UO strives to comply with Title IX.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

WHEN OREGON went to the Rose Bowl after the 1994 season, there was an influential nucleus of Christian athletes on the team, and a big, tough offensive tackle named Steve Hardin who, at the time, might have best been described as a devout skeptic.

But as Oregon recorded victory after improbable victory in that football season, even Hardin found himself joining the post-game prayers in the middle of the field, figuring it was best not to mess with a proven winner.

It's one of my favorite stories from that season, and it came to mind, in a very roundabout way, in connection with Oregon's addition of lacrosse as its next women's sport.

That's because the Ducks maintain that they are complying with Title IX by showing a history and continued practice of adding women's sports, with women's soccer having debuted in 1996 and women's lacrosse taking the field in the spring of 2005.

The Ducks profess that by adding women's sports, and by funding those sports to the allowable limit of NCAA scholarships, and by showing improved facilities and better marketing and that sort of thing, that they comply with Title IX.

And yet the Ducks also recognize in the Title IX heavens, there is in fact a Higher Power - the well-known prong of Title IX compliance called proportionality, which holds that if 55 percent of students are women, that 55 percent of the athletes must be women.

The Ducks don't meet that prong, even with adding lacrosse, with its 12 scholarships and average squad size of 26 athletes. During the past school year, 53.6 percent of Oregon undergraduates were women, whereas only 37.47 percent of Oregon athletes were women.

The Oregon position is that that isn't a problem at the moment, because the Ducks comply on the second prong - history and continuing practice of adding women's sports. (Title IX prohibits gender discrimination in schools that receive federal funds; violators risk losing that funding.)

However, clearly Oregon would feel more comfortable if it were closer on proportionality, because that's a more objective standard. Clearly, while Oregon professes full confidence that it complies under prong No. 2, it would breathe a lot more easily if it weren't so far out of the ballpark on No. 1.

IN THE WORDS of UO human rights investigator Sid Moore, from the UO Office of Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity, which oversees the athletic department's compliance with Title IX:

"Yes, there are three prongs, and yes you can be in compliance with any of the three to be in compliance with the law. If they (the federal Office of Civil Rights) came today, if they came next year, I'm confident that we would still be in compliance.

"But as far as the prongs go, proportionality is kind of like the Holy Grail of Title IX compliance. ... You almost don't have to dig any deeper once you get there."

Oregon athletics director Bill Moos said a memo this week from UO general counsel Melinda Grier makes it clear that proportionality remains the ultimate test; it's the direction that having a history and continuing practice for expanding opportunities for women should ultimately take the university.

It's not a goal that Moos is convinced is achievable, as long as football's 85 scholarships and additional walk-on athletes remain part of the Title IX equation. Moos said Grier's memo also said that Oregon probably can't add another men's sport - such as baseball - without regard for how that affects its proportionality numbers.

Wrote Grier: "I think the danger is that a court would say that until we reached proportionality, we can't add any men's sports."

At least, however, Oregon's current path seems to have lessened the pressure it was feeling a decade ago to subtract a men's sport.

That Oregon has kept wrestling, added two women's sports, gotten in the black - thanks to football - and stayed out of court is, given the modern climate, almost miraculous.