A sports budget problem has now become a general budget problem for theUniversity of Northern Iowa. The school announced Monday it’s reinstating its women’s swimming and tennis programs in the face of a threatened lawsuit over Title Nine. Title Nine is a 1972 federal law requiring schools to provide comparable opportunities for male and female athletes. Northern Iowa announced last month it was dropping men’s AND women’s swimming and men’s and women’s tennis because of budget cuts, saving the University 327-thousand dollars. U-N-I President Robert Koob says the decision to reinstate the two teams will make a tight budget situation even worse.Koob says the Assistant Iowa Attorney General says it would cost more to fight a suit than it would to reinstate the teams. Koob says now the university has to juggle the checkbook to make things work.Koob says the new vice president for administration and finance will have to look for money to re-instate the program, while the athletic department also looks for more money. Koob doesn’t know where the money will come from and says it will probably take several months to stabilize the budget.The athletic director says it’ll take about 150-thousand dollars to bring the programs back to life.
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