All in the Name of Proportionality

Proportionality is forcing one school to scare up extra females for the purposes of roster inflation, while another will drop a very popular men's sport.

Marshall will add three (3) women's tennis players to their roster in an attempt to meet their quota. Good luck with that, Thundering Herd. Read more here.

"We are trying to get up to 10 on our roster because it is a good, safe number," head coach John Mercer said. "Also, there are some Title IX issues that we are trying to meet."

"Basically, you can't have one without the other," said Erik Paz, assistant compliance director. "We get into problems with having so many football players, and to compensate for that, we have to add more female athletes to balance the numbers."

Just how committed are these athletes?

"I am just here because they needed me," Halbert said. "It will be fun, and it isn't a big commitment because the coach said I can get out of it what I want."

Mercer lets the women decide how much they want to get involved. They do not have mandatory practices.

Wouldn't it have been easier to just drop a men's sport or two to meet the Title IX quotas? If Marshall had a men's swim program (they have a women's team), you can bet it would have been an attractive option...

Now to the Delaware story. The university is dropping its men's track program before it can reach the ripe old age of 101. That's right, folks. The University of Delaware will cut the 100 year-old team after the 2011 season. Read more about the dumping of men's track/cross country here and here.

You know why this had to happen, right?

The University of Delaware's football team recently wrapped up its season with 103 players on its roster. That includes four quarterbacks, 10 running backs, 14 wide receivers, 16 defensive backs and four kickers.

Do people care about Delaware football? Well, uh ... I guess so. Spend enough time in the First State and you're destined to hear folks talk glowingly of Rich Gannon and Keita Malloy and Joe Flacco.

Behind the blather and fan-board loudmouths, however, is an ambivalent reality. Playing at home against Georgia Southern in last month's I-AA semifinals, Delaware drew 10,317 fans to a stadium that holds 22,000. One week earlier, in the quarterfinals against New Hampshire (a conference rival), that total was 8,770.

Really, 8,770.

Men's swimming survived the Title IX purge. Why?

Last year, men's track had 47 athletes on the roster. Cross country had 12. Dropping the two sports will result in nearly sixty (60) men being cleared from the athletic department "roll".

This year's men's swim team is about twice as quota-friendly as the running squads were. They have 31 male athletes over at the cement pond.

Just like Cal's rugby team, Delaware men's track was just too popular to keep around...