Introduction:
The role of the NCAA in the 1970�s became much more important because of the many issues that arose during this decade, both inside and outside of college athletics. Civil rights had been a major national issue of the sixties with the fight for equality by women and African Americans. This became the new ideal for the seventies so the NCAA was now faced with the challenge of equally providing for all student-athletes, new and old. Title IX and proposition 48 were major issues that the NCAA had to deal with along with the many excesses that were prevalent in college athletics at the time. The NCAA finally had a sense of urgency to deal once and for all with these excesses. They felt that the cost of college athletics must be controlled as they saw it was getting very much out of hand. The overall goal for the National Collegiate Athletic Association was to find a way to please all sides of the issues they faced while still maintaining the prestige of the major division I-A athletic programs that then existed, particularly football and basketball.
The NCAA's Problems With Title IX:
Title IX was a major issue in the 1970�s that demanded comparable expenditures to be used for men�s and women�s sports (Byers, 221). To the NCAA this meant less money for the major-league college men�s programs that had helped to build the rich history of college athletics, mainly football and basketball. The NCAA argued that it wasn�t there fault that women didn�t join the NCAA when it was created. �The men and the NCAA, itself, didn�t discriminate against women. Women�s athletic leaders discriminated against themselves through the years refusing to accept competitive athletics as a proper pursuit for teenage women� (Byers, 243). They saw Title IX and the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women, or the AIAW, as economically threatening to the security of men�s college sports. The NCAA and the AIAW obviously clashed very much on this issue. The AIAW wanted to have their own organization separate from the NCAA in order to control their own budgets and to stay away from the �wrongful practices� that occurred in the men�s programs (Byers, 240). The NCAA sought to find help through connections with high political figures by ultimately limiting the powers of the Title IX law in college athletics. One way they tried to do this was to stop the AIAW from being its own governing body over women�s intercollegiate sports. The NCAA did this by proposing to hold the women�s championships through their NCAA association, therefore, still maintaining control over women�s athletics.
The NCAA Takes Action:
The NCAA took the Title IX issue to the U.S. Congress against the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW, which is the agency that proposed Title IX). They tried to refute the law by having the law removed from the jurisdiction of college athletics. The NCAA argued that the federal government was overstepping its boundaries by interrupting these institutions of higher education. Senator John Tower was the first to show the NCAA�s message to Congress proposing an amendment that would have excluded all intercollegiate athletics from the jurisdiction of Title IX, but this amendment was eventually defeated (Sack, 119). The NCAA tried many other ways to gain support for their position arguing against Title IX. �Objecting on grounds that ranged from inappropriate governmental intervention in higher education to the suspicion that the interpretations were being written by radical feminists who were �entrenched in their thinking� to the need to limit Title IX reviews to nonrevenue-producing sports only, the NCAA tried and failed on several fronts to receive support for their position� (Sack, 121). The NCAA felt they had one last chance in lessening the impact of Title IX. This was by filing a suit involving a single institution posing the question whether or not Title IX could apply to athletic programs that received only donations and not federal funds. These roundabout ways of the NCAA to oppose Title IX continued well into the 1980�s as it happened that the NCAA did win in some way by having control over the Division I championships for women. It is very evident to see the strong opposition that the NCAA felt for Title IX, but it became evident to the association that limitations had to be made in all intercollegiate athletics if it were in some way going to diffuse the effects of this law.
Cutting Costs:
As the heads of the NCAA saw the money diminishing for male sports after the passing of Title IX in 1972, they then had to find a way to cut costs out of all athletic teams, mainly the big name sports, to have enough money to go around. In the 1976 college football season, the NCAA did a study on profits of Division I-A football teams finding that only about 51 percent reported a profit from their programs (Byers, 221). The coaches explained that the reason for the high expenses was due to the fact that the football and basketball teams, which were the large revenue sports, were paying for the other sports programs. The colleges reacted in the 70�s by raising ticket prices by about 66 percent in order to bring in more profit (Byers, 220). The NCAA saw that they had to make their own cuts in places that they saw the spending of athletic money was unnecessary. Such excesses as taking recruits and their families out to lavish dinners had to be eliminated or at least limited. Coach Joe Paterno of the Penn State Nittany Lions presented the option of eliminating two-platoon football, where there is a varsity and a junior varsity squad, and consolidating them into one team. Teams were traveling with an over excessive number of 60 players to away games and this number was ultimately lowered to 48 players thus cutting out unnecessary travel costs (Byers, 227).
Another thing that the NCAA instituted in order to lower costs were limiting the number of grants-in-aid for all programs. For example, in 1969, the Southeastern Conference (SEC) permitted 40 grants-in-aid to be given to incoming student-athletes and a total of 125 total full ride scholarships per team per year (Byers, 220). At an Economy Convention in August of 1975, the NCAA limited Division I football programs to a total of 95 full ride scholarships, with only 25 of those grants going to new incoming players (Byers, 226). Head coaching staffs in all sports became lowered and fixed in order to lower the total costs of salaries being paid to college athletic coaches. �The goal of the NCAA economy advocates in 1975 was to save money for the colleges. We also believed that the rules would spread player talent as well, helping the aspiring programs� (Byers, 228). The NCAA saw this as an equal opportunity for all colleges by putting limitations on scholarships. The NCAA also imposed rules to do away with travel uniforms for all teams. They saw it as a way to save money for the schools and also as a vehicle to extinguish differences between big time college teams and lower end teams.
Conclusion
The role of the NCAA in the 1970�s was one that changed the face of college athletics which is still very prevalent today. Title IX, the creation of women�s athletic teams, and the consolidating of those teams under the NCAA name tag made intercollegiate athletics open to men and women alike. Title IX did create questions related to university athletic budgets, but the NCAA did their job in being fair by cutting out the unnecessary fat in men�s sports teams in order to provide comparatively equal budgets to all sports teams, namely the new women�s sports. The NCAA became more of a regulatory agency in the 1970�s as it was a time for change and limitations within intercollegiate athletics. Even though the NCAA was very much opposed to Title IX in taking away from the male athletic sports finances, they succeeded in helping to create an opportunity to compete at a championship caliber level by admitting them to the NCAA. It is prevalent, and still is today, how restrictions imposed by the NCAA during the 1970�s has made intercollegiate athletics a fair system within which to play.
Bibliography:
Byers, Walter. Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Exploiting College Athletes. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Sack, Allen L. College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA�s Amateur Myth. New York, New York: Oxford Press, 1999.
LINKS:
Effects on Wrestling
From a Women's Point of View
Brown v. Cohen
Title IX Timeline