In response to Ashley Souder’s April 14 letter, “Title IX isn’t root of athletics problems,” I don’t understand how you can say that the athletic department has an inability to manage its money when the athletic department has the Big 12’s smallest annual budget, yet fields more teams than half of the conference.

In 2002 the football team posted a $6 million profit. Men’s basketball had a profit of $2.3 million. Those were the only two sports to post a profit in 2002, yet you bash them. The profits from those are what supports the other 16 programs. It is funny that they make a profit, considering you claim that they spend more than they make.

Your point of blaming football for the loss of baseball doesn’t make any sense either. Maybe you don’t realize this but sports is a business, not just entertainment.

In any business you have to spend a little money to make a little money. If the athletic department didn’t spend the money it did on football, then the program would never improve and wouldn’t make any money.

Whether it is fair to blame Title IX or not can be debated forever, but the fact remains that Title IX is outdated.

Thirty years ago some of the things that it prevents were more prevalent than they are now. With female enrollment at colleges a lot higher than it was in 1972, the number of male programs will continue to decrease since Title IX requires the ratio of male to female student athletes to be roughly equivalent to the overall proportion of female and male students.

The athletic department and the football program are not to blame for this problem.

Andy Wilson

Junior

Sports management