Originally posted by Nevergoodenough
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For example: Say the football and men's basketball teams bring in $15M per year, and only cost $12M to operate. If the total athletic budget is $20M, then the school is kicking in $5M, so the school would be required to spend at least $2.5M on women's teams (half of the amount the school is paying for). Therefore, the athletic department could spend $17.5M on men's teams and $2.5M on women's and be in compliance.
This scheme recognizes that it is clearly not the case that Federal money is paying for football and basketball, since they pay for themselves. Of the Federal money that goes to the school, the portion that gets sent "over the wall" to the athletics department is being spent in equal proportions on Men's and Women's teams - $2.5M each, in this case.
If that's too radical, you could pare it back so that only the budgets of profitable sports are exempt, so in my example, the $12M budgets of football and basketball would be exempt, leaving $8M, so the school would be required to spend at least $4M on women's sports.
For schools that DON'T make money on their football teams - well, they can still pump in money to prop them up, but they have to match that spending dollar for dollar on women's teams.
The more I think about this, the more fair it seems - it is completely logical that the Federal government should be allowed to attach strings to the money it gives to educational institutions. But why should the government get to dictate how the university spends the revenue it generates from its sports teams? Put it another way: it's (somewhat) logical that if the government gives a school $10M to build a new science lab, and the school gives its athletic department $10M that year, then you can easily make the argument that the government's grant freed up the $10M in the school's budget, which it chose to spend on sports - in that sense, the $10M going to the athletic department could be seen as the government's (people's) money. Therefore, the sports that those $10M go to support should be proportional for men and women.
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