Will we get a girls team? Who's in the know?

Our club team is pretty good....not SEC good, but at least there's a foundation and some amount of equipment there (though the athletic department would have to work out an arrangement with recsports for its usage). Probably decent enough athletes to at least put them out there when you're trying to recruit and say "hey, this is what we've done with no scholarships, imagine what we can do fully funded."

That being said, doubt it happens. At that point, you'd actually get into reverse Title IX issues and having to cut another women's program or add another men's program I'd bet.

Curious when the last time was that A&M added a varsity program...my guess is equestrian, but that's not based on anything. When was the last time we added an NCAA program?

Add men's soccer when you add women's gymnastics....problem solved

I mean, that is a solution, and I think one we'd all like to see, but I don't think they're going to sink that kind of money into it, especially since the SEC doesn't sponsor a men's soccer championship. South Carolina and Kentucky both play in CUSA for men's soccer.

[This message has been edited by AGBlastoff (edited 9/27/2011 9:38p).]

My daughter is a 11 year old bad ass with 5 state championships under her belt in the past two seasons. Training level 9 and should start getting looks in the next two years should she be still in the game testing elite. I would love nothing more than for her to get an A&M schollie for gymnastics. Would be the bomb. If A&M doesn't have a program by the time shes ready for college, she'll have to look elsewhere.

The last time we added an NCAA sport was soccer around 1993 I believe.

No way we add gymnastics. There are facility issues not to mention the insurance costs involved (which I'm told are beyond exorbitant).

Also this made me laugh '(though the athletic department would have to work out an arrangement with recsports for its usage)'...If it's anything like the agreement we have with rec sports re: swimming you can DEFINITELY forget about it. They are bending us over a barrel in regards to us using the pool.

The amt of money that gets dumped into that pool is pretty astronomical itself...

Competition pools are money pits, and that's just an unfortunate reality. The nicer they are, the worse of an idea they are financially. U of H is the same way, so they just practice in the old 6-lane pool rather than the rec center pool.

So are coaching salaries...LOL

AGBlastoff - Both the dive team and the swimming team use the pool at the UH rec center for practice. Their meets are staffed by a lot of UH campus recreation student employees, and a lot of the setup and takedown for the meets is completed by campus rec staff as well. All pool maintenance is completed by the campus recreation aquatics staff. UH Athletics pays campus rec money each year for the use of the facility in the same way A&M athletics does with rec sports.

Equestrian was the last team to get added as an official varsity sport. This was sometime in the late 90s.

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you'd actually get into reverse Title IX issues

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Is that possible? I didn't know that. Any examples?

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At that point, you'd actually get into reverse Title IX issues and having to cut another women's program or add another men's program I'd bet.

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Despite strong efforts to change this, there is no real "reverse" enforcement.

The problem isn't just Title IX. It's a combination of T9 and budgets. The most common scenario is that a school wants to have football (and its many scholarships) and so it has to have several womens sports to balance out the M/W participation. Times get tough, schools still have to comply with T9, so they cut men's sports.

In 2006 James Madison cut 7 mens teams to save their athletic department while still complying with T9 and a group representing those mens teams sued. The case was dismissed. When Kansas cut mens tennis, swimming, and other sports several years ago a similar discrimination case was brought and was recently settled, I believe through mediation. The result was that Kansas "reduced the size of its womens teams and encouraged more men to walk on to other sports". Basically women's teams got less walk-ons and Jayhawk football got more. Not much of a victory.

I don't want to get too far off topic by citing other examples, but IMO this happens in the long run not just in this case but nearly every time any group is oppressed and measures are taken to promote equality. The initial idea is a good one but at some point equality is restored and no one ever says, "OK we're all good, Title IX has served it's purpose and now it's time to revise it."

This is mainly because of the popularity of football and the size of football teams, but there are nearly 3 times as many male high school athletes as there are females. So yes, if Title IX were about jobs, and there are an equal amount of men and women going for these jobs then yes - there should be an effort to make it 50/50...but if there were 3 times as many men as women on earth (so if earth were a Corps party , it would be crazy to want the job force to be 50/50, right?

So you can't mess with football and you can't mess with women's sports, so you have to mess with men's sports that most people don't care about. Trust me, I care - I am on the "other sports" board. Unlike many "other sports" folks however, I realize that just because I care about mens tennis and mens soccer doesn't mean I can make other people care. Title IX makes them care about women's soccer and tennis.

Title IX has been great for women's sports but IMHO the solution is to make college scholarships proportionate by gender to American high-school age participation in sponsored sports. Either that or acknowledge that football is the horse pulling the cart and count football scholarships separately and have gender equality in all other sports. Won't ever happen because it would cause an uproar and all most athletic departments really want to do is appease the gender equality folks so they can keep on playing football.

Anyway the short answer is that no, we would not have to add another men's sport in order to sponsor women's gymnastics.

The real reason we won't add it (these figures are from 2009 but they make the point).

Football Revenue: $42 Million
Football Expenses: $16.5 Million
Football Profit: $25.5 Million
Total Athletic Dept. Profit: $2.7 Million

http://businessofcollegesports.com/2011/03/20/whos-making-money-in-big-12-football/

The only reason Big-time D1 women's sports even exist to the extent to which they do (a good thing) is so to comply with Title IX. I can assure you that no athletic department is going to add or keep a women's sport (99.9% of which operate at a deficit) unless they have to.

The question was what was the last team to be added as an NCAA sport. I took that to mean sport with an NCAA Championship.

Equestrian and archery were both added by A&M in 1999 and were listed under the emerging sports category by the NCAA i.e. no NCAA Championship. Since then, I believe archery has been delisted by the NCAA due to too few teams being added; we dropped it around 2004/05. Equestrian showed some growth and was extended. Unfortunately that growth has halted, and, to a very small extent, even gone in reverse as a couple programs have either been dropped or the attempt has been made to drop them.

Harry, I've been an advocate for exempting football from Title IX for years. There simply is no women's equivalent.