A Free Press article on meal spending differences for Men's programs vs. Women's does not put EMU in a good light.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/educati...842309001/

I think you need to be a subscriber to read the article, so here are some highlights.

The article opens with this paragraph:

"Eastern Michigan University's women's basketball team got $88 from the school to buy a holiday ham. The men's team received hundreds more — $397, to be exact — just to buy a bunch of pink lemonade-flavored energy chew snacks."

Other tidbits:

"Universities across the Midwest's two biggest athletic conferences — the Big Ten and the Mid-American Conference — spent more than $40 million in the 2019-20 school year on food for athletes when they were on their home campuses, according to a Free Press review of documents filed by the universities to the NCAA and additional documents provided under freedom of information laws."

"The men's basketball team at Eastern, for example, spent just over $9,500 on meals and snacks in 2019-20 school year. But the women's basketball team spent only about $2,300 during the same time."

"The gender disparity can be found at every school in the Big Ten.

The universities spent $25.1 million on men’s teams, while spending $6.3 million on women’s teams. The percentage gap was largest at Michigan State University where about $9 out of every $10 allocated to specific teams was spent on male teams. The smallest gap was at the University of Nebraska where nearly $7 out of every $10 allocated to specific teams still went to men."

"Eastern Michigan spent a total of $230,000 on all sports, $190,000 on football alone. It spent only $4,000 on its women's teams. (It spent about $20,000 on food not directly allocated to any one team.)"

There is a lot more in the article, including quotes from Scott Wetherbee. I don't want to step on any copyright toes, so that's all I'm going to quote here. There are other examples of inequities in both the Big Ten and the MAC, and the numbers are not surprisingly larger in the Big Ten. But Eastern takes several more hits in the article and is cited as the worst in the MAC for the disparities.

This is not good, and is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Dear cidbearit,
Here we go again. Eastern the worst in the MAC. By how much? A thousand, ten thousand? I'm sorry, but I don't believe 190,000 spent on football and only 4,000 on women's sports.
Let's get more information on wonderful U-M and MSU, and put them in the spotlight.
We also have to remember, as far as participants in various sports go, that football alone could have 100, while women's basketball, volleyball, and swimming may come close to 100.

(11-05-2021 11:15 AM)Ken Barna Wrote:  Dear cidbearit,
Here we go again. Eastern the worst in the MAC. By how much? A thousand, ten thousand? I'm sorry, but I don't believe 190,000 spent on football and only 4,000 on women's sports.
Let's get more information on wonderful U-M and MSU, and put them in the spotlight.
We also have to remember, as far as participants in various sports go, that football alone could have 100, while women's basketball, volleyball, and swimming may come close to 100.

I didn't want to quote the whole article. It does go into details about the Big Ten, and Michigan State is the worst there as far as percentage of disparity. They did include some charts:

Wehterbee does address some of this:

"“When you look at percentage of budgets, football has a $5 million budget," said Eastern Athletic Director Scott Wetherbee. "A golf program only has $150,000 budget ... 10% of (the football budget) is half a million dollars. But 10% of golf is only $1,500.”

Wetherbee acknowledged there's still a disparity, though: Men's basketball spent about $9,500 while women's spent about $2,300 on meals while they were at home."

The article does include interactive charts for the Big Ten and MAC spending amounts. So the raw data is there. And the data definitely does point to gender disparities.

Wetherbee thinks losing Title IX lawsuits is his job.

If you dont believe these numbers you should just submit a FOIA request and see what the numbers are for real. then you can post on the board and we can show up the FREEP.