Where it can't be axed entirely, they favor at least reducing the number of players on rosters, as Cal State-Fresno and other institutions have reluctantly done. College teams play with larger rosters than the pros, partly because they can't rely on mid-season signups or trades to replace sidelined regular players. Ironically, colleges with standout football teams, being flush with revenues for scholarships and equipment, have the easiest time expanding women's sports. Although top-division football as a whole makes money, it is made unevenly, with some strong teams raking in the receipts and others running deficits. In any event, the head count, not money, is what's often really at legal issue.
Wrestling is among the least expensive sports to sustain.
Of course, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission can't resist making things worse. Last October, it put out new guidelines arm-twisting colleges to pay coaches of women's teams as much as they do men's. The guidelines do start with a token concession that not every volleyball coach may be entitled to the salary of a Big Ten football wizard, but from then on it's mostly bad news. The guidelines hint that if colleges can't show that they've advertised and promoted men's and women's squads equally, women's coaches should win salary-dispute cases. In the whole Title IX controversy, incidentally, it appears next to impossible to find anyone willing to criticize the law in principle.