at least as much as realistically possible

Every year the NCAA Tournament divides the country up into regions to limit travel costs and allow tourney participants to keep more of the revenue instead of spending it on travel.As there are significantly more eastern schools than western schools, the tourney divides the country up into 4 regions, West, Midwest, East , and South.If you draw a line from the easten edge of Texas following state lines up to the eastern edge of North Dakota and then count the schools west of that line, only 90 of the D-I's 347 schools are in the western US. Likewise, at the D-II level only 70 or so of the 290 or so D-II schools are west of that line.This creates a situation were each year several eastern teams are redirected to the Western and Midwestern brackets, further weakening the perception of western basketball.I have tried reseeding brackets to try to shorten travel but ultimately I reached the same point that seeding committes must...that there are far too few western conferences and central conferences and far too many undeserving eastern ones that have to be placed.Rule1:Push for upgrades of deserving western schools and conferences for D-I basketball and FBS and D-II football and possibly give western bubble teams an edge in making the basketball tourney until more western conferences can be established or moved up.At a highly theoretical level, the NCAA needs to push for more Western conferences and to take out some of the undeserving eastern ones who are ONLY participating at the level they are due to cheap travel. A school that might be be an FCS power if they were located in the east is often a marginal DII or DII school in the west due to a lack of competition breeding high travel costs.In many cases more focus by the NCAA in an effort to fix that situation is all that is required.In football at the FCS and D-II levels (levels of play that are designed to generate significant revenue, unlike D-III) the lack of western schools makes the cost of national playoffs quite steep for western schools.Getting more balanced regional representation will increase fan interest in the west growing the NCAA basketball money overall, generate more revenue for good western upgrade candidate schools and their western opponents, and cut the brutal travel costs out west.I wouldn't be opposed to the NCAA trying a hard sell on NAIA members either. Remember NAIA rules allow their members to award up to 24 football scholarships and up to 11 basketball scholarships. Right now they are looking at the real possiblity of a total collapse of the football playing west at the DII level. There simply aren't enough schools.All DII football playing schools in the far west have to endure ridiculous travel.Adding mid-sized regionally isolated football playing NAIA schools like LA's Azuza Pacific, Eastern Oregon, Southern Oregon, and Montana Tech would be a godsend to the travel budgets of western DII football schools...possibly leading to the resurrection of football at a number of schools like Western Washington.

I love college football, but I acknowledged the reality of it.Football is the biggest problem for athletic programs as the sport is expensive in general and demands a number of players magnifying those costs even further.Football does have the potential to fund athletic programs in full,but, as the sport is a cash cow, it is controlled by the BCS schools, who are, in turn, ruled by the athletic departments with the top 15-20 athletic budgets.To make any significant change at the top of the food chain, the NCAA needs to work with university presidents and turn the rank and file BCS schools against the ADs of BCS elite...at least as much as realistically possible.As many have suggested over the years, the simplest way to ease the burden on athletic programs is to cut the number of football scholarships and total participants in football at each level of competition.Cutting scholarships for football is an unpleasant idea for most hard core football fans, but it is the least obtrusive way save collegiate baseball, wrestling, and other sports teams.Coaches hate the idea of smaller rosters in general and the ADs at the top recognize that smaller rosters cuts their coaches' margin of error,which is why the presidents should make the decision.This would be an attractive cost saving option for presidents at a number of lower BCS schools who struggle to maintain pace with the top 15 or so programs and even a few of the presidents at schools in the top 15 who just hate waste.(It is a suggestion that if included in the total reform package,could have the presidents of those universities assisting the NCAA in pushing it through additional reforms.After all, schools at the bottom of the BCS and at the bottom of the FBS have similar financial problems.When you add in the leadership at struggling FCS and DII programs, a strong coalition could arise to help solve problems at all levels.)Currently FBS schools are capped at 85 full scholarships for players and some schools have dozens of players trying to walk on.FCS Schools are capped at the equivalent of 63 full scholarships (These can be divided up between as many at 85 players).Division II schools are capped at 36 scholarships.Even with scholarship cuts, football programs will still exist.I also believe the talent differences would be preserved(dominant teams will still have much better talent) just the total costs will go down.BCS schools will still have 5 and 4 star recruits all over their rosters, but now their three-star fourth team will play for lower BCS and non -BCS FBS schools.It will allow more really good football players to actually play in college.Most importantly,the costs for every football playing university accross the board would be reduced.Fewer scholarships and fewer players mean less travel costs, less equipment costs, less housing costs, less money needed to be spent in support of the players, and fewer matching scholarships for Title IX sports.The downward push of talent would make the talent level at the FCS level more acceptable to the NFL fan, helping to make all levels of collegiate scholarship football better attended and more profitable.I will come back to this point often.Anything that pushes deep bench BCS players into the starting lineup at a lower level is a financial positive for NCAA members.Rule 2:Cut Football player numbersCut FBS programs to a maximum of 65 full scholarships and no more that 85 total players, with a traveling roster capped at 60 players.Set a minimum scholarship limit for FCS programs of the equivalent of 30 fullscholarships and a maximum of the equivalent of 45 full scholarships.The FCS scholarships could be divided between up to 60 players. Title IX was a high falutin' idea about equality of opportunity by sex pushed down the throats of the somewhat sexist folks who ran the NCAA in the late 1970's and early 1980's.Those folks screamed loudly that "these liberal ideas will destroy college sports!"The government wanted these reforms in place, but certainly didn't want the blood on their hands if they inadvertently killed a major football program, so the reform was delivered as an overriding guideline with little specifics behind it.The NCAA resisted and it's members were regularly taken to court.The outcomes of these cases established new more difficult rules for meeting this guideline.And the NCAA leadership and leadership in the athletic departments at member schools didn't help.The angry NCAA braintrust structured Title IX compliance in a way that pitted equality advocates against non-revenue male sports advocates.They protected football and put the squeeze on all other sports.They said, "OK, to comply with Title IX, we are now only going to cap the number of baseball scholarships a DI school can offer to 11.7, in spite of the fact baseball requires a 30 man roster.""Ok to comply with Title IX, we are now only going to cap the number of soccer scholarships a DI school can give men at 9.9, in spite of the fact that a full soccer roster is usually just as large.But if you have a women's soccer team you can give out 14 full scholarships."and on and on...As theyears have passed these rules have lead to a lot of schools dropping programs with no female equivalents like men's wrestling and have created a lot of ill will towards Title IX as well as a lot of anger towards football from women who rightfully see Title IX compliance as a fairness issue.Today the NCAA is no longer run by "neanderthals".The people who run things now can see both sides, so it is high time to make the rules to handle TItle IX reflect that change in mentality.Rule 3: Work to improve the logic behind Title IX compliance. Offer equal scholarship numbers in similar sports and make those numbers sensible for those sports.Finally balance unpaired sports against each other.When an equivalency exists in a team sport, like men's and women's socceror baseball and women's softball, make schools offer the same number of scholarships for each sex and make that number have some reflection on the number of players required.When an equivalency is not there, like mens' football, try to balance the scholarship load with sports for women that lack equivalencies.Don't play games about interpreting Title IX.Make those numbers equal.Also look at high school participation rates to guide what scholarship sports the NCAA should push to it's member schools.You really should have participation numbers in college that in most ways parallel participation numbers by sex in high school.Here are the percentages of participants per sex by sport in the top 10 high school sport. (The raw data is from the 2008 National Federation of State Associations' annual report on high school athletic participation.

