Schools use different tactics to inflate numbers on their women's sports rosters.

TITLE IX

How to game the numbers for 

Welcome to Big State University, 

where you’ve just been hired as 

athletic director!

That means women get equal athletic opportunities, and that’s usually based on undergraduate enrollment. If your school is 50-50 women to men, your athletic program should be, too.

But you’re in a pickle. Big State’s enrollment is 55% women and 45% men, while its athletic program is the opposite – mostly because of its enormous football team.

You could add more women’s sports, but it’s expensive to hire coaches, buy equipment, build facilities and compete in the NCAA.

It’s much easier to just manipulate your numbers.

100

50/50

You need 100 more women to reach that balance.

LET'S SEE HOW.

BIG 

STATE

a federal law banning sex-based discrimination in schools – including athletics.

As part of your role, you must get Big State to comply with Title IX, a federal law banning sex-based discrimination in schools – including athletics.

As part of your role, you must get Big State to comply with Title IX,

This sport has indoor and outdoor teams which feature similar events. A single athlete can participate in both – allowing Big State to count that athlete twice.

Men who compete on both teams get double-counted, too. To ensure a net gain of women, let’s have a women's roster that's bigger than the men’s.

Let’s also add all the women distance runners to the cross country team. Now we can triple count them. We’ll do the same for men, but, again, we’ll add fewer.

Good work. By padding your female rosters and then duplicating – or triplicating them –

 you made up 50 women’s spots.

Track & Field • Cross Country

allowing Big State to count them twice.

Let’s have all the women compete on both teams to double their numbers. 

+50

X3

X2

Track & Field

Track & field has both indoor and outdoor teams and feature similar events, so a single athlete can participate on both squads and be counted twice.

Big State also has a women’s rowing team, which needs just 23 athletes to compete in the NCAA championship and some more for conference competition. But you can add a lot more by opening up the sport to anyone with a passing interest.

Hold an informal tryout at the beginning of the year and count every woman who comes, even if she never competes in a race.

50/50

Rowing

You can also count novice rowers, who likely won’t compete and get different coaching and treatment compared to their teammates.

Nice! That just got you 30 spots.

Nice! That just got you 30 spots. 

+30

+50

Practice players

You can do the same thing with the male practice players on the women’s volleyball and soccer teams.

Congratulations! Those 20 men got you to the100 women's spots you needed.

Big State’s women’s basketball team practices against male players. The federal government says you can count the men as women, so let’s do it.

+20

EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT.

Now you can submit this data to the federal government and appear in compliance with Title IX ...

100

+20

EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT.

It’s much easier to just manipulate your numbers.

+50