I hope to see some of my fellow ticks on cagesidelive tomorrow night! It should will be interesting to hear his thoughts on why they canceled the program.

EERS_1_Fan

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Dont meant to sound sexist... but Title IX balance perhaps?

Just thinking it says they eliminated MEN's sports but not the female verion:

"Arizona State University on Tuesday announced the discontinuation of its wrestling program, along with two other varsity sports, men’s swimming and men’s tennis."

they don't want to see men in speedo anymore...or in spandex

Underboss MMAfia

Head of the West Coast Family
ULTIMATE CHALLENGE CHAMPION UFC 83

Or those short tennis shorts.

It's probably a product of Title IX. It's hard for athletic departments to work towards proportional gender representation for a number of reasons. Within college sports, the law mandates university athletic departments have to show legitimate movement towards providing a number of scholarships for female athletes that is proportional with the proportion of female students as a whole. Most universities have slightly more students who are women than men (not sure about ASU on that stat). On top of that, if a university has a football team, then it's super hard to reach that proportion of scholarships for female athletes because so many of the male athletic scholarships go towards football players. On top of that, universities with football programs often look to the football team as its big money-maker, which will provide excess $$$ for scholarships for student-athletes in many sports, but most football programs lose money. The whole thing is a big mess, and I'm not blaming Title IX at all; I support Title IX big time. But it sucks that the smaller men's programs get shafted. The universities that have kick-ass football programs year in and year out generally don't cut teams irrespective of gender.

I think Title IX is a nice in theory, but horrible in practice. It all comes down to how much money is spent and scholarships are awarded. The idea was to free up more funding for womens sports and give a swift kick to colleges not being fair with thier dollars spent on womens versus mens sports. I get it. However... in practice it means mens sports such as wrestling where there is no women's equivalent often times are the victum of 'equality' and get eliminated. So rather than even out the funding, by being forced to add a womens sport so the dollars are more evenly spent, it's easier to just cut the funding for a men's program to get back to guidelines.

I dont know that is what happened here... I just think it's a little interesting that it was 'MENs' programs listed for these budget cuts and not womens.

Yeah, I agree Sixtus - Title IX, the way it operates now, is highly problematic. Most university athletic departments just don't have enough money to add on women's sports. It's an easier "solution" under the current guidelines and financial circumstances to just cut the non-revenue producing men's sports. Or what happened to me was they cut the men's track program at UCI when I went there, and then they reinstated it with no scholarships. And UCI has never had a football team, so it's not always a football related issue. I dunno, I support Title IX, but I don't have answers on how to change it. After I graduated from UCI, they polled the student-body, asking if they were willing to pay more in fees if it went to strengthening the athletic department. The student-body voted yes, and then they refunded men's track and got a baseball team. Money, money, money... Sucks for ASU's wrestling team.

http://mmajunkie.com/news/4353/guest-column-c-b-dollaway-on-the-death-of...

I dont support Title IX. It's a nice theory to solve world hunger and end poverty... but that doesnt mean we should keep with the same old FAILED policies just because it's a nice theory! The old addage of, 'dont throw good money after bad' is true here. More ofen than not, its not a lack of money issue... its a lack of PROPER MANAGEMENT OF THE MONEY THEY HAVE. If your kid went out and blew all of his lunch money on soda, candy and arcade games... and then came to you later in the day and said, that he was out of money and needed money to buy that healthy salad... would you assume you had not given him enough money and that you needed to increase how much you gave him each day because you want to see him eat healthy? That's whats happening... they are wasting money in so many areas and then they dont have the money for the things that DO matter - so the solution is to raise fees or cut worthy atheltic programs in this case.

I really hate whenever there is a tax or increase in fees to pay for something that should already be paid for... where did the money go that was supposed to pay for it to begin with???

Sixtus,
On the topic of waste, our government is a huge culprit. Governments have so much potential to do good and yet they can't do anything efficiently. I'd be happy to more taxes if I knew where the money was going and how it was being spent. Good luck!

About universities, make no mistake about it, universities are businesses. I was reading an article about university endowments. Harvard is at the top of the list and I believe their endowment is currently $36 billion and their rate of growth is staggering...

Here is an interesting article:

http://www.azcentral.com/sports/asu/articles/2008/05/13/20080513asucuts....

A couple of excerpts that jumped out at me:

Uhm... every college I looked at when I was considering wrestling in college had significant, active and involved boosters... and according to CB it sounds like ASU did too. Could the same be said for Womens Water Polo? And since when did when schools and in particular athletic programs at schools 'invest in making money'?

SO basically they paid for and built thier own facility through fundraising... did Womens Swimming pay for thier own pools? ASU was willing to take the Millions of dollars in fundraising for the facility to be built not even 3 years ago, and now they want to shut the program down (and keep the facility for university use)??

It sounds like this cut was out of the blue and there was not really any warning or chance to try and fundraise to save the program:

And from the Mens Swimming coach:

Before I was just GUESSING this was some sort of Title IX BS... but now I am convinced it is. If it was purely financial, they would have announced cuts in the future and given the programs a chance to try and save themselves... in this case it almost seems like the 'MENS' programs were targeted under the disguise of 'investing in making money'.

**Edited for proper quoting**

The AZCentral.com article is a good find Sixtus. Just for clarification on my support of Title IX...

