ATLANTA, Ga. - The first of six scheduled Town Hall Meetings conducted by the Secretary's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics began Tuesday at the Wyndham Downtown Hotel.    Established by Secretary of Education Rod Paige in June 27, the Commission's mission is to collect information, analyze issues, and obtain broad public input directed at improving the application of current Federal standards for measuring equal opportunity for men and women and boys and girls to participate in athletics under Title IX. The Commission must report its findings, in a written report to Secretary Paige by January 31, 2003, as to whether those standards should be revised and, if so, how; also, to recommend other steps that might be taken to improve the effectiveness of Title IX and to maintain and build upon the extraordinary progress that resulted from its progress 30 years ago.    After the Commission's co-chairmen, former WNBA Houston Comets star Cynthia Cooper and Stanford University Director of Athletics Ted Leland, opened the meeting with introductory remarks, three panels of invited speakers presented remarks.    While their remarks were diverse and represented views from both sides of the Title IX argument, then public comment portion of the session presented views that were personal and heartfelt. While anti-proportionality advocates dominated the crowd