To the Editor:
I have read with regret the story of yet another swim program's demise. It is farcical that the administration at Dartmouth speciously attributes the "necessity" for this action to a lack of financial resource. If anything, it belies a lack of financial creativity. However, at the bottom of all these decisions lies the bellwether of Title IX which has flushed out of the weeds the truth that the NCAA and the athletic departments of most Division I schools are nothing more than the handmaidens and defacto recruiting and training agencies for the NFL and the NBA. One tenth of one percent of the combined television contracts alone for these two behemoths would very likely finance every canceled men's swimming program in the country. It's time for the professional leagues to ante up and start paying for the "student athletes" that are delivered up from Division I schools. Perhaps your financial administrators, in conjunction with the rest of the (predominantly tax funded) Division I colleges and universities, could find a way to make that happen. Regrettably, until that happens, all these "meetings on the steps" are nothing more than legerdemain.
