UTC athletic director David Blackburn speaks during a luncheon Monday to the Chattanooga Quarterback Club at Finley Stadium in this 2013 file photo.The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga could be in the midst of its best year from a football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball standpoint, but it hasn’t all been good news for athletic director David Blackburn.
Blackburn late last month announced the elimination of the men’s indoor and outdoor track programs effective at the end of the current school year. He joined “Press Row” on ESPN’s 105.1 FM this past week to discuss several athletic-related topics, and the following is an excerpt from the interview:
Q: Of the football-playing schools in the Southern Conference, VMI has 11 other men’s sports, Furman and Wofford have 10, The Citadel nine, Mercer and Samford eight and Western Carolina seven. UTC has only five other men’s sports, so what is the best way to explain why that’s the case?
A: “Well, I certainly don’t know all the demographics of all the other schools as it relates to gender. The situation I found myself when I got down here is that we were nearing the end of a Title IX recovery process. The federal government and the Office of Civil Rights require that you be in a certain place, and the situation that we were dealing with was multi-faceted. There is a lot that has been done, but the one area that is the most difficult is proportionality as it relates to athletics gender and campus gender.
“I could talk for eight hours on Title IX and still not cover it, but the piece that was the most difficult here was our proportionality. We have a 14.7-percent discrepancy in relation to what our general campus populace is. I don’t know what the other exact campus populaces are, but in nearing the end of this recovery, we had to find something to reduce the discrepancy. We had to make a hard decision in order to be compliant with a federal law, and the biggest reason men’s track was an option was because it affected the fewest individuals.”
Q: Title IX had great intentions when it started and has given females great opportunities, but schools now that are not in good economic health are not gaining sports for women but losing sports for men. Do you think it needs to be overhauled?
A: “That’s a great point, because you don’t want to tie money to this, but you have to. We’re in the middle of a budget cut across the state, and everybody knows that. It takes a lot of money to add a sport, but it takes even more to sustain it, and what you don’t want to do is add one sport and then in a couple of years have to cut two.
“You want to grow women’s sports so it eliminates the discrepancy that any institution may have with gender, but we are not in a position financially to where we can do that. I think that is an issue nationally, and we don’t have the money to add female opportunities and try to be as gender-neutral as the law allows you to be.”
Q: What message have you been trying to get out to those who have been affected by this?
A: “It has been very painful and hurtful for me, and I know that people don’t want to hear about that. We expect people to be hurt over this. We were in an unfortunate situation, and, as a leader, there are sometimes situations that may not be your fault, but you still have to take action. I’ve met with everyone who has wanted to meet, and I’ve been very straightforward.
“It’s a very complex issue, and we expect hurt and pain over this kind of decision.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.