Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 5, 1993 TAG: 9308050175
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: KANSAS CITY, MO. LENGTH: Medium
The task force, which spent more than a year studying spending and participation in men's and women's athletics, made public Wednesday its recommendations for January's NCAA convention.
It stopped short of demanding an exact and immediate division of money and other resources, which could have affected football.
The legislative recommendations were forwarded to the NCAA Council, which will decide at its meeting this week in Beaver Creek, Colo., whether to put them to a vote of member schools in January.
Outgoing NCAA Executive Director Dick Schultz and NCAA President Joseph Crowley were at the meetings Wednesday, but they were not immediately available for comment.
Most people on both sides of the question say the matter ultimately will be decided by the courts.
"I don't think these recommendations will change football," said Tom Hansen, executive director of the Pacific 10 Conference and a member of the 16-member task force. "I believe the council will sponsor the recommended legislation and the membership will adopt it."
"I'm not real excited about it, to be perfectly honest," said Ellen Vargyas, senior counsel for the National Women's Law Center and a consultant to the task force. "There are definitely some good things in the report. But I think this report stands for the proposition that the NCAA has chosen not to be a major player on the issue."
The task force said "emerging" women's sports should be acceptable for meeting minimum sports sponsorship requirements and revenue distribution and that the council should "create a mechanism to identify future emerging sports."
Emerging sports were identified as crew, ice hockey, team handball, water polo, synchronized swimming, archery, badminton, bowling and squash.
A controversial recommendation is for the maximum financial aid limitations to be increased for some Division I and II women's sports, but not for men's sports. The report also urged the council to decrease the amount of financial aid to athletes "that is not based on need."
A key passage in the 13-page report concedes that football and men's basketball at most schools produce revenue for men's and women's sports.
"Maintaining current revenue-producing programs as one aspect of long-range planning for increasing women's opportunities is preferable to decreasing the . . . opportunities for men - especially when such maintenance may result in revenues available for both women's and men's programs," the passage reads.
Said Chuck Neinas, executive director of the College Football Association: "It doesn't assist anyone to have a pyrrhic victory where the healthy programs are dismantled so that they can be equal with emerging programs."
Vargyas said she argued against that passage.
by CNB