The closure of ASU’s wrestling, swimming, and tennis teams stinks. I personally can relate to the topic, probably more than most people can. While at UCI, I was the only person on our team irrespective of sex to win multiple conference championships and the only person to qualify for the National Championships. But there were over a dozen women on the team receiving varying degrees of scholarship money. Conversely, I had to pay for my own shoes every year. I always looked at the situation as part of the process of making up for past and ongoing gender discrimination that I could not begin to comprehend as a male. It isn’t the same situation as that at ASU since our team was reinstated (albeit without funding), but it’s along the same lines.

If Title IX was never legislated in 1972 and eventually put into action in the 1980s, there is no question, we would never have had Mia Hamm, Lisa Leslie, Dot Richardson, and so on; we would never have had the focus on women’s sports given in the 1996 Olympics or the dominant women’s soccer teams from the USA afterwards. Even coaches like Pat Summit, Tara VanDerveer, and Geno Auriemma wouldn’t have attained any serious recognition without Title IX. Nobody disputes this, not even nationally recognized Title IX detractors. Prior to Title IX, the only women who were able to reach national sporting significance were in individual sports, such as tennis (Althea Gibson, Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert) and track and field (Wilma Rudolph), and even those women had to deal with different types of discrimination we cannot feel. Further, they were still far fewer in number than male stars in those sports.

That’s why I support Title IX. Without it, the ratio of women being discriminated against athletically as opposed to men would be off the charts, and quite frankly, very few men would care. Again, I do not support what’s happening to the three men’s teams at ASU by any means. It is flat out wrong and not the proper way to go about supporting women’s athletics. But I don't feel what’s happening at ASU should be used to knock Title IX all together. Title IX and other university sectors do need to be reformed dramatically though, and actually, perhaps that’s all Sixtus is saying. If better accountability of funds can help to bring those three programs back, ASU needs to move on that. This site and other MMA sites are dominated by males. It’s unfortunate we’re not getting more (well, not any) women’s perspectives.

You're right, most men would not care - but having fewer womens sports is not necessarily a bad thing. See the major problem I have is that there is not equal interest, therefore why should there be equal funding? If 100 men express legitimate, serious interest in being a student/athlete and only 25 women express interest, why should there be equal funding to each gender? And further, why should there be equal amount of teams/player scholarships awarded? Nearly all 'mens' sports do not have policies against women on their team (but men are prohibitted from being on womens teams), but we are all willing to admit that it's unlikely there will be any women ever playing NCAA Football. Occasionally you see a woman playing on a HS football team, but it's rare. Why? Because there ARE some differences between men and women whether it is PC to admit it or not.

Why don't they have the same Title IX issues for men's funding and scholarships as they do for womens in 'Cheer'? There are some men who want to be on the Cheer teams - but not as many as there are women. So should we Title IX it too and require them to cut back on the women allowed on various teams and increase specific funding for men? Or lets take it to academics... what about Nursing programs? They are dominated by women, there are plenty of men who go in to nursing but I am sure the ratio is 4:1 or greater women to men... why not Title IX programs like that too - fund and lower the standards to attract more men and give more scholarships to more men? Afterall in our PC world 'fair' seems to mean 'equal, even, balanced numbers'. It sounds a little ridiculous... because it is and that's my point.

It's dominated by males because there is more interest in violent sports with men than with women - it's just a fact. Over all... there will NEVER be the same level of interest (and therefor fewer qualified perspectives) from the general population as a whole of women as there is from men in organized athletic competitions.

Perhaps an easy fix is to simply allocate the funding based on expressed, qualified interest and previous years full-season participation over something like a 5 year average to add consistency. As the popularity of a particular sport grows organically the funding will trend up... and likwise, as a sport becomes less popular over time the funding will taper off. One large pool of funds available equally to any sport (men or women) based on need and expressed, proven interest and participation over a period of time.

From the sounds of it... ASU AD is not trying to save money, they are trying to 'balance the numbers' with having the same number of men athletes as women athletes. Why would they have moved to having 8 mens programs and 12 womens programs while keeping the womens version of the same sport (i.e. kept womens swimming but dumped mens swimming)...

Hey Sixtus, there's a pretty provocative book out right now called "Playing with the Boys: Why Separate is not Equal in Sports" by Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano. They are feminists and supporters of women's sports, but they feel Title IX has set back women's progress in sport and society as a whole in some ways. I'm only about 100 pages into the book now, but one thing they argue is girls/women should be encouraged to compete in boys/mens sports when they are able to - basically that things should be integrated more than they are. Not sure if that's exactly what you're saying, but similar to some things.

Probably at ASU, the problem is complicated by the football team, and that's why they have 8 men's teams vs. 12 women's. Their football team takes up so many more scholarships than any other sport. But I do agree, too many athletic directors and Title IX proponents simply focus on the # of scholarships, instead of promoting things that could be much more valuable in the long run, such as interest in women's sports, better media coverage, better resources for girls at the grass-roots levels.

Thanks for the tip on the read. I have two books I am trying to finish up right now, but I will have to look at that one.

I dont think women should be necessarily 'encouraged' to compete in 'mens' sports... its more about the individual women than it is about women in general. What I mean is to state the obvious... it would take a pretty specially gifted athletic woman to compete competitively with men in something like tackle football.

I would agree with your generalization of one of the main points of the book though... (in my opinion irresponsible) legislation such as Title IX sets back 'womens progress'.

BTW, boosters raised enough money to save the ASU wrestling program:

http://www.mmaweekly.com/absolutenm/templates/dailynews.asp?articleid=63...

I bet that pissed the AD off!