Whenever the question of why Cal State Fullerton no longer fields an NCAA football team is raised, many explanations abound. Fan apathy, a poor win/loss record, lack of support from the administration, exorbitant costs to maintain the program and inevitably, Title IX are some of the reasons offered. The truth is there is not just one reason why the Cal State Fullerton Football program was dropped. Now that the climate is warming to the idea of bringing back the Titan Football Team in some capacity, one of the main obstacles will be Title IX compliance. For those that are unfamiliar with with Title IX, known as the Patsy T. Mink Equal Opportunity in Education Act or the “Gender Equity Law,” here are some resources to help understand the history and the potential pitfalls resurrecting the Titan Football team faces.
Simply put, Title IX is a 37-word United States law enacted on June 23, 1972. It states: “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Despite the fact that no where in the text of the Title IX law does it mention gender equity as it pertains to athletic competition, that is predominantly where the battles were waged and continue to be fought for gender equality.
Since the passage of Title IX, the law was open to interpretation widely until the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare under Jimmy Carter’s administration issued a policy interpretation for Title IX in 1979. This policy interpretation has become known as the “three-prong test” of an institution’s compliance. A recipient of federal funds can demonstrate compliance with Title IX by meeting any one of the following three prongs.
1. Providing athletic opportunities that are substantially proportionate to the student enrollment, OR
2. Demonstrate a continual expansion of athletic opportunities for the underrepresented gender, OR
3. Full and effective accommodation of the interest and ability of underrepresented gender.
In regards to bringing back the Cal State Fullerton Football team, the administration and invariably the lawyers assigned to represent the California State University system will have to agree on which prong they believe needs to be followed in order to be in compliance to avoid costly lawsuits.
If the first prong is the one that Fullerton administrators and attorneys choose to follow, bringing back Titan Football would mean two to three new sports exclusively for women would need to be created. Since the student population on Cal State Fullerton’s campus is 60% women and 40% men, complying with the first prong would mean that all athletic teams fielded by Cal State Fullerton need to have 60% of the athletes be women. Past history has shown that the CSUF administration has chosen to follow the first prongĂ‚Â closely.
This article is not intended to express an opinion on which way Cal State Fullerton should view and interpret the Title IX law. It is merely intended to provide some background and history in regards to the Title IX compliance and potential options to remain in compliance while still resurrecting the Titan Football team.
For more information on Title IX, please visit the following resources:
Title IX explained by Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Here’s the solution. Have a women on the team, making it a female sport, too. Problem solved. Let me know what else you need me to break down.
The problem is more complicated, because for CSU’s it isn’t just about title XI, it’s about Cal-Now, which is more stringent than title XI. The Cal-Now consent decree was the result of the national organization of women suing the cal state schools for failing to comply with title XI, and the result of this lawsuit was a california-only law that demanded that female athletic participation had to be within 5% of the female student population. Compliance with the Cal-Now decree is the single issue that is faced for bringing back football.
CSUF has been ordered to follow the proportionality prong by Dr. Reed. The NCAA has also endorsed that institutions follow tis same prong, this despite the fact that the Bush administration had clarified that any of the three prong tests are acceptable. Now that we have a new president, only time will tell which direction the Office of Civil Rights within the Department of Education will head.
The Cal-Now consent decree was mentioned an above response. At the time the football program was dropped, this was binding on the system. Despite what the poster writes, the Cal-Now consent decree has been void since June 1999 and is no longer binding, but once again Dr. Reed has expressed his concern that it should still be followed, despite that it expired close to a decade ago.
I remeber going to Titan football games. I watched as Mark Collins picked off three passes against the University of Pacific at Glover Stadium, Drank beer with Judi Garman and Dr. Cobb prior to the big win over Fresno State on a Greg Steinke field goal at the Bowl and cheered in 28 degree weather as a Cheating UNLV team with Randall Cunningham defeated a then and later undefeated Damon Allen led Titan team in the Silver Bowl.
Football at Fullerton would be fun, but it would also signal the collaspe of the current CSU Fullerton athletic program.
Part of the problem has been fixed when the supreme court ruled affirmative action illegal and the UC/CSU system dropped it as a policy. It maintained a “Law” status as the federal government simply threatened to withhold money for education and accredidation if it did not follow the policy. The whole argument started not with minorities of race, religion or anything else. It started with gender. Women were being admitted to the state’s public universities ahead of more qualified males.
It is important to note that NO UNQUALIFIED PEOPLE WHERE GETTING ADMITTED TO COLLEGE! The problem was that some women, who met the minimum requirments for acceptance where being admitted over males who far exceded the minimum qualifications in an attempt to get an “EQUAL OUTCOME” as opposed to an “EQUAL OPPORTUNITY.” This was the key argument to dropping it as a policy for CA state education. Women had a significantly higher attritian rate than males did so they accepted a disproportionate amount of females in an attempt to have a 50-50 graduation rate (or as close to it as they could). In order to do this the acceptance rate needed to be around 65% to 35% women to men respectivley. The UC/CSU system realized that by maintaining a 2/3rds female to 1/3rd male ratio was not consistant with the intent with the law. The law was opportunity based in its intent and wanted to make sure women had the same OPPORTNITY as males. NOW or CAL-NOW basterdized the law/policy to mean the same OUTCOME as males which meant they would have to admit twice as many (yet ALL qualified) females.
As the UCs and CSUs realized what was happening and the staggering disproportionality of their student body, they decided to remedy this with achievement based admission policies (how novel). Since then the ratio has come more into balance but still skewed.
This relates to title IX (not XI) as it places a new burden on administration as the ratio changes. No longer to 66% of your student athletes have to be female. As CSUF comes closer to 50-50 (now still about 60-40 as NOW puts pressure on schools to get the playing field as vertical in their favor as they can by using “outcome based” arguments) the title IX burden lifts a little and leaves more room for male student athletes who want the opportunity to compete to have an “opportunity” to do so which was the intent of title IX. The present administration at CSUF is afraid of doing the right thing in favor of the politicaly expaditious thing. (In the Army we called it the “hard right” as opposed to the “easy left” respevtivly).
This new ratio of more males in college instead of working to pay for their wives or girlfriends to go SHOULD give school administrators the opportunity to do the “hard right” and open more opportunities up for male athletics based on the INTENT of the law. Football would make the money to pay for both the male and female sports programs so that ALL the students athletes would have a team to try out for available and an opportunity to all.
Since the demographics of a college campus has changed over the last 15 years so should the mentality. The door has been opened by the evolving ratios but leadership is still too cowardly to walk through it because of special interest presure too cowardly to actually exist on the very level playing field they espouse.