Common Sense strikes: Cheerleading is NOT a "sport."

Of course it isn't, under Title IX or anything else.

Few laws have damaged sports at the interscholastic/intercollegiate level more than the bizarreness that is Title IX, the gender-based discrimination law that has decimated male participation in sports across the country... and at the worst possible time.

Wrestling programs, for example, have been destroyed because of this program.

In 1982, there were 363 N.C.A.A. wrestling teams with 7,914 wrestlers competing; in 2001, there were only 229 teams with fewer than 6,000 wrestlers. Yet, in that same period, the number of N.C.A.A. institutions has increased from 787 to 1,049. No wonder wrestlers are unhappy.

Missing is any discussion of how countless men’s athletic programs have been cancelled due to Title IX quotas, including men’s swimming at UCLA. Before it was cancelled, the UCLA men’s swimming program produced 16 Olympic gold medalists.

More than 300 men's varsity programs at Division I colleges have been canceled in the last decade, and compliance with Title IX is often given as the reason.

When Delaware canceled men's track and cross country last year, it said Title IX was responsible. University officials said that in order to continue gender equity, they needed either to expand women's programs or cut men's programs, and the former just wasn't financially feasible.

So, why is this important?  Why does it matter?

The generally hostile environment towards men on campuses around this country is taking a toll.

"Women's Studies Programs?"

Seriously?  So, women rate their own studies based purely on their plumbing?

Where's the Men's Studies, stereotypes notwithstanding?

Over the past few years, there's been an extremely troubling trend in our nation's colleges and universities: While the growth of the numbers of women as a percentage of the student body has exploded... the numbers of men are shrinking... and getting smaller. 

There are more men than women ages 18-24 in the USA — 15 million vs. 14.2 million, according to a Census Bureau estimate last year. But nationally, the male/female ratio on campus today is 43/57, a reversal from the late 1960s and well beyond the nearly even splits of the mid-1970s.

Why?

Why is it that when fewer women participate in, say, badminton, it's a problem that needs a civil rights solution... but when fewer men are even attempting to go to college, no one cares?

Why?

Well, I believe that the institutionally hostile environment is part of it.  I also believe that men's athletic programs getting decimated is part of it.

And as the number of men going to school decreases year after year after year... hasn't the time come to ask those in charge of this nonsense what they intend to do about it?

Today may have been the first step.  The idiocy of declaring cheerleading to be a Title IX sport finally appears to be on the way out.

Perhaps now, some of these girls can be removed from their pedestals.  Maybe now, the discussion of fairness and equality can begin in earnest.

Maybe now, affirmative action, so beloved by those who benefit, so important to everyone but white males in this country, can be directed at the REAL minority: men on college campuses.

But I doubt it.