Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 has gained its most notoriety on campus from what has been publicized most about it - the decimation of men’s gymnastics, fencing and lacrosse. The elevation of several women’s sports to varsity status came with much less fanfare, and most students remain confused by what our athletics department has chosen to do and why.

I can remember how confused I was last year reading about the men’s gymnastics team and its struggle to keep afloat. It just didn’t make any sense to me. The team was obviously a set of very talented and dedicated athletes. Members had a combined grade point average of 3.29. They built houses for Habitat for Humanity. And the team was ranked sixth in the nation.

Why did they have to lose their team?

It would be nice if I had a better perspective on the difficult choices our athletic department was faced with, but Athletic Director Clarence Underwood and everyone in his office I asked for an interview declined to speak with me. So I am forced to guess.

I should begin by making it clear that Title IX is somewhat older than most people think - it was instituted in 1972, and it doesn’t contain any quotas of any kind. Title IX simply reads, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Sounds like something I would vote for. And when I did I would imagine it turning out as it has at The Ohio State University, where the university has elevated several women’s teams to varsity status without cutting a single men’s team. But that hasn’t been how it has worked here.

A common misconception is the university uses our tuition dollars to pay for our athletic department. But our athletic department is financially self-sufficient. And it has a rather large price tag - nearly $1.13 billion in expenses for the entire institution, according to data MSU is required to report under the Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act. To stay in business, our athletic department is responsible for generating at least this much revenue in a single year.

Some people might think the university’s best chance to make revenue is our men’s basketball team with its recent success. But the football team actually makes more than twice what our men’s basketball team does - $15.9 million versus the basketball team’s paltry $6.8 million. The operating expenses for both of those teams are about 50 percent of the money they each make. Men’s hockey just makes it out of the red. These three sports - football, men’s basketball and men’s hockey - are the only sports to actually make any money at all, according to Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act data.

Alumni donations also go a long way toward maintaining the athletic program, but many of the large donations are made to a specific sport (such as basketball or football) and don’t really benefit smaller teams.

Then comes Title IX. Our university should have an equal number of varsity players of both sexes and both sexes should receive roughly equal funding.

Our athletic department, which is forced to operate as an independent business, has to make the numbers match.

Fine. And as we go down the list of teams, at first glance it doesn’t appear this should be a problem. Almost all of the varsity teams have memberships hovering somewhere near 30. A few, like the women’s crew team, have more. For a few teams it’s a great deal less. Then we get to football, which is listed with a whopping 110 varsity players - all men.

Football is the problem. But only insofar as without it, we would not have an athletic department at all. It’s not as though our football team has too many players or costs too much - 110 men and $8.6 million is simply what it takes to run a quality football program that generates money for the rest of our athletics. Unless the athletic department can find a new source of revenue, we need the football program in its place. And so the rest of the men’s side suffers.

Even at a Big Ten university, money does not come to the athletic department easily. Ours was faced with the decision of having a large number of underfunded teams for both sexes or trying to improve and fully support the teams we already have while trying to create a nondiscriminatory sports environment.

Officials chose the latter and cut some men’s teams from their varsity status. For an independent business like our athletic department, it’s the only decision that makes sense. But if our university truly cares about equal treatment of both sexes, maybe it should think about different ways of offering both men and women’s teams a little financial support.

The spirit of Title IX isn’t to scale down one sex to match the other. It’s about offering both sexes the opportunity to reach their fullest potential.

Andrew Banyai is a political science and pre-law junior whose column usually appears Tuesday. Reach him at banyaian@msu.edu.