BGSU Athletics Equity Report - Marc Horwitz

Since we have been talking about Title IX for quite some time in class throughout the last few weeks, I thought it was rather appropriate timing for BG to send out the the annual federal compliancy email.  Within this email is links to various reports that relate to University compliance, such as Security & Safety reports, graduation rates, and most importantly for this blog entry, the Report for the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act for the period 7/1/2010 - 6/30/2011.

While most students probably deleted this email before even opening it, I thought it may be interesting to see what this athletics report had to offer since Dr. Spencer had mentioned in class that it was the Office of Equities that dealt with compliance within the athletic department. I clicked on the link for the report and actually found it really interesting to see some of the data and other aspects of compliance that we had discussed in class put to use in a real report for our school.

The main section of the report deals with the participants at the university.  As we had learned in class, one factor that goes into Title IX compliance is a correlation between male and female athletes in relation to male and female enrollment at the university.  The Equity report provides a very detailed breakdown of male and female participants in athletics, breaking it first down by males and females, and then listing the number of participants for each sport.  It is amazing to me to see how large of a portion of our total male athletes on campus is fulfilled through football.  According to the report, the football team accounts for 105 of the 226 male athletes on campus, that's 46%. That means that just about half of our male athletes at BG are football players, with the other 54% coming from the 6 other male teams. Compare that to the women's participation numbers, where the largest team is Track & Field, which accounts for 85 of the 227 female athletes, just 37%.  Keep in mind that women's track and field is really like putting four teams in one, as you have the cross country team, sprint team, distance team, and the field team all compiled into one for this report. According to this report, BG is in compliance with this prong of Title IX compliance as there are a total of 226 male athletes and 227 female athletes, just about a 50/50 split, similar to the reported undergraduate enrollment totals from the same time period (6,262 males, 7,342 females). While the numbers may end up being even, I think it is pretty clear to see that focus is on men's sports at this school, particularly football, when nearly one quarter of the entire athletic population is the football team (23%).

While the remainder of the report is also interesting, consisting of facts and figures with everything from coaching staff salaries, revenues, and expenses, I found the first section regarding athlete participation to be the most informational and most applicable to the things we have discussed recently in class.  Seeing these participation numbers, mainly the number of football players rostered compared to those of other sports of both men and women, makes me wonder what other sports teams think about the participation levels.  Take a sport like men's or women's golf, or women's tennis, all of which have 8 members, or better yet, look at a sport that has been cut in recent years. While I know it has been said in class that Title IX is not to blame for sports being cut, figures such as these sure do make it seem like allocating resources differently, or perhaps not carrying 105 members on the football team, could have saved sports such as men's track and field, men's swimming and men's tennis.  Perhaps, if less members were rostered on the football team, these sports could have been salvaged.  I understand that football brings in the most money of any athletic program, but it seems a little off that when athletic programs today are looking for equality and proportionality, one men's team is making up nearly a quarter of the entire athletic department.

For those interested in looking over the Report for the Equity in Athletics, the information can be found by visiting http://www.ope.ed.gov/athletics/InstDetails.aspx?

US Department of Education. (n.d). Report for the equity in athletics disclosure act. Retrieved from http://www.ope.ed.gov/athletics/InstDetails.aspx?