schools that don’t sponsor football, schools such as Marquette, who sponsor 7 men’s sports and 7 women’s sports).

It comes perhaps as addition by subtraction. While men’s volleyball was never as popular as women’s at the NCAA level, Title IX has effectively ensured that this will continue to be the case. Low-revenue sports such as volleyball and in other cases wrestling or water polo or lacrosse or even far more esoteric college sports like fencing or rifle shooting or boxing are cut for no reason besides attaining or maintaining gender equality. Cody very astutely pointed out in my interview with him that women’s “sand volleyball” (which I don’t think I’m ever gonna be able to write without quotes) programs are starting to become more and more numerous, but despite the fact that both sexes play the sport professionally, oftentimes concurrently at the same events, this opportunity probably won’t ever come for the men at the college level.

Take a look at the three major conferences in NCAA men’s volleyball:

MPSF — 8 out of the 13 schools don’t sponsor football.
MIVA — 6 out of the 8.
EIVA — 5 out of the 8, but of the 3 that do, 2 are Ivy League schools Princeton and Harvard. Ivy League schools don’t offer athletic scholarships for any sport, so they count on the other side here.

Just 8 out of the 29 schools maintain equity while having a fully-scholarship’d football program. BYU, for one, maintain their equity by offering soccer and gymnastics for women, but not men. They also sponsor, um, cheerleading, but it’s coed:

And I’m sure there are like cuts for schools such as USC, UCLA, Ohio State, Penn State, and the others. It’s unfortunate, but….doesn’t it beat the alternative?

Like I said, I’ve seen this argument broached before, that Title IX is the big bad villain for low-revenue men’s sports. If you want to know what I think (and you’re reading my blog, so I’m gonna assume you do), it’s football that’s to blame, not Title IX. Why does football need 100-player rosters? Only 11 guys are in the game at any time. Obviously I’m not saying have a roster that small, but the pros only use rosters about half the size of the colleges. That would sure leave some roster spots and maybe even scholarships for lower-revenue sports. How did college football rosters get so massive anyway? Anyone know? Cause I sure don’t.

Football’s not going away, though. The money that goes into it comes back out many times over. A lot of schools get the majority of their athletic funding from football revenues. So if those programs blinked out of existence, far more harm than good would be done (setting aside for the moment any health concerns football raises). At least a few probably wouldn’t make it.

I’ve seen a few (understandably) frustrated men’s volleyball fans and players say the rule ought to be more along the lines of equity with football disregarded, for the very reasons I’ve laid out here — it has no analogue on the women’s side in terms of team size, and it is far and away the highest-revenue sport a school can offer. I think that’s reasonable, I really do, but there’s no chance it would ever be law.

I feel for the effected players and fans — hell, I’m one of them. I’d love to see far more widespread men’s volleyball. But when the alternative is women and girls missing out on, in a lot of cases, having any such opportunities as these at all, it’s not even a consideration. I would hope even the players and fans who recognize its deleterious effects can recognize the positives as well — it’s not out to get anybody. Quite the contrary, there have even been cases where schools were found to have offered more opportunities to female athletes and were ordered to either cut those back or afford more to males. I support that just as strenuously as I do the initial spirit behind Title IX.

But it seems there’s only so many slices of the pie to be had. It will remain my hope for men’s volleyball to claim a larger one, but I’m just one voice in a crowd, and these days no one’s really talking any louder than anyone else. Whether anything is to change seems very difficult to say.