Let's get ready to rumble: 30-year-old equity law is showing its age, say wrestling coaches. (In The News).

Although both sides were ready to go to the mat over Title IX, the challenge to the law that bans sex discrimination in education passed without action--at least for now. The 30-year-old law, and its application to sports, was the focus of a suit filed in January by the National Wrestling Coaches Association. That group argued that men's minor sports programs (such as wrestling, track, swimming, and golf) have suffered because money was redirected to fund women's sports programs.

On May 29, however, the Bush administration, perhaps with one eye on the November elections, sidestepped the hot-button issue and asked that the suit be dismissed on a technicality. A Department of Education spokesman said that the statute of limitations had expired, and that individual schools could address the problem better than the government.

The crux of the current debate centers on how Title IX is applied to sports. Although NWCA backs sports equity, the group claims Title IX has become a quota system. The taw requires that the number of mate and female athletes on campus is proportional to the student body. However, women make up about 53 percent of the campus population on a national average, and complying schools should therefore provide for 53 percent women athletes. But there are far more mate athletes than female athletes across campuses nationwide, so, claims the NWCA, schools are cutting back on men's programs to come into compliance. The group wants to modify the law so that funding is distributed according to interest, not the proportion of women on a campus.

Title IX supporters, on the other hand, argue that the problem centers around budgets--not the law. Many big-budget university sports (primarily football and basketball) are operating in deficit. When athletic directors took for ways to trim budgets, Title IX requires that they cut areas of over-representation, and that means the men's minor sports. Without some legal backup, say the law's supporters, schools will instead turn to the women's programs when the time comes for cuts.

Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, remarked to NCAA News, "It spoke volumes that in its response to the lawsuit, the (Bush) administration made no defense whatsoever, even in passing, of the athletics policies that are so important to young women in this country." The administration's inaction, she said, "sets off alarm bells as to what the future plans of the administration might be, whether they are keeping their options open to roll back and weaken Title IX enforcement."

Although the issue remains unsettled for now, the law has generally met with public approval. Seventy-nine percent of respondents to a 2000 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll approved of Title IX, white just 14 percent disapproved. Moreover, 76 percent of respondents approved of reducing funds to men's athletics, to support women's programs.