Title IX issue further clouds UNM athletic budget
Already faced with cutting sports programs because of $7M deficit, report finds Lobos fail to provide equal opportunities for women
ALBUQUERQUE — With a deadline looming for drastic cost-cutting measures by the University of New Mexico’s Athletics Department, the job of making those changes got considerably more complicated Thursday.
Athletic director Eddie Nuñez shared with reporters the findings of an independent consultant’s report that outlined potential violations of federal law by the department — gender equity issues that include the condition of facilities, financial aid for summer school and, perhaps most critically, an imbalance in scholarships for male and female athletes.
Title IX regulations mandate that every school receiving federal funding must provide equitable opportunities for men and women proportionate to the school’s undergraduate
enrollment. Although the report found UNM in or near compliance in a variety of categories, the scholarship issue may be paramount, as it comes at a time when the athletic department is trying to dig itself out of a massive financial hole.
Helen Grant Consulting, an independent firm based in Mississippi, issued the 39-page report. Nuñez, in his first year at UNM, hired the firm this spring.
The consultant found that more than 55 percent of UNM’s full-time undergraduate students are female, but only 44 percent of the athletic department’s scholarship athletes are women. The 11.6 percent disparity equates to a need to manage about 145 participation opportunities in order to avoid penalties. The report says UNM:
Should create a “roster management plan” to reduce men’s scholarships and increase those for women.
Lacks a full-time coach for the women’s beach volleyball program.
Should upgrade infrastructure for some women’s programs and address equipment issues for both men’s and women’s teams.
Should provide an on-campus facility
for beach volleyball.
“If we take this report and don’t do anything with it, yeah, you’re going to have the [U.S. Justice Department’s] Office of Civil Rights in here and you’re going to have bigger questions,” Nuñez said.
The athletic department’s budget deficit — expected to top $7 million for the upcoming fiscal year — won’t get any easier given the Title IX issues outlined in the report. UNM President Garnett Stokes this spring authorized Nuñez to cut one or more sports programs as a means to stabilize the department’s financial mess, and she gave him a June 30 deadline to announce his plan.
While Nuñez said he is optimistic he will be ready to make an announcement soon, he cautioned it might not come until early July.
“Cutting sports is not about sustaining a department,” Nuñez said. “By doing so, you’re not going to save millions upon millions of dollars, but it is a part of it, and it does help.”
The consultant recommended three approaches to achieve Title IX compliance. One was to add women’s varsity sports such as lacrosse, water polo or field hockey. Another was eliminating men’s teams, something Nuñez has long considered. At present, UNM supports 22 varsity sports — the national Division I average is 16, the report says — of which, a dozen are women’s teams and 10 are men’s.
The third suggestion was restructuring the number of scholarships offered among the programs. A major hiccup to that plan is the influence of football. The UNM football team is receives more than $2.93 million in scholarships, surpassing the entire allotment for all women’s sports ($2.83 million).
A roster management plan, according the report, would directly affect eight of the 10 men’s sports. The exceptions would be football and basketball. Similarly, most women’s sports would see modest boosts in their scholarship numbers.
With the primary goal being to cut costs, Nuñez said the choice is clear.
“It does make recommendations that we do need to reach Title IX proportionality; we have to cut some sports,” he said. “What sports, the number of sports, how do we get there? At this point, I don’t have those answers because I’m not going to put our student-athletes, our coaches, their families and everybody else in a position without doing our due diligence.”
Nuñez said any athletes affected by the elimination of their teams would have their scholarships honored until graduation, and any program marked for elimination would have the opportunity to compete in the 2018-19 season.
“I don’t think this is a one silver bullet where you’re going to cut x amount of teams and you’re going to reach a certain proportionality, as well as a financial situation that you’re looking for,” he said. “This is going to be a culmination of roster management, potentially the reduction of some teams and how many.”
To add a women’s sport would require a hefty and sustainable cash infusion from either the school or the private sector, something Nuñez said isn’t realistic given the athletic department’s budget deficit.
Some women’s sports need infrastructure improvements, according to the report. For instance, the softball team’s facility does not measure up to baseball’s; beach volleyball trains at an off-campus bar; and Johnson Gym, which houses indoor volleyball, is infested with roaches and rats.
Title IX requires that all teams have similar-quality facilities, as well as equipment, staff support and marketing opportunities.
“I came in and inherited a lot of the situations that I’m dealing with, and regardless of that — what is in place and what I’m trying to do — I’ve got to try to make it right for us moving forward,” Nuñez said.
By adding beach volleyball in 2015, UNM gained temporary compliance with Title IX.
The university was given a four-year grace period that required appropriate infrastructure, something it hasn’t lived up to. The report states an on-campus facility of Division I quality would cost at least $1 million — money the athletic department doesn’t have.
“I had anticipation that we were going to have some things that were going to fall [into the report], that we were going to have some shortcomings,” Nuñez said. “The reality is if we don’t know that, we can’t address it.”