I agree with you, 69, but I wouldn't want to use "foreign-born" too loosely. Certainly there are many individuals who were born abroad but have lived in the US a substantial portion of their life and consider the US "home." Very different from somebody who considers themselves another country "home," comes here for college and then intends to go back to said country, as would appear to be the case with many tennis players. You could justify some academic scholarships from the latter bucket with goals of diversity and academic cross-pollination. For athletic scholarships? Seems like a win at any cost move. Maybe you could make a case for a revenue producing team that there's return on investment (although I think there is too much of a profit drive in collegiate sports anyway). But for a non-revenue team, I can't see the upside for the taxpayers. It's not like a tennis conference championship has a lot of publicity value. In my opinion, state universities have a duty first and foremost to residents of said state so the proportion of scholarships to foreign exchange students shouldn't be higher in any one sport than it is in the university as a whole.

Yes, SB has one Russian born girl from Chicago. So she is probably a US citizen, but the rest are are all Eastern European girls, +1 Canadian, etc. Look, this is very hard. They are all great women and I support them, but Title IX says american women cannot be discriminate against in acccess to athletics. This effectively is discrimination against american women in colligiate sports. Footnote: UCLA has no foreign born girls; but most of their team comes from Laurel Springs School in Florida, which is basically the top HS tennis academy for girls in FL. Ironically, next door Miami is 60% foreign players. So if not the BW, maybe the State of California should step in. California girls tennis players and their parents shoul be rightfully very upset about this situation.

This has been a trend in tennis as well as a number of other sports (water polo, etc). Even college basketball has a pretty large number of foreign born players. I’m not sure how to change this, other than perhaps the NCAA putting a cap on the #’s per team. If a conference tries to limit the foreign athletes, they will be at a disadvantage so the only way to address it is if the NCAA got involved. I don’t expect to see this change anytime soon

Title IX. Some parent of a US player just might sue. Stranger thing have happened.

Title IX states, "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."

Title IX doesn't address national origin.

so what you’re saying is that Title IX is more likely to provide for a third gender curling team than an American tennis team. I’m curious what the money flow is in tennis. Got to be some incentive for offshoring the talent. With the NCAA, the buck always stops with, well, whoever has the most bucks.

Sort of related, but I recall the UCD women's basketball team playing in the NIT a year or two ago and several of the teams they played (Utah or Wyoming, I can't remember exactly) having mostly European players. Most of the team was Norwegian or something.

I think it was Washington State

WSU roster

Well Title IX is very much involved in this issue because it drastically increased the number of athletic scholarships available to women athletes at the college level. This opportunity was not lost on many foreign woman athletes who, understandably, wanted an esssentially free education in the US if they could get it. If they played great tennis they most likely could. Enter Anton Rudjuk, an opportunistic Russian (yes, the Russians again) who runs a “consulting office” where a foreign tennis player can pay US$1500+/- for him to help them find a US tennis scholarship. He has done this for 600 foreign players thus far in his business. Now this is not illegal in any sense and he is helping women in the process, but it certainly was not the intent of Title IX to allow “European woman take athletic scholarships from American woman tennis players” said Geoff MacDonald, head women’s tennis coach at Vanderbilt. So, again I say no ban, but limits. UCSB simply over the top on this. BWC should step in and stop this.
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how are athletic scholarships funded? Is it taxpayers, donors, student fees, or other sources? I guess the question is whether the people footing the bill are aware and/or bothered by this.

I think its a combination of all of them. I think its sort of an under the radar thing with tennis because the very top ranked teams- UCLA, Stanford, etc. have few foreign players, but they get the top US players and there are not a lot of them to go around. So it is the lower levels of tennis that see this happening. Apparently top DII is almost all foreign players. And they get the scholarships partially paid by US taxpayers. I think this is fine. Just put a reasonably limit on this- no ban. BTW both UCSB woman’s tennis coaches are, in fact, foreign born. Canada. South Africa. They are great coaches and I in no way disparage them. I actually believe they would support some limits. IMHO

I suppose there's an argument that a court could rule that the intent of Title IX (in regards to athletics) was to protect women in America by effectively reserving sports on US collegiate sports teams for them; therefore, international players taking those slots is a violation of legislative intent.

I doubt anybody's ever going to put limits based on citizenship status or birthplace -- because those are politically charged and have the potential to limit folks who've been in the US a long time -- but I could see some sort of NCAA rules about limiting nonresident students (like how public schools already calculate tuition) or requiring some percentage of teams to attend US high schools.

But since I'm not in touch with what the national data is like, I have no idea if this is a good idea or not.

Well, the very good Aggies men’s tennis team just got trounced by a UCSB team dominated by foreign born players (6 of 9). As noted above this happened to the Gals as well. UCSB just feels is has to win at any cost including its total non-support of U.S Tennis which is a dying breed by all accounts at this point in time. So of the 16 scholarships (men and woman) allowed to tennis 13 went to foreign players at UCSB. This is not a way to rebuild U.S. Tennis in my view; and it is not a fair allotment of UC athletic funds (which includes state funds) in any case. Again, I’m not in favor of a ban, but, please, can we just have some reasonable limits? Surprised the UCSB student aren’t a little pissed over this, not to mention the tennis parents of US born UCSB kids.