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Let me get this straight. You’re the athletic director of a university. You call a meeting... Let me get this straight. You’re the athletic director of a university. You call a meeting, look a bunch of student-athletes in the eye—kids who bleed your school colors, who spend 20 hours a week in a pool or on a court—and you tell them their programs are being cut. You use words like “sustainable” and “operational costs.” You tell them it’s a tough decision, but it’s going to save the school a cool $550,000 a year.
Then, a week later, you sit down at your desk, fire up your email, and blast out a memo to the athletes you didn't cut. You boast about a massive, $25.5 million spending spree on athletic infrastructure. A new 19,000-square-foot facility. State-of-the-art weight rooms. Locker rooms. Lights for the baseball and softball fields.
You can almost hear the triumphant clicks of the keyboard as Concordia University’s AD, Crystal Rosenthal, typed that email. It’s a level of tone-deaf audacity so profound it almost circles back around to being impressive. It’s like a landlord telling his tenants he has to evict them because he can't afford the building's upkeep, and then they see him out back the next day, breaking ground on a solid gold hot tub.
This isn't just bad PR. It’s a blatant, almost cartoonishly villainous, admission of priorities. And now, a federal judge has called them on it.
The Shell Game of Title IX Compliance
The story at Concordia University Irvine isn't really about swimming or tennis. It’s about math, and it’s about a law that schools have been trying to game for decades: Title IX. The women on these newly-axed teams didn't just get mad; they got a lawyer. And that lawyer, Arthur Bryant, came with receipts.
Women make up 59% of Concordia’s student body. They receive only 51.2% of the spots on athletic teams. According to Bryant, the school needs to add about 100 opportunities for women just to get into the same zip code as gender equity. So, offcourse, their brilliant solution was to… eliminate two women’s teams? The logic is so twisted it could be a pretzel.
This is a bad plan. No, 'bad' doesn't cover it—this is a five-alarm dumpster fire of legal and ethical malpractice. They weren’t cutting costs; they were reallocating resources from non-revenue sports (like swimming) to the ones that look better on a recruitment brochure (like a baseball field with fancy new lights). They were trading athletes for architecture.
The university’s official line was that the “current model is not sustainable.” Let’s translate that from PR-speak into English: “The sports that don’t make us money are a drag on the budget we’d rather spend on shiny new buildings.” They thought they could get away with it by cutting the men’s teams, too, as if that somehow balanced the scales. It doesn't work that way. When you’re already deep in a hole on gender equity, you don’t start digging faster.
But what really gets me is the university’s argument in court that it would be “impossible” to reinstate the teams. Impossible? Are we talking about splitting the atom here, or hiring a coach and booking a few swim meets? They claimed they couldn't find coaches who align with the school's "religious mission." What exactly is the Lutheran-approved method for teaching a backhand? It's a smokescreen, and a flimsy one at that.
A Temporary Reprieve, Not a Victory
So, a federal judge stepped in, and the Division II School Ordered to Reinstate Women’s Sports It Cut. For now. And that’s the key part of this whole mess. This isn’t the end of the story. Judge Fred W. Slaughter’s ruling was basically a legal timeout. He even said that the university doesn’t necessarily have to keep these specific teams forever to comply with Title IX.
This whole episode just feels so… familiar. It’s the standard playbook for a modern university, which is basically a real estate development firm with a side hustle in education. We’ve seen it at Iowa, UConn, Dartmouth, and a whole list of other schools who tried the exact same thing since 2020 and got their hands slapped by a judge. They cut the less-visible sports, hope nobody notices the Title IX violations, and then act shocked when they’re dragged into court.
Concordia says it plans to add women’s lacrosse. Great. But is that a genuine move toward equity, or is it just another piece in the shell game? Are they going to fund it properly? Will it actually close that 100-athlete gap, or just provide enough cover for them to quietly try and cut the swim team again in a year or two?
And what about the athletes? The swimmers and tennis players who had their world upended, who had to sue their own school just to be allowed to compete. They’ve been forced to become activists when all they wanted to do was go to class and get in the pool. Now they have to practice and compete under the shadow of a university administration that clearly sees them as a line item on a spreadsheet, and an inconvenient one at that.
Maybe I'm the crazy one. I mean, budgets are tough and schools have to make hard choices. But then I see that $25.5 million figure for new facilities, and I realize this was never about a lack of money. It was about a lack of will, and a complete lack of respect for their own students and the law.
Same Story, Different Mascot
Let’s be real. This was never about saving $550,000. It was a calculated gamble. Concordia’s leadership bet that nobody would have the guts or the resources to challenge them on a blatant Title IX violation. They prioritized shiny objects over people, and they lost their bet. This injunction isn't a victory for the athletes; it's a temporary pause in a war of attrition. The university got caught, but the mindset that led them here—that students are expendable and laws are negotiable—is still running the show. The fight isn't over, not by a long shot.