05-13-2026, 11:31 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-13-2026, 11:32 AM by
Blue Hawk Card.)
There was a time when I (painfully) had a pretty good knowledge of Title IX enforcement regulations and practices. This outline is based on my (very possibly incorrect) memory of that (now possibly outdated) set of Title IX regulations and enforcement practices regarding sports. I am either too lazy or too busy (you can decide which) to look this stuff up, so I am not claiming this is completely accurate. With those important caveats:
First, the Department of Education's Civil Rights folks can conduct a Title IX investigation of a school. There are presumably many ways for them to get interested in you (i.e., in a school), including complaints from someone about your school. Once you are in their cross hairs, they conduct a very thorough multi-year (usually) investigation to determine whether you comply. As with all litigation, including that in administrative agencies, most cases are resolved through settlement, often with the school making changes that the DOE Office of Civil Rights determines to be sufficient to get a school into compliance. So a big part of Title IX reality is praying to stay out of the DOE OCR cross-hairs.
[Note: This is outside of, and presumably in addition to, litigation by an individual or group directly against the school. I do not know what it takes to get standing to bring such a suit. But filing suit would presumably require all of the expense of litigation for the plaintiff. Far better, or at least more economical, for most is to get the DOE Office of Civil Rights to conduct an investigation of a particular school, if they can convince them to do so.]
There are several ways--three, I think, though you should not count on that being correct--to satisfy the Title IX folks that there is equivalence (of roster spots, of scholarships, of facilities, even of things like game times and broadcasting of games) between males and females. One, I think, is raw numerical equivalence. For example, about the same number of roster spots for males and females. Another is a ratio matching the ratio of males and females in the student population (so a school with 60% females would be expected to have about 60% roster spots and scholarships going to females). But I believe there is another, less definitive, way to qualify by showing that your opportunities match student demand (which would allow a school, I think, to defend against the claim that it should offer a women's (or men's) hockey team by conducting a survey showing there was no real demand for a hockey team at that school). The school only has to qualify on one of these three tracks. The school gets to select which one it will quality on (though the school will sometimes claim it qualifies on more than one track).
The bottom line, unless it has changed, is that a school does not, despite what many think, necessarily have to have the same number of roster spots for males and females. That having been said, once the DOE Office of Civil Rights gets you into their cross hairs, it can be very difficult to satisfy them. For example, although this might be changing due to NCAA roster restrictions and elimination of walk-ons, for many schools there are a number of non-scholarship players on teams. But that number can change quite a bit from the first week of the season to the last. Once the DOE OCR folks have their sites on you, it can be incredibly aggravating to match roster spots up the way they want them to match up, depending in part on when you do your census of athletes on teams.
And it goes beyond just roster spots, as there has to be equivalence of all sorts of things, not just roster spots. Even if someone put the DOE OCR folks on your case for allegedly favoring men over women, those DOE OCR folks can be upset if you devote slightly more of your scholarships to females than to males. [I am not making this up. You might be surprised at how hard it is to get those numbers within one percent of each other.]
Also, people who think about Title IX compliance tend to focus on NCAA (or, for NAIA schools, NAIA) sports. The DOE OCR folks decide which sports count. Almost all NCAA or NAIA varsity sports count, but after that things can get mighty interesting. What about jayvee sports? [Not relevant at NCAA schools, but relevant at many NAIA schools, because the NAIA has jayvee inter-school competition.] What about competitive cheer, which is co-ed, but tends to tilt toward more female than male team members? [An NAIA sport, but not an official NCAA sport unless that has changed recently, though many NCAA schools have competitive cheer teams.] What about rodeo and esports, both of which are run by non-NCAA and non-NAIA bodies, and both of which tend to be co-ed, but tend to be more male than female (but with major exceptions on some teams in some years)? What about shooting sports, which can tend toward males at some schools, but females at other schools? The rosters in co-ed sports can change, from a male to female ratio standpoint, quite a bit from year to year and even within a year (or season). [So can the rosters of matched sports, like golf and track teams. Some years they have more females, but other years they have more males.] What about club sports, especially what one might think of a "big time" club sports (like rugby at some schools)?
I am a big believer in the importance of both men's and women's sports and a fan and supporter of men's and women's teams and athletes. [And, yes, I understand that I used an outdated term, co-ed, but did so simply for the sake of simplicity.] But it is mighty hard to define and maintain "equivalence" in practice, if measured precisely, even at a school that believes in it.
Also, once you have a football team, things get out of whack pretty quickly, due to roster sizes (and, sometimes, facilities, fan support, and other things that can be hard to balance). That is especially true at small schools.
Bottom Line: It is much more complicated than simply comparing numbers of men and women on varsity NCAA (or NAIA) rosters.
Bottom Line 2: You do not want to be in the DOE Office of Civil Rights cross hairs because one of your school's enemies convinced them to do a Title IX investigation. [Do not ask me how I know. Please just take my word for it.] Being the subject of a Title IX investigation will require almost everyone in your athletic department and several other campus administrators and staff to spend lots of time responding to inquiries, conducting surveys, and doing all sorts of other things. You will almost always have to hire lawyers to deal with DOE OCR. And there are only a few lawyers out there who specialize in this stuff, so they do not work cheap. [Again, please do not ask me how I know these things. That would be impolite, and this board runs on politeness, right?]
Bottom Line 3: Except at a few large schools with long lists of varsity sports teams, if you have a football team, you are ripe for a Title IX investigation. There is almost always a raw numbers case that can be made against you by someone who hates you. Whether that results in a DOE OCR investigation varies: As someone once said in some movie (I think), "Are you feeling lucky today?" Think of it like holding in football or traveling in basketball: There are a lot of folks who are out of strict compliance with all of the rules, because it is almost impossible to be in full compliance with all of the rules, strictly enforced. Most never get called for it. But some have the joy of being scrutinized for not being in full compliance. When that happens, "everybody else is out of strict compliance and we are way better than almost everyone" is not a defense.
Bottom Line 4: Except at Hillsdale and a few other tiny schools, if you do not comply with Title IX, in the eyes of the DOE OCR, you run the risk of losing federal support, including federally guaranteed student loans and Pell grants. That might not happen very often, if ever. But can you take that risk? If you lose that support, you are out of business. So you take those calls from DOE OCR pretty seriously. [At least, that is what I have heard.]
