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for anyone who wanted to play, regardless of gender. And in fact, if I recall correctly, one way schools can demonstrate compliance with Title IX is by showing that they are indeed providing adequate athletic opportunities to the women who want to play. So, what you're suggesting is, IIRC, already an option.
Problem is, it would be quite difficult to quantify the true level of interest in playing sport among a college's women such that everyone was satisfied that the measure was accurate. Which is why the vast majority of schools have chosen to demonstrate Title IX compliance by working towards bringing the proportion of female athletes into line with the proportion of female students -- that's something that can easily be quantified.
Unfortunately, the by-the-numbers approach has led to some schools dropping non-revenue men's sports in order to achieve this balance (rather than, say, increasing their athletics budgets to allow for more women's opportunities), especially in recent years when many colleges have more women than men in their undergraduate populations (and thus should have more women than men athletes -- unlikely given the still-unbalanced situation in many local school systems). It's these actions by the schools, rather than Title IX itself, that are responsible for the resentment that has been created among men whose sports have been dropped.
It's definitely a frustrating issue. My undergrad school got a lot of heat regarding Title IX non-compliance while I was there, despite the fact that it was taking very positive steps towards compliance (the school is, BTW, one of the institutions with more women than men overall -- I think it was about 54% female when I was there) -- it had raised a few women's club sports to varsity level (i.e., scholarships, etc.) and did research among the student body to determine what other women's sports might have the greatest chance of success if added (rather than just randomly adding women's sports with no history that then had difficulty attracting enough participants, as has happened at some schools). This still wasn't enough to bring the ratios in line, though -- what finally did it was that, for financial reasons, the university dropped the football team (the football team was Division I-AA, so there was basically no revenue for football, and the team was just terrible, so no butts in the seats either).
I've often wondered if perhaps there ought to be some sort of exception or adjustment made for schools that have football teams, as there's really no women-only sport that requires nearly as many players as football does. Those football roster spots are indeed sports opportunities open to men, but then again there are many athletic programs that would have achieved and exceeded compliance long ago if not for football. I'm kind of torn between worrying that we penalize male athletes just because they happen to be the near-exclusive players of the most roster-heavy sport there is and thinking that each slot on ANY team is an athletic opportunity that should be balanced on the women's side, assuming of course there's interest.
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