The NCAA is dumping on diaper-changing dads.

Title IX, anyone?

Of course not. Only the rights of females need protection. And everybody knows kids don't need fathers.

Penis bad. Vagina good.

From Sean Keeler of the Des Moines Register:

The number of children in the United States who lived in fatherless homes in 1960 was approximately 5.1 million. In 1995, it was 16.5 million.

Meanwhile, the NCAA tells Eric Butler to go jump.

Butler is a defensive tackle at Kansas. He missed the 2001 football season, he says, to attend to the birth and rearing of his daughter.

When he asked for a waiver to play this fall, the suits in Indianapolis shot him down faster than you can say "Huggies." He's also filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that the female-only waiver violates Title IX.

Maybe.

Let's be clear on one thing. No amount of fathering holds a candle to the physical and emotional responsibility of childbirth. We're talking apples and oranges.

But at the same time, ask yourself this: What's the harm here?

Does granting Butler another year somehow cheapen motherhood as we know it? Does it create some dangerous, irreversible precedent?

Mr. Keeler appears to have been living in a cave all his life. Or Iowa.

Businesses are giving more and more working fathers paid paternity leave. The NCAA doesn't consider itself a business.

Whatever.

The NCAA doesn't consider football to be a full-time job. It's an educational, extracurricular opportunity.

Wink. Wink.

An opportunity, that, when combined with classwork, usually eats up more than 40 hours during the week. To say nothing of weekends.

"I think it's awesome that (Butler) was being a responsible father and to see him get punished for that, I guess, kind of disappoints me," says Katie Kock.

You probably know her better as Katie Robinette, the former Iowa State women's basketball star. A few years back, Katie had a son, Caden, with Cyclone fullback Ryan Kock. He'll turn 3 in October.

As someone who's had to juggle the roles of student-athlete and parent, she's something of an expert on this subject. Katie, who lost a season transferring from Iowa State to Nebraska, petitioned the Big 12 Conference last spring for an additional year of eligibility. No dice.

"Going in, you have to realize you could be giving up a year and sacrificing it, to be the father," says Katie, who graduated in May and now works for Principal. She and Ryan married in July. "Ryan's not home a lot when he's playing football. During two-a-days, we hardly saw him.

"The football calendar, anymore, is practically year-round. Squeezing school and sports and parenting into the same datebook takes a village. And patience.

Ack!

Due to time constraints, we now move to further action.

The bottom line?

...The 1994 U.S. Census found that 39 percent of all children under 18 lived apart from their biological fathers. A Harvard study over more than 25 years found that children of involved fathers were likely to be more mature, more sociable and have better grades. If the NCAA says women can kick for the alma mater's football team, why can't men take paternity leave?