CSUN, Don’t Blame the Law

Some colleges and universities have made their athletic programs for men and women roughly equal without a lot of fuss. Many have not. Cal State Northridge, firmly in the second group, this week axed four men’s sports--the school’s respected baseball program, volleyball, soccer and swimming.

Many will no doubt blame the laws that mandate equal participation opportunities for men and women, such as the landmark Title IX. But it was bad management and big-league fantasies that forced CSUN to drop the ax. Athletic directors and campus administrators who dragged their feet on equality for 25 years bear responsibility--and not just at CSUN.

That sort of desultory attitude across the Cal State system prompted a lawsuit that forced the campuses to make their athletic programs conform with the law by 1998. While many schools have complied by slowly adding women’s sports, cash-strapped CSUN and its sister schools had to slash men’s programs.

The logical choice for cutback at CSUN would have been football, which accounts for 85 of the school’s 400-plus varsity slots. But doing so would have knocked CSUN out of its athletic conference. In fact, CSUN’s decision last year to join the Big Sky conference--with its requirement of certain core sports and more team travel--effectively doomed baseball and the other now eliminated sports.

Realistic revenue projections should have told CSUN that to compete in football and basketball it would have to sacrifice the other sports. Either CSUN made the decision conscious of the probable effect or failed to analyze it properly.

The losers are CSUN athletes, current and future. Some of its baseball players have now signed with schools like Cal State Fullerton, a baseball power that cut out football several years ago. But some CSUN freshman recruits in the eliminated sports who passed up opportunities at other schools are left out in the cold. Their dismay is real, but so are the gains made under gender-equity laws. Between 1971--the year before Title IX passed--and 1995, the number of girls participating in sports increased 662% at high schools, also covered by the federal laws.

If CSUN administrators had followed the spirit of gender-equity laws from the start and managed their programs accordingly, it’s doubtful that the campus would be making such drastic cuts now. But yesterday’s indifference and today’s tight budgets leave few choices.