Survey of 1 says ... Title IX survey stinks

My partner is out of town, so I thought I'd really cause trouble and rant about an issue that's divided the sports world for 27 years — Title IX.

The most recent problem is this: In 2005, the Department of Education sought to clarify one part of the three-pronged test that publicly funded colleges' use to determine whether or not they're complying with Title IX, which prohibits gender discrimination in educational institutions.

The U.S. Department of Education said if university officials conducted e-mail surveys of female students that were on their campuses about what sports opportunities they were interested in, that was good enough. Also, if those students didn't respond, that amounted to no interest.

It was a clarification that outraged supporters of Title IX, including NCAA brass, and it was the subject of congressional hearings last month.

Why?

Several reasons. First, who responds to surveys? I can't get 50 percent of the high school coaches I cover to return surveys. The UHSAA recently tried to discuss moving from two officials to three but most of the prep coaches they surveyed didn't respond. Does that mean they don't favor the switch?

Who knows? No response could mean anything.

The other flaw with the clarification is that college officials didn't have to survey students who weren't already attending their schools. If I want to play volleyball and a school doesn't have a volleyball team, I'm going somewhere else. So I'm not there to tell them I'm interested in volleyball.

So how do college officials know if there is interest if they don't bother conducting a legitimate survey? Why not make the questions part of high school testing? With SAT, ACT and graduation skills tests, there has to be a way to ask students what activities they're interested in pursuing.

Women can't play sports that aren't offered. They can't take advantage of opportunities that aren't available.

We had a recent example of officials trying to gauge interest in something that wasn't really offered.

Just a few days ago the Utah High School Activities Association voted unanimously to give high school girls a golf league of their own. The numbers, they said, finally warranted prep girls competing against each other.