Title IX and Class Warfare

I have taken some flak in my personal life over my opposition to Title IX so I have decided to run some posts which examine the issues a little more seriously than I have done in the past. In this post I will examine a parallel between the Title IX supporters and class warfare. Very often taxes on the "rich" are sold to the public as not really taxes at all because you wont pay them and the "rich" can "afford" it. Similarly, the National Women's Law Center suggests that the way to be Title IX compliant is through modest cuts in football's "bloated" budget. In a press release (pdf) the NWLC says

The male athletes whose sports have been cut should turn their attention to the athletic directors who subsidize bloated football and men’s basketball budgets, and stop blaming female athletes, who account for a little more than one third of total athletic operating budgets. If men’s sports are being cut, it is because ... athletic dollars continues to be spent on ... football and men’s basketball and are not being spent to add new teams for women or to support existing men’s “minor” sport teams.

This argument is dishonest because it only considers athletic budgets. If a school is found in violation of Title IX, then fedral education dollars are withheld from the school, making this an issue not just about athletic budgets. In the same press release

Second, ... cost-cutting can be accomplished without hurting the competitiveness or revenue production of these programs.
• Universities could stop funding hotel rooms for football players on nights before home games, order new uniforms less frequently, reduce the distance traveled for non-conference competition by selecting opponents closer to home, among other possibilities too numerous to list.
• Athletic conferences also could ... limit travel squad size, and add sports for the underrepresented gender at the same time to ensure geographic proximity of opponents.
• The NCAA could .. impose across-the-board cost reductions, such as capping the ridiculously high dollars spent to recruit new athletes or reducing the 85 football scholarships to a more reasonable number.
None of these measures would hurt the competitiveness of these programs or restrict their ability to generate revenue.(my emphasis)

Everyone has a different opinion about how much the government should meddle in people's lives, but legislating how often football teams get new uniforms is IMO too much. Notice the debate is framed around getting something for nothing. The cuts in football aren't really cuts because they can "afford" it.

I don't want to make this post too long so I will save more arguments for the future, but one final point specifically about football. There is no female counterpart and this is really comparing apples to oranges. College football is an American cultural phenomena that draws more attendence than all professional women's sports in the enitre world put together. The budget discrepancy is the natural consequence. Furthermore, if college football has any relationship to the systematic discrimination against females, then the relationship is oblique at best. I don't want to sound like I'm just complaining, so here is one of my proposed changes to Title IX: exempt football.