Never mind. All anyone can hear right now is noise.

A committee studies Title IX, issues its recommendations for possible tweaks, and then two prominent female members denounce the findings.

Politicians step in front of cameras. So do Hollywood faces. The education secretary says he will only accept unanimous recommendations, even though on this issue, you can't get a unanimous opinion about the time of day.

Statistics are skewed to make this case or that one. Voices are raised. The documents glaze the eyes, and some of the language is impossible to understand without a translator.

And in the end, there is no harmony. There is only racket.

Everyone needs to give a little.

- First: Title IX has been historic and effective. A godsend to girls, including my own daughters.

That does not make it immune to improvement. Its application has hurt real people, intended or not, as men's wrestling and gymnastics and swimming teams are exterminated.

It does no good to pretend that hasn't happened. Or turn scarlet -- as some women's groups have -- at the very idea Title IX should be studied to fix any leaks. As if suggesting it might be imperfect is an attack on justice.

The Constitution is a pretty good document. It also has 27 amendments.

- Second: Football coaches need to come out of the bunker.

The cornerstone of the Title IX dilemma is how football's numbers force schools to either slash other men's sports or invent new women's sports so the number of scholarships will fit the right ratio. Football is a grant-in-aid hog. It inhales money.

The coaches say cutting football scholarships to 60 would be a disaster. What next, the single wing?

Hmmm. OK. Try cutting to 75. Or 70. You can play a football game with 70 players.

Among the roadblocks to peace in this dispute is football's obstinacy.

- Third: The concept of strict proportionality -- where scholarships must precisely match percentage of enrollment -- is not logical.

Generally, women are as interested in sports participation as men. That I can buy. But that doesn't mean a 56 percent female enrollment on one campus means the exact same level of interest as 56 percent on another.

Give the schools some wiggle room. A few percentage points up or down. It could save a wrestling team.

That's not forcing women from the playing field and back to the kitchen. It's just leaving space for common sense.

- Four: No foot-dragging by the athletic directors on enforcement of this law. If they get something -- such as flexibility in proportionality -- then they give something back. They cut a slice off the football elephant, before they go pleading poverty.

- Five: Everyone needs to remember what Title IX is, and what it isn't.

It's a guarantee that women get access to sport. And it has done wonders.

But I heard a member of the fruitcake lobby the other day carrying on about how ESPN should give women's basketball the same exposure as men, and the need for equal recruiting budgets. As if Title IX mandated equal Nielsen ratings.

And men's basketball and football didn't pay the bills.

There is no reason this can't work more smoothly. No reason that women can't continue their sport revolution. And no reason that a wrestling program needs to be purged the same time there is a campus search party out looking for 25 women willing to be on the crew team.

It takes more give, and more take. And much less rhetoric.

Mike Lopresti writes for Gannett News Service.

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