Timing suspect for Oregon's decision

Depending on perspective, Friday was an exciting day for the University of Oregon, a dismal day for the sport of wrestling, a day of victory for competitive cheerleaders or an opportunity for people to say the school is green with envy over the success of its neighbor to the north.

Friday was a combination of all of the above, with a little Title IX thrown in for good measure.

The University of Oregon is re-instating its baseball program, dropped for budgetary reasons in 1981. Starting with the 2008-09 school year, Oregon no longer will be labeled the only Pac-10 team without baseball as a varsity team sport.

It's a move a lot of baseball fans have desired for many years and has been a primary goal of new athletic director Pat Kilkenny. But its timing is very suspect to those outside the school.

Just last month, Oregon State University repeated as national champion in baseball. It was the third straight year the Beavers reached the College World Series and the school is the only one in the Northwest ever to win a baseball crown.

And it was a chance for fans statewide to celebrate, no matter their allegiance the rest of the sports year, because Oregon doesn't have a baseball team.

The Beavers win two national titles and suddenly Oregon moves to add a sport missing from its program for a quarter-century. Kilkenny said Oregon's announcement Friday had nothing to do with the success of the Beavers, but who could blame someone for thinking the Ducks - traditionally the state's rich athletic program because of their ties with Nike boss Phil Knight, their fancy locker room, their 4,000 football uniform combinations (or something like that) and their ambitious plans for a new basketball arena - don't like being the have-nots when it comes to national titles? In recent memory, Oregon is two down to both the Beavers and the University of Portland, which won a pair of women's soccer crowns.

Oregon's announcement Friday impacts much more than just baseball, though.

To keep the university relatively in line with Title IX requirements - which require gender equity in sports at Universities that receive federal funding - baseball couldn't be added without some other men's sport being eliminated.

Enter wrestling, the poster child for critics of Title IX's impact on sports.

Oregon announced it will eliminate wrestling after the coming school year. The Ducks have a lot of company in that category. According to the Web page intermatwrestle.com, nearly 450 colleges and universities have cut wrestling since 1972, the year Title IX was approved, and fewer than 325 schools in all levels from Division I to junior college still offer the sport.

Now Oregon State, Arizona State and Stanford will be the only Pac-10 schools with wrestling teams and Shane Webster will join Karl Van Calcar as sports trivia question answers in the state. Unless a Duck wins a national title next winter, Webster, a 2006 champion, will be the last for Oregon. Van Calcar, the 1986 Prefontaine Memorial Run winner, was the last track champion for Oregon State, taking the steeplechase in 1988, the year OSU cut the track program for budgetary reasons.

I'm not opposed to Title IX. I think it's important to support women's athletics and I applaud schools for giving women chances to earn college scholarships.

But I think it's a shame that football throws schools into a Title IX crunch because Division I universities can offer 85 football scholarships and nearly all do to remain competitive.

Football, in turn, funds nearly all the rest of each school's athletic programs. But because no corresponding sports for women offer large numbers of scholarships, programs like wrestling, men's volleyball and men's gymnastics get cut.

With the addition of baseball, Oregon offers six men's sports with a maximum total of 131.3 scholarships (the scholarships for sports like baseball, golf, tennis and track and field often are split among many athletes, with few getting full rides).

Oregon offers eight women's sports, with a total of 97 possible scholarships.

(For the record, Oregon State offers seven men's sports, with 139 total scholarships; and nine women's sports, with 123 scholarships.)

Though Oregon's numbers don't add up to perfect equity under Title IX, especially because Oregon has a higher proportion of female students - about 53 percent of the total student body - the school can be in compliance by showing it is expanding the opportunities for women. In recent years, the Ducks have added women's soccer and lacrosse.

Reports were, they were going to add crew as well. But the announcement Friday was that the new woman's sport would be competitive cheerleading.

That surprised me, and most of the people I talked to.

The University of Maryland was the first to offer competitive cheerleading as a varsity sport, in 2002, and Oregon officials said Friday that competitive cheerleading is a sport growing quickly nationwide.

The choice of cheerleading as a competitive sport is sure to raise eyebrows, especially when more traditional sports such as swimming or gymnastics, or even the emerging sport of crew, are not offered by the Ducks. Incidentally, Oregon State offers all those sports to varying degrees of success.

The Beavers have been to the NCAA championships in gymnastics many times and annually rank in the top 20. The swim team is improving. The rowers made the top 20 in crew this spring and Myrtle Point native Kaylie Towne was an All-American.

But Oregon State hasn't won a championship in any of those sports. Maybe if the Beavers can pull that off, the Ducks won't be far behind with a team.