SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Girls Varsity Soccer So your daughter wants to play college soccer?

Articles to read before I get told that I am crazy and no one is shutting down football.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/03/04/SPGGC5E0CD1.DTL

http://www.voy.com/53670/4/6378.html

http://starbulletin.com/97/08/08/sports/bigold.html

Wow - a lot of good questions and many I don't have answers for or an opinion on (to be honest).

Football did drop in scholarship numbers after Title IX enforcement took place. USC also dropped their men's cross country team and added equestrian to increase the number of female participants. I know that baseball has a roster of 40 players, but only 11 scholarships (I think) to split between them. I do not know how many scholarships the other sports have. The women's track team has a roster of 43 and the men's is 32. Are they all on scholarship? I don't know. You are probably a lot more well read on Title IX than I am and you've obviously sought out some figures to back up your statements. I don't know where these figures come from. It's not something I've ever seen. I just know the ticketing/fundraising side of things.

You asked why people felt the need to rationalize the salaries that coaches are paid. I personally don't, so that's a question for someone else. I feel that all of the coaches are well compensated and they have built into their contracts bonuses for team performance. That's an incentive for the coach to push their teams to do well.

Next: "Then the question becomes how much does the football program owe -- and why shouldn't the number of scholarships go down [at the NCAA level] in order to increase what the football program owes to these other sports [as per some organization's wishes]?" I didn't mean for you to get the impression that I felt the football program "owed" the rest of the sports anything. My point is that without the football program the funding for the othe programs would not be there. USC is lucky to operate "in the black" unlike some other schools. Soccer, baseball, basketball, volleyball does bring in some funding through ticket sales, but many of the other sports do not. You don't have to pay to go to an equestrian or swimming or tennis match, but these students are still provided equipment, coaches and some scholarships. Where does this money come from? Booster donations and ticket sales.

Your final question about fully funded soccer programs being related to football, I can't answer. I don't know who is fully funded and who isn't. I would assume the UNC women's program is fully funded solely based on their year end and year out domination in the sport. I would assume this even though their football program does not draw a big crowd. You appear to know a lot more than I do on other institutions and even more than I do in other areas of USC. I won't discuss things that I know nothing about so that I don't throw out incorrect information.

Thanks for the discussion. You've given me some things to think on also.

Maybe I am just being obstinate.... but if you reduce the number of scholarships to 60, I believe you still make the same revenue and therefore more to go around for all. 25 additional scholarships is a lot of money to go around

What exactly is the question we are trying to solve?

Something about football and soccer and not being treated fair?

I coach football and soccer now, as well as played football and soccer in college. My conclusion is this: Our soccer team funding was/is dependent on the football team. They receive many more perks and benefits than the soccer team, but without them we would not be able to support a team half as well as we do now.

To me it seems like a teenage girl girl being angry at her father for owning a '04 Dodge Ram with power everything versus her '99 Saturn with roll up windows and cassette player. She can complain, or be thankful she is being taken care of was well as she is.

R1C: I came into this discussion believing that college football was the engine that allowed scholarships to be offered in most other sports. In the last few days, as I've searched out numbers, what I've found is that most college football programs lose money and thus can't be funding much of anything. This is amazing to me. It's also amazing to me that there is so much more funding for men's sports than women's sports; I thought that Title IX had resulted in proportional funding. I have no doubt that I was amazingly ignorant a few days ago, and am only slightly less so now -- but I'm still in the process of learning the questions to ask and asking them -- I'm a long way from getting to an "answer" or even a set of answers.

Specifically, here's what I've learned in this discussion to date:

1. USC and Clemson are the only SC universities making non-trivial money on their football programs.
2. Most college football programs lose money.
3. If a college football program loses money, it is not helping fund any other programs regardless of its revenue.
4. Title IX has not resulted in proportional representation.
5. Since the only proven legally defensible mechanism is proportional representation, most South Carolina universities seem to be open to lawsuits if any organizations choose to pursue them.

Now, you've taken this discussion into the realm of high school football [I believe this is what you meant in your third paragraph]. What is the revenue and expenses associated with your high school football program? Are these numbers available anywhere for South Carolina high school athletic departments? Is Title IX applicable to high schools? Is there anything like the EADA (the reporting standard for Title IX) being done at the high school level?

R1C: One other note on the heart of your post, the hypothetical you posed concerning football and soccer being treated fairly.

I don't know how you'd come up with a definition of "fair", so I'll give you my definition...which is at the athletic department level, not the program-by-program level. At this time, it appears that the best definition I can find is proportional representation in terms of spending since there's a 30+ year legal framework for that in Title IX. I honestly don't give a rat's behind how much money is spent on football; however, if you take all men's sports and all women's sports then it makes sense to me that you're going to spend a proportional amount based on the proportion of students you have.

Your automotive analogy you give above is seriously flawed. This isn't about a "father" and a "daughter", this is about a "man" and a "woman." There isn't an automatic authoritative paternalistic relationship due to gender.

If your argument is that college or high school football pays the bills and thus deserves more, well, then show me the revenue and expense statements from most of these universities. What you'll find, as I did, is that with two major exceptions that college football is so expensive that it tends to lose money or at best break-even.

Is this the case in high school? No idea at all. Honestly...none! Do I think we should spend less on high school football? No idea at all. Honestly...none! I would hope the high school football programs are run efficiently enough so that they're almost all making money.

But would I like to see the athletic department budgets by program for South Carolina high schools to understand what is going on -- and would I like to see EADA-like reports showing gender representation? Honestly...absolutely!

[futbol(soccer)] Maybe I am just being obstinate.... but if you reduce the number of scholarships to 60, I believe you still make the same revenue and therefore more to go around for all. 25 additional scholarships is a lot of money to go around

I can come up with an argument against this. My guess would be that the 25 football scholarships that would be removed would be much more likely to negatively impact people on a lower socioeconomic scale. Thus you'd be pitting statistically disadvantaged male kids against advantaged female kids if you put more money into soccer [for example].

Then again, a counter argument is that these are athletic, not need-based, financial assistance -- and that the 25 you take away from football could be applied to sports in which there are proportionally more disadvantaged female athletes.

Interesting stuff!

High school football teams do not have the following three major costs that are associated with D1 college football programs:

1. Paying players (scholarships)
2. Paying coaches (big bucks for major D1 staffs)
3. Travel (a day trip to Summerville vs. overnights to Oregon)

Thus, if they get a decent gate six Friday nights per year, high school teams should not only be able to fund themselves, but a significant part of the rest of the athletic teams as well.

Hurst66: Is there any reporting requirements associated with high school athletic departments? Or is "Freedom of Information" the only way to get this kind of information?

No idea.

There's always the question of Athletic Department funds and Booster Club funds as well.