Cal dumping baseball

I don't know if that "insufficient pledges" storyline for baseball and men's gymnastics is the whole story. Cal was up against it re Title IX. From NY Times story earlier this week on the considered reinstatements:

Until now, Cal had been fulfilling Title IX requirements by asserting that it met the “interests and abilities” of its female students, one of three so-called prongs that institutions can choose to comply with the law. When a university cuts even one women’s team, it can no longer rely on that claim, nor can it argue that it has a history of expanding opportunities for women, which is another option for compliance. Now, Cal has effectively backed itself into a corner and is left with only the third option — proving that female participation in athletics is proportionate to female undergraduate enrollment in the university.

According to that story, if all five teams had been cut, the university then would have had to add 50 spots for women and cut 80 spots for men to get back into compliance.

 

Sorry, but I fail to see what most nonrev sports bring to the student body - and I was the statistician for my school's baseball team back in the day.

 

Title IX compliance is not optional. You want to have a football and men's basketball team, you have to have sufficient women's sports to balance the numbers. That is simply not debatable anymore.

 

You're right - it isn't optional. Yes, there has to be balance. That said, most of the sports (in gender balance) could go away without the student body even noticing.

 

I do not argue that, although the men on campus would not be happy if the women's volleyball players weren't there to strut around the rec center.