Convention Ends, but Meetings Go On : NCAA: Gender equity issue lingers, which could make the coming year a contentious one for college sports.

Having weathered 160 proposals dealing with everything from athletic certification to the logos on institutional stationery, Grant Teaff left the NCAA convention Saturday and prepared for his next trip--two days in Palm Springs.

Unfortunately for Teaff, athletic director at Baylor University, rest and relaxation will not be high on the agenda in Southern California, either.

Teaff is a member of the NCAA’s gender equity task force, a 16-member panel that will meet Monday and Tuesday in Palm Springs. The meeting will be the group’s fourth since it was established last year by Dick Schultz, NCAA executive director, to examine the gender equity issue and recommend appropriate action.

The results of the task force’s work are expected to lead to legislation that will be considered at next year’s NCAA convention, a prospect that could make the coming year a contentious one for college sports.

“It’s like people are waiting for a piano to fall on them,” said Donna Lopiano, executive director of the Women’s Sports Foundation and a consultant to the task force.

Federal law requires that colleges and universities provide equal opportunities in their athletic programs for men and women.

But the law, commonly known as Title IX, is, according to Schultz, a minimal standard. The NCAA, he believes, has a “moral responsibility” to do more.

“Gender equity means different things to different people,” he said. “Title IX says nothing about proportionality based on enrollment.”

According to an NCAA study, released last March, men’s intercollegiate teams receive nearly 70% of all athletic scholarship money, 77% of all operating dollars and 83% of all recruiting funds, even though the total enrollment of men and women is virtually equal.

While there appears to be basic agreement within college athletics that something must be done to correct the imbalance, the problem lies in identifying the best course of action.

“The thing that’s interesting,” said Teaff, who spent 21 years as Baylor’s football coach, “is Title IX is the law. At the first meeting (of the task force), we came up with a definition for gender equity that said, ‘Gender equity is above the law.’ It reaches further than Title IX. That’s where the problem is.”

The gender equity issue guided the voting on several proposals at this year’s convention, which ended Saturday.

Among the items approved by Division I delegates were measures rejecting planned scholarship cuts in 10 women’s sports, including basketball. The cuts had been approved as part of cost-reduction legislation developed by the NCAA Presidents Commission.

As a result of convention action, women’s basketball has 15 scholarships, men’s basketball 14.

Although the gender equity task force has not reached any conclusions, much of the back-room talk at the convention focused on how the panel might deal with football, the seemingly sacred cash cow for many schools.

“It’s apparent you can’t put (football) aside,” Teaff said. “We have to get to it. It’s an unavoidable situation as I see it now.”

As the only current or former football coach on the task force, Teaff finds himself defending the massive web of student-athletes, staff and expenditures required by programs at the Division I-A level.

“There has been talk of limiting squads to 100 (players),” he said. “From what I know about gender equity and Title IX, that would be the worst thing you could do.

“I went to Angelo State as a walk-on. If you had a squad limit, I wouldn’t be here today. I’d still be in Snyder (Tex.), working at a service station.”

According to Lopiano, formerly the women’s athletic director at the University of Texas, the notion that football must be slashed to promote gender equity is a little extreme.

One idea she tossed out involves making the performances of women’s basketball teams part of the criteria for the disbursement of revenue from the Division I men’s basketball tournament.

“It’s not going to be perfect,” she said of the task force’s work. “I subscribe to the theory that gender equity can be regulated at the conference level. What’s important is not keeping up with all the Joneses--just the people in your conference. The NCAA is not going to solve (the problem).”

Schultz is opposed to developing convention legislation to deal specifically with gender equity, a view he reiterated in his state of the association address last week.

“We have not tried to legislate Title IX or our hiring practices,” he told convention delegates, “and, because of the diversity of our institutions, I think it is virtually impossible to try to put legislation in place to deal with gender equity.

“But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a moral responsibility to do everything we can within our means to guarantee that we have equity on our campuses.”

Schultz also used his speech to express concern that football has become a “target” for some in dealing with the issue.

“Certainly, we are smart enough and committed enough to achieve the goal of gender equity without damaging the quality of football and other programs,” he said.

So what’s the solution?

For the time being, more meetings.

“One every month,” said Teaff, shaking his head, “from now until eternity.”