Title IX missile on collision course with football arms race

What is happening here is a clash of financial interests. The administration has among other things decided that sports play too large a role in higher ed and its priorities. This should come as no surprise given the head of the admin'n is a guy who drinks and smokes and clearly has yet to lift a single barbell greater than 25 lbs. On top of that, given his academic credentials, it is unlikely he ever saw much in sports. I am sure for much of his life has has asked himself, "Why are there so many athletes in colleges and why do they get the glory while academics like me (who actually are here for the purpose of learning) do not?"

Fair questions and observations indeed, and if I were him, I would have made them, too.

Let's take the world as it is and worry less about how is came to be. We have universities these days that have if they are lucky four major sources of income:

1. Tuition
2. Deals of all kinds, including media and endorsement
3. Financial relationships with private and public sector entities, or they operate their own businesses (eg: medical centers, physical research and invention incubators)
4. Donations from alums or foundations.

Take each one.

1. Tuition: It is going up and increasingly the typical potential American student cannot or refuses to pay it, insisting on financial aid or deciding that it is better to go to a trade school or not go at all. The tuition is going up because the costs associated with running a campus keep going up. IT infrastructure is just one thing, as are the devices and services needed to serve the student body (eg: information systems and networks, local services such as food courts and gymnasiums, security staff, housekeeping staff, grounds, adjuncts, etc.). Liability costs go up a well since the bad news and lawsuits generated by just one "unfortunate incident" on campus can do in a college for millions. The response of colleges these days is clear, as is the trend: Seek to attract and admit more full-fare-paying students. Those most likely to fit that bill are foreign students who are either from wealthy families back home or who are very good students whose gov'ts will pay the tuition at 100% the rate. However these students generally do not feed into the formula for the #2 category of revenue since they are either too brainy or too important (ie, from rich families) to risk on the field of play (as if they had the experience anyway) but in any case, their folks wouldn't like them doing it anyway instead of studying. New result: In many cases as tuition rises, the number of students can be maintained but some schools have conceded they must reduce the expected headcount as time goes on due to the need to insist on 100% tuition-paying students.

2. Sports: If a school is large enough, this can be a hefty chunk of its revenue and indeed, it is aptly placed better in category #3. However for our purposes I broke it out as a separate revenue stream. To MAN the college team however with our present and future heroes, they need to play a game that the people want to watch, which in the US is football. They recruit athletes to fit this bill, not students. So if the athlete can get Bs and As, all the better, but really, what colleges are doing is looking for a mercenary. They don't care if he can add or read. they care if he can play football, because that translates into a lot of money for the college. Simple enough.

3. Financial relationships: No need to elaborate. If you can set up and run a business under a non-profit umbrella, heck, do it! Look at Drexel University in Philadelphia: It bought Hahnemann Health and that healthcare system is much greater in revenue than the university. The tail as it were wags the dog, financially speaking. Not that that is necessarily a bad thing; someone has to be running the hospitals, and I prefer it be a large uni'y with smart people in it than some other place run by idiots. But you get the idea.

4. Donations: Puh-leeze. Nothing like they used to be. A coupla mill here and there per year. Not even a drop in the bucket.

So let's say you're a college and you don't have a large business system like a string of hospitals to feed you money. The vast majority don't. And let's say you are not able to attract the 100%-payers you need to to cover your increasingly-high tuition costs since you are out in podunk. And donations? Again, nada.

You have one other avenue to get on the map and make money-- enough to keep you in the black, if you are lucky: sports. And now, POTUS is seeking to take that from you since no one seems the least bit interested in paying for, much less attending, the women's basketball games. You can't be happy about that.

OK, so back to my subject line. What about this "Sumo = Japan" thing? Well, sumo is taught in sumo schools in Japan, not in colleges. Whereas, here in the US, football, "American sumo", as it were, is taught, indeed, perfected before full release into the marketplace, in our colleges and universities. What POTUS wants to do is get "American sumo" out of the colleges so they can all go back to focusing more on the primary reason for colleges, which is supposedly, to educate minds.

However he is mistaken in that that is the primary purpose of colleges. As with every other institution, its primary purpose is to serve its own interests as best it can. In many cases, this is simply to survive. Many colleges have at this point only their "American sumo" club to keep them going. POTUS has an uphill battle indeed but should he succeed, many of our larger schools who are able to function as a consequence of the revenues from their #2 source of funds will contract and become not-so-larger schools. Medium-sized schools, likewise, to a lesser degree. And smaller ones are unlikely to see change to their revenue streams from this issue. Then he will have some 'splaining to do to the many people in academe who once supported him but will now ask him why he was so hell-bent on finding ways to reduce their employers' revenue streams. And jobs that used to be in place at those unis will start falling away. Also more bad news.

However if after, say, a 20-yr period, colleges are out of the business of also acting as football training camps, we may see concurrently the rise of the professional football training camp here in the US that has no attachment at all to colleges or unis. Or maybe, it will be a separate business unit, not subject to Title IX rules and regs (hey, there's an idea!). Just as in Japan, child sumo wrestlers don't go to college but instead at age 12 and 13 start "professional sumo training", likewise we may one day see a similar model, with our future football heroes starting perhaps a bit later in age, but nonetheless, that same idea at work. But if POTUS and his feminist friends think they can, for good or bad, right or wrong, outdo the financial juggernaut that is professional football just by getting stricter about Title IX, well then, I got a bridge to sell them.