Sitting in the upper concourse, a stocky, broad-shouldered guy wearing a University of Michigan sweatshirt watched a heavyweight match in the semifinals of the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships at The Palace in Auburn Hills, Mich., two weekends ago.
When it ended and the referee raised the victorious wrestler’s arm, the Michigan fan pointed out that the winner is a Muslim who came from a Catholic high school and whose college coach is Jewish.
After explaining that, the guy said, “See, we can all get along.”
Once two competitors get on the mat, wrestling indeed is as equal-opportunity as a sport can get. Politics, favoritism, height, long arms and long legs offer no advantages. A 125-pounder takes on another 125-pounder. And the wrestler with superior skill, strength, stamina and cunning wins.
The problem is getting those two people on the mat in the first place, at least on the college level.
In the past 35 years, 447 colleges have cut wrestling programs, including Indiana State in 1986. But it’s not from a lack of interest.
A few hours after that NCAA semifinal round, my family and I were back inside The Palace — the massive, suburban home of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons. We were part of a crowd of 17,800 fans — the largest single-session audience ever for the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships. And the tickets weren’t cheap, ranging from $50 to $150 for multiple sessions.
There are now 245,000 high school wrestlers in America, including a fast-growing contingent of 5,000 girls. It is the sixth-most-popular high school sport in the country, according to the National Wrestling Coaches Association. And yet, there are just 220 colleges sponsoring varsity wrestling teams, including 87 at the Division I level.
“It just doesn’t add up, that it could be struggling as it is at the collegiate level,” Mike Moyer, the NWCA executive director, said by telephone from the group’s offices in Manheim, Pa.
The source most often blamed for the demise of college wrestling and other small-budget men’s sports is the 1972 gender-equity law known as Title IX. But many on the receiving end of athletic program cuts contend it is the application of Title IX that has damaged their sports, not the intent of the law, which requires schools to provide equal opportunities for male and female students.
Others — including many people celebrating Title IX’s 35th anniversary at this weekend’s NCAA Women’s Basketball Final Four in Cleveland — insist the real problem is college financial administrators who funnel an excessive portion of their funding to football and men’s basketball programs at the expense of low-revenue sports, such as wrestling.
In reality, both the unintended consequences of Title IX compliance and economic-based choices have depleted the number of college wrestling, cross country, golf, gymnastics, tennis and swimming teams.
Gaining by cutting
There is much to celebrate about Title IX, and the women’s Final Four is a shining example. The law opened the door to rich experiences once reserved for men. According to the most recent NCAA statistics, 164,998 women competed in varsity sports in 2004-05.
In 2005, the architect of Title IX, Vigo County native and former U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, got a warm reception at the women’s Final Four in Indianapolis that spring. “The number of people that came up to me and said, ‘If it wasn’t for Title IX, I not only wouldn’t have had the chance to play intercollegiate athletics, but I wouldn’t have had the chance to get a college education,’ was amazing.”
Bayh has a right to be proud of that.
But no law is perfect. And it is unfair for those dwindling, low-profile sports to be written off as collateral damage or dismissed by Title IX proponents as “not our problem.”
There are two sides to this and every story, and both have compelling numbers. For example, even with all of the progress through Title IX, male athletes still account for 57 percent of all athletic opportunities in NCAA sports, while women comprise nearly 57 percent of all college students.
Of course, a great deal of that disparity comes from the large number of athletes needed for football programs. No female sport has a roster necessity to match football.
Title IX gives schools three ways to comply: They can offer athletic opportunities equal to their male and female enrollment ratios; or they can show a history of expanding athletic opportunities for women students; or they can prove that the interests and abilities of their female students are being met.
That first method of compliance — proportionality — is the most clear-cut and the most debated. And when a university chooses to comply through proportionality, the other two worthwhile objectives can be lost.
James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., plans to cut 10 sports at the end of this school year. Seven are men’s teams, but JMU also wants to drop women’s archery, fencing and gymnastics. Once that happens, JMU’s remaining athletic opportunities will be 61 percent female, which matches the overall student body, according to a USA Today report.
An advocacy group, Equality in Athletics, is suing the U.S. Department of Education to block those cuts.
The National Wrestling Coaches Association tried suing the DOE over Title IX five years ago without success.
But yet another group, the College Sports Council, last week called for reform of the law, citing a prolonged decrease in the number of men’s athletic teams. In a news release, the CSC, using NCAA participating statistics, said more than 2,200 men’s athletic teams have been eliminated since 1981.
Skeptics say the number of teams is less relevant than the gender breakdown of the individual athletes — 219,744 men, compared to 164,998 women. But those teams are important.
No more Bruces at ISU
Their value is personified best by former Indiana State University All-American Bruce Baumgartner.
At last month’s NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships at The Palace, sophomore Gregor Gillespie won the 149-pound title for Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, where Baumgartner is now the athletic director. Two other Fighting Scots wrestlers placed fourth and seventh in their weight classes. Edinboro is known for wrestling, just as ISU once was.
“It’s a sphere of excellence,” Baumgartner said last week. “It’s a source of pride, school unity and a feeling of accomplishment.”
That reputation helped wrestling survive seven years ago, when Baumgartner made the ironic and difficult decision to cut two Edinboro men’s sports — tennis and baseball. Those cuts were “predominantly budget-driven,” Baumgartner said, and were not made to comply with Title IX.
“People don’t cut sports because of Title IX,” Baumgartner said. “People cut sports because they don’t want to fund sports to meet Title IX.”
Now 21 years removed from ISU’s decision to drop wrestling, men’s and women’s gymnastics and bowling, Baumgartner understands the role economics played in those choices.
Still, the university lost a program that sent Baumgartner from Terre Haute to four Summer Olympics, where he won four medals (two golds) and carried the United States flag into the stadium at the 1996 Atlanta Games. He’s one of the most decorated U.S. Olympians ever and became president of USA Wrestling.
Baumgartner even became an icon in places where few Americans dare to go, such as Iran, the Soviet Union, Cuba, East Germany and Bulgaria. Why would people there hang posters showing Baumgartner? Because they love wrestling. Politics mean nothing on a wrestling mat.
“There’s no finer human being on the planet,” Moyer said of Baumgartner.
“How many more Bruce Baumgartners would be walking around if we had a more fair interpretation of the [Title IX] law?” Moyer added. “That’s the sad thing.”
Moyer and Baumgartner both expressed a hope that someday ISU would bring wrestling back. Moyer said efforts by the NWCA have helped 45 colleges reinstate lost wrestling programs. The NWCA is also calling for the NCAA to help the situation in two ways — first by increasing the minimum number of varsity sports required at an institution (“It would force the schools to spread their money around,” he said, instead of channeling a disproportion amount into football and basketball), and second by offering sweeter incentives to schools with a broader variety of teams.
In the meantime, though, the idea of wrestling returning to ISU remains more than a longshot.
“I do not anticipate ever being able to bring wrestling back,” said Sycamore Athletic Director Ron Prettyman, a former high school wrestler who came to ISU in 2005. “It’s a difficult thing in this day and age to add a men’s sport because of Title IX responsibilities and gender-equity responsibilities. I am very pleased with the way things are going right now at Indiana State. But the opportunity to bring back any of our men’s sports, the chances are very slim.”
Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.
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