By Mickey Furfari
For The Register-Herald
MORGANTOWN —
If you’re a male and Title IX has deprived you of an opportunity to compete in college athletics, don’t blame Oliver Luck.
“(President) Richard Nixon signed Title IX into existence,” West Virginia University’s new athletic director said recently. “He was a Republican, a conservative, and it was in a civil rights package.
“I’m not responsible for it, personally. I’m just responsible to make sure that we comply,” Luck said.
As most folks are aware, Congress legislated Title IX in June 1972 to give female athletes opportunities to compete in sports at both the high school and college levels. So there has been equity since then.
But what those lawmakers apparently didn’t consider was that it has deprived some male athletes, in untold numbers, from opportunities to compete. A lot of colleges, including WVU, had to eliminate some men’s sports to balance the numbers.
“Again, I wasn’t responsible for that piece of legislation. That’s the way I look at it,” Luck reiterated.
Luck, a great quarterback at WVU from 1978-81 and former NFL standout, prefers to see the positive side. And Title IX certainly has been a blessing for female athletes.
“I think all sports are important,” he said. “But that’s a difficult challenge to find (room for) all of the sports we like.”
Luck admittedly would love to see WVU support 36 teams like Ohio State does, but he knows that it is not financially possible.
West Virginia dropped men’s gymnastics in 1980 when coach Bill Bonsall, the father of that sport in the entire state, retired. Golf was another early victim.
Then in 2003, WVU discontinued men’s track and field — one of the world’s oldest sports — cross country and men’s tennis.
The state legislature brought back rifle as a sport and gives $100,000 annually for its existence.
“There has been a lot of discussion about Title IX affecting intercollegiate athletics overall, and how it has hurt male sports,” Luck noted. “My department function is to do as well as we can regarding the law that appears today, which is Title IX, and we’ve got to be compliant.”
That requires every school to offer women the same opportunities as men. And it’s what his department is trying to do. Any decisions made as to adding any sports would be made at the institutional level, according to Luck.
He thinks adding men’s sports would be a no-win situation. That would please some people and displease a lot of others. That’s the way he looks at it.
But he said, “We will look at all possibilities in terms of additional sports. However, I can tell you it’s not No. 1 on my priority list.”
His top priority is to hire a new associate athletic director to oversee financial and administrative matters. That position has been vacant since Russ Sharp died in March.
Luck vows to maintain the athletic department as a self-supporting unit. He said his predecessor, Ed Pastilong, did a remarkably good job of that during his 21 years as the AD.
“That, I think, is the most important aspect going forward. If we can do that with adding new sports, we’ll certainly look at that,” he stated.
“Keep in mind that football and men’s basketball are the only sports (among 16) that pay for themselves. All of the others end up costing you money.
“So you have to be very, very careful because one obligation is trust, if you will, to make sure we maintain self-sufficiency.”
