Flaws of Title IX evident in golf

Weber State and Utah Valley State College are fielding women's golf teams. They have coaches, tee times, schedules, equipment and scholarships. They have everything they need.

Oh, except players.

The coaches say it's difficult to fill their rosters, that it's difficult to find qualified female players, that they're going to have to take some risks to fill their rosters. They're begging for female golfers.

Which poses one giant question: Why do they have golf teams in the first place?

You probably guessed it. "This is classic Title IX," said one local collegiate athletic department official.

It's a strange modern phenomenon: To meet the requirements of Title IX, college athletic departments inflate the numbers of female athletes by adding sports in which there are little interest or ability.

Some schools have added rowing teams, advertising for rowers — novices and otherwise — in newspapers. What's next, women's equestrian teams? Actually, they have those, too.

They'll take anyone who can hold an oar or sit upright in a saddle, as long as they're female (presumably, the horses can be either sex).

All of which is curious because in 1975, when the Department of Health, Education and Welfare attempted to clarify Title IX, it declared that schools should examine "whether the selection of sports and levels of competition effectively accommodate the interests and abilities of members of both sexes."

And yet, if you believe what Weber women's golf coach Jeff Smith told the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah produces only "one or two college-ready golfers a year." The Utah Junior Golf Association reports that its membership consists of 500 boys and 50 girls.

So much for interest and ability.

This is the insanity of Title IX: They've created golf and rowing teams for women who don't want to golf or row, and cut wrestling, gymnastics and track teams for men who want to play.

There are 3,075 high school wrestlers in Utah. Know how many Division I college wrestling teams there are in this state? One (UVSC). The programs at Utah, Utah State, BYU and Weber State were cut long ago, along with hundreds of other men's programs throughout the country, to make way for women's sports. Meanwhile, there are three women's collegiate golf teams in Utah, with another on the way.

Because the interpretation of Title IX requires one-to-one proportionality (in contradiction of the original law), and because football skews the head count, women get more scholarships than men in all of the other sports, interest and ability be damned.

These two back-to-back sentences actually appeared in the Tribune as bullet points:

• Coaches of women's college golf (teams) are struggling to fill their rosters.