Anthony Robles was a three-time All-American and a 2011 NCAA champion for Arizona State. (Bruce Yeung/Yeung Photography)

Anthony Robles

Title IX turned 40 earlier this summer and possibly with anything that age, it may be time for some slight adjustments and tweaks.

In fairly plain English, Title IX is a federal legislation that prohibits sex discrimination in all educational programs that receive federal financial aid. This measure has been very controversial in the college athletics world, but it reaches far beyond athletics and covers all aspects of education.

It has forced athletic departments to make tough decisions in order to be complaint with the mandate. Though, it was not designed to cut any programs or sports — rather equalize opportunities — it has undoubtedly been the main reason behind a variety of male sports being reduced over the years.

The real issue with the law is that it requires schools to treat both sexes equally in regards to scholarships. And when you have a sport like football that allows 85 scholarships — you will run into some “equality” issues.

Hence the reason why many schools will sometimes carry nearly double the amount of women’s activities as opposed to men’s in the attempt to offset the football scholarships.

One sport that has been hit hard across the country in college athletics is wrestling. It’s a sport that can be tough at times to raise the funds necessary to be competitive with travel and training costs fairly high.

Anthony Robles, who was born with only one leg and became a three-time All-American wrestler at Arizona State, says he continues to be saddened by the loss of the sport at so many schools across the country.

“I’m extremely disappointed, we’re a very tight community — the wrestling family — and just one program going down, it hurts us all,” he told the 110 Sports Podcast.

He also believes that Title IX has its place, but at times, it affects too many people.

“I think Title IX is a great idea, but it is just misused. The smaller male sports are the ones that suffer from it.

“Hopefully, we can figure something out to where it doesn’t affect the male sports, but also at the same time, things are still being done for the women’s sports. There’s got to be some kind of common ground to where we are not being cut for that.”

Title IX has obviously helped grow participation in women’s sports and bring more opportunities, but possibly a small accommodation can be made to at least leave the schools with more power over the situation.

Some believe that football should not count when measuring equality because it is many times funded solely by the program itself and in many instances, pays for other sports that do not generate any revenue. This is one idea Robles said he was open to, but believes there is definitely a way to solve the issues at hand.

“There is plenty of ideas you can kick around and plenty of ways we can solve it, so it’s just about getting it done soon because there are a lot of athletic programs across the country being dropped every year.

“The longer we wait, the more affected we will be by it.”

 Arizona native Matt Minkus is the host of the 110 Sports Podcast, a show that pays homage to one of the most repeated cliches in sports: “Giving 110 percent.” Excerpts of new shows will be available at LindysSports.com every week.