Boy there's been a lot of misinformation in this thread. So let's get some facts in place. Then everyone can go on their rants.
NCAA Men's Gymnastics allow for 6.3 equivalency scholarships per team. NCAA Men's Soccer allows for 9.9 equivalency scholarships per team.There are only 17 NCAA Men's Gymnastic programs but only 12 are fully funded scholarship programs. Three of those 12 are the three US Service academies. So it is basically the 7 B1G programs plus Oklahoma and Stanford which are competing annually.There are about 84 schools that have men's gymnastics club teams.There are currently 19 gymnasts on the Iowa roster. One of those is from Iowa.There is probably only a handful of high schools anywhere in the country that have gymnastics programs. The cost is prohibitive. Collegiate men's gymnasts are recruited from club programs. Very similar to soccer. So the fact that there is no high men's gymnastics in the state is completely irrelevant. Unlike women's gymnastics, NCAA Men's Gymnastics is a primary training ground for The US team for international competition and therefore receives some subsidies from USA Gymnastics. However, this is starting to dry up.
So there you go. There is no doubt that the two sports most negatively impacted by the adoption and enforcement of Title IX are wrestling and men's gymnastics. On the date Title IX was passed into law, there were 239 varsity men's gymnastics programs in the country. Now there are 17.
I'm as big a soccer fan as you can get. I make an annual trip to England each spring to see a Liverpool match. However, adding men's soccer at the University of Iowa right now would be a disaster. They would be given a shoe string budget and would add to the majority of mediocre programs that Iowa currently sponsors at the varsity level. We would be a bottom feeder program for an extended period of time in the B1G. Especially against programs like Indiana, Maryland, Penn State, Rutgers, etc. People are also dramatically over-estimating the amount of prep talent that is being produced in the state of Iowa.
Bottom line is this. Men's gymnastics will ultimately die from it's own wounds. As the supplemental funds from USA Gymnastics continue to be removed from the collegiate sport, individual programs will die away and the sport will move completely to a club sport at the collegiate level in the US. When will this happen? I don't know.
Secondly, Iowa is not in compliance with Title IX per the proportionality measure. Once a men's sport is added without a corresponding women's sport, it eliminates our ability to claim compliance by the continual expansion of female opportunities measure. You then set yourself up for legal action.
Adding men's soccer will not happen anytime within the next 20 years short of some major legislative action towards Title IX. The next sport that will be added at Iowa will be Women's Lacrosse. It's the fastest growing sport in the country and is on pace to surpass volleyball nationally as the largest female participation sport within 10 years. The Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union will be adding women's lacrosse at the High school level within a few years and you already have good growth at the club level in the state. Per Gary Barta, women's lacrosse will be added at Iowa shortly after the IGHSAU adds it.
