The real cost of eliminating directors of women's athletics.(IN HER OWN WORDS)

In 1980, when the NCAA first recognized the potential to profit from women's sports, a trend began to combine women's and men's athletics programs. The men's directors became ADs and the women became expendable.

This nationwide movement toward one athletics director has eliminated women from real leadership at nearly all NCAA Division I schools.

Succumbing to financial, social, and institutional pressures prevalent in NCAA Division I, this fall Brigham Young University UT became the latest to merge its athletic departments.

Now only three NCAA Division I athletic departments have a female director for women's sports: the University of Texas-Austin, the University of Tennessee and the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville.

Administrators rationalize eliminating the position by citing financial savings. This is an absurd argument. The "cost" to multi-million-dollar athletic departments of having a Director of Women's Athletics is probably close to the amount spent on sending their football team to a hotel on the nights before home games, including buying all 85 or more players a meal and a movie--before HOME games.

But the real cost is much higher for women students, women athletes and those who aspire to the position of athletic director. Here are some of the very real costs of the loss of the Director of Women's Athletics position:

* Women lack role models. Research consistently confirms the importance of role models as crucial for young women to see that they can be leaders in sports, and one day hold the position of AD. The critical message now is that this top leadership job is reserved exclusively for men.