This is great news – I’ll admit that I’ve been very pessimistic about the chances for this money to actually be raised and for the athletic department to keep the sports anyway. If they pull it off it will say a great deal about the Cal community.

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.

So the author’s saying that, excepting proportionate participation, women’s teams are untouchable when considering Title IX compliance and cutting sports?

It annoys me that Title IX is inflexible enough that it’s holding large numbers of sports hostage.

What’s interesting in the article is that Cal is being bashed by both Title IX opponents and proponents. It’s a very frustrating battle that is damn near impossible to win.

What does “Save Title IX” mean exactly?

I’m super glad that the potentially cut teams will likely gain at least a few more years (and hopefully by them the economy would have rebounded and we can all just fret about the lack of state funding to keep Cal academically competitive against other top institutions), but this Title IX thing is just insane. I didn’t realize how much constraints is caused by Title IX, although this article does answer the questions why the number of women athletes does not add up to the number of male athletes (even though there are more women teams).

Regardless of the actual reason (and I’m sure the fund raising, etc. are a huge part of this potential decision reverse), the end (not cutting any sports) justifies the mean.

It looks like a lot of the male teams would have serious roster reduction. I’m not sure most of us fans realized that. The article pointed to Football, Crew, and Men’s Water Polo as likely sources of these cuts, that’s the cash cow programs plus two of the currently most successful programs.

I had already read the article, when it was not on the front page and since then the good folks at the NY Times decided to feature the link to the Cal article in the most noticeable spot on their home page.