Columnist Ron Kantowski: Overstuffed football teams skew Title IX

Thursday, June 20, 2002 | 9:51 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's insider notes column appears Tuesday and his Page One column appears Thursday. He can be reached at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

If you're an idealist who believes that college sports are a byproduct of physical education, then you probably don't have a problem with Title IX, the federal mandate that guarantees scholarships for female athletes and made it possible for soccer star Brandi Chastain to strip down to her sports bra on national TV.

But if you're a realist who believes that college sports should be run in the manner of a big business which they've become, then you probably can't relate all that much to Helen Reddy and those old Virginia Slims commercials.

It's a difficult fence for many to sit on, but in that I have a soft spot for the Harvard-Yale football game and Princeton basketball, put me with the idealists. As Stanford has proven, you can still use "student" and "athlete" in the same sentence (and be able to spell them) and compete. And every time the Oklahoma football team goes on probation, as the old wisecrack goes, Kansas State shouldn't have to drop two minor sports.

As for the other philosophical issue of any Title IX discussion, well, in that I expect my wife to help out with bills at home, she should also have the opportunity to shoot hoops or run the bases during her college days. Provided she doesn't cry, of course.

College football coaches, athletic directors and presidents can learn something from Tom Hanks and Madonna. There's no crying in baseball, but when it comes to Title IX, these guys weep crocodile tears every time somebody tries to take room and board away from the third-string placekicker and give it to the girls.

On the surface, it's easy to see where they are coming from. In that lining up to use the restroom at a concert isn't a sport, there are no women's athletic pastimes that require 85 participants. Thus football, which is "limited" to 85 scholarships, skews the sports opportunities on most college campuses toward the men. To keep the Title IX cops off their backs, schools have been forced to add women's programs and/or drop men's sports.

That's why the law has become more controversial than a George Carlin routine at Chuck E. Cheese.

But as is the case with most of life's knotty problems, there's a compromise solution.

If the rough-and-tumble NFL can get by with 53-man rosters over the course of a 16-game schedule (plus exhibition games) why do NCAA teams need 85 players to play 11 games?

According to a Scripps Howard News Service report, Ohio State had 107 players on its roster last year, meaning that some had jersey numbers better suited for an airplane. It also meant OSU must have had the longest bench in college football. Only 50 Buckeyes got off it during the Outback Bowl against South Carolina, and only 27 played five minutes or more.

Using the 85-player limit, that means 58 Buckeyes played five minutes or less. And here you thought the Bush administration is overstaffed.

The coaches say they need the big rosters to offset injuries. That's why you have a taxi squad. In college, they're called walk-ons. Same difference.

Woody Hayes could rise from the dead and chase me as if I just intercepted one of the three passes his teams might attempt during the course of a game and he'd never get me to agree that 85 players are necessary to build a winning football program.

Not when the Patriots can do it with 53.