The percentages listed are derived by dividing the number of participant in each sport by sex by the total number of participants in the top 10 sports for each sex).3,980,560 young men participated in the top 10 male sports in high school and 2,703,327 young women participated in the top 10 high school sports in this report Men's sportparticipation Women's sport participation 1 Football27.841 Basketball 16.63 2 Basketball 13.89 2 Track & Field16.55 3 Track & Field 13.79 3 Volleyball 14.72 4 Baseball 12.014 Softball13.73 5.Soccer 9.64 5 Soccer 12.82 6 Wrestling6.52 6 Cross Country 7.04 7 cross country 5.55 7 Tennis 6.38 8 Golf4.02 8 Swimming & Diving5.45 9 Tennis 3.93 9 Cheerleading4.1210 Swimming & Diving 2.81 10. 3) 4 of the top 5 sports for each sex have near equivalencies or exact equivalences.While certainly the top 5 sports are team sports and require larger scholarship numbers, it makes one wonder why the NCAA doesn't require all DI schools to offer specifically the top 5 sports for each sports and maybe one more sport for women to balance football.(Perhaps in the North they could substitute Hockey and Field Hockey for women instead of soccer.)All of the top 5 sports have the potential to generate some revenue with the possible exception of track, so why aren't these sports part of D-I's minimum requirementIt seems pretty simple to put together sensible guidelines that satisfy the intent of Title IX while offering appropriate opportunities to dedicated student athletes in their preferred sports.Ending the battle of the sexes just increases the number of people who are willing to watch and support collegiate athletics.In other words, ending the battle would increase the revenue to fund sports at member schools.. Consider how many events cheerleaders have to attend at an FBS school.They should be on full scholarship.A lot of student athletes can make time arguments, but cheerleading has the best secondary argument... say, tuition-only scholarships.At that level, with Title IX matching, this would make sense.. Collegiate athletic opportunities for men and women should mirror high school participation percentages.That is just seems like common sense.The three most popular high school men's sports are football, basketball, and track.The three most popular high school female sports are basketball, track and volleyball. Now Title IX clearly suggest there should be equal opportunity between the sexes, so logically the NCAA should try to have their member schools offer an equal number of basketball and track scholarships to each sex.That leaves football and volleyball as a natural match.Rule 5: Link scholarship football to scholarship volleyball.With say 30 full scholarship volleyball players,35 full scholarship cheerleaders, and a reduction in the total number of football scholarships, the once crippling FBS football scholarship Title IX imbalance would be solved rather cheaply.Volleyball is not a hugely expensive sport,as teams have little in the way of equipment, the uniforms are not expensive, and they play in gyms that are already there for basketball.