When it comes to dealing out scholarships, it is a numbers game for head track and field coach Steve Dudley.
The Mississippi State men’s track and field team is given 12.6 scholarships for 42 members while the women are given 18 scholarships for 44 participants. The numbers might seem odd, but there is a reason for the limits: the passing of Title IX in 1972.
Title IX is an education law which states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” In relation to sports, it requires men and women to be given an equal opportunity to participate in sports and receive athletic scholarships proportional to their participation.
The NCAA allots the number of scholarships that can be given to each sport, and one of the sports most affected by Title IX is track and field. At Mississippi State, track and field includes men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s outdoor track and women’s indoor track. MSU does not officially sponsor men’s indoor track because it is also an NCAA rule that there must be two more women’s sports than men’s.
Although the men’s and women’s teams contain almost the same number of participants, the men are allotted about a third less scholarships. Although track and field feels a significant impact from Title IX, Scott Stricklin, MSU athletic director, said it is important to look at every sport’s position.
“It is hard to take one or two sports and just look at that. You have to look at the whole department and look across the board to get a sense of how it all ties together,” he said. “There are some attempts to provide opportunity where the numbers do not match up, but when you look at why it is different in track, there are some other sports where you would need to make similar views.”
On the men’s side of the equation, the football team can give out 85 scholarships. This means most sports that are both men’s and women’s have a few more scholarships for the women to compensate for the high number football receives.
Ann Carr, Mississippi State’s women’s athletic director, said she believes the allocation of track and field scholarships is fair since it is that way for every other school. Carr said sometimes the women’s coach has a say in what a women’s team does or does not get.
“When I think about Title IX, I think most people just think of it as a way to make sure women have an opportunity as well as they’re treated fairly, and I think bottom line is it allows us to be able to participate in sports and be treated fairly in sports. We aren’t always treated the same, but we don’t always want to be treated the same,” Carr said. “I think when you’re looking in from the outside, there are a lot of things that aren’t necessarily explained or you are not able to see, and therefore decisions may be made that aren’t necessarily what they appear to be.”
Since the track and field scholarship number is allotted by the NCAA, recruiting becomes a very significant tool to bring the best players to each school. Steve Dudley, track and field coach, said being a part of the Southeastern Conference is important because those teams have a higher budget that allows them to travel to more places and have nicer facilities.
“As your program improves, a lot of student athletes choose to come to your program because they feel like they are going to get better faster, and they are willing to take student loans out or do things to come to your university rather than some of the other ones,” Dudley said. “When it comes to scholarships, it’s a level playing field, but when it comes to facilities and budget, we have the advantage being in the SEC.”
Concerning the different aspects of track and field, Dudley said his staff does not give a certain amount to cross country or any other specific part. They simply recruit athletes who will give them the best chance at winning a national championship and give scholarships based on that fact alone.
However, Dudley’s task of recruiting takes on a very different look since he must recruit for both the men and women. Having just one head coach for all of track and field is not a new phenomenon at MSU. Carr said it has been this way for as long as she has known. This is not an effort to snub either track team because State still has the NCAA set number of coaches allowed on its coaching staff.
It does place an added amount of pressure on Dudley, who cannot focus his recruiting on just a single sport, but Stricklin said he is pleased with Dudley’s involvement at MSU, including getting out into the community.
“It comes down to which coaches do the best job of delegating their scholarships and recruiting the very best athletes they can get,” Stricklin said. “Steve has a tough job because you don’t have a lot of scholarships in the sport of track, so you have to make hard choices, and I think he does a wonderful job on both the men’s and women’s side.”
At this point in the season, Dudley and his teams have no time to worry about scholarships or Title IX, but instead are focused on improving each day to stay at the top of the SEC West. Dudley said excitement for the MSU track and field program will continue to increase as the teams continue to perform to their maximum ability.
“People like to win, and if you win then the interest will come. That’s our job to get better and better and start winning, then people will come,” Dudley said. “That’s the way I look at it: this is on us to put a product out there that people want to come see.”