Gender proportionality in intercollegiate athletics : The mathematics of Title IX compliance

The ongoing controversy over Title IX, requiring university athletic departments to provide equal participation opportunities to men and women, has been the source of heated controversy. The purpose of this research is to determine how much remains to be done before proportionality is achieved, i.e., before the number of female athletes matches the female percentage of a school's student body, as well as how various proposals would affect compliance. We analyze data on the gender composition of 304 Division I athletic programs and student bodies to determine what each school needs to accomplish through strategies of adding female athletes, cutting male athletes, or reallocating participation opportunities from women to men. Most schools - especially those with football teams - are nowhere near compliance. Compliance is more approachable for schools with a smaller proportion of female students, with more financial resources for female athletics, with a smaller athletic program, and without a football team. Compliance is still unlikely or, at best, far in the future for most schools even if certain NCAA rules and federal regulations are enacted. The reallocation strategy appears to present the most inviting avenue to compliance, although the only scenarios in which most football schools come close to compliance would involve exempting football from Title IX coverage or placing a fifty-player cap on football rosters, neither of which seems likely in the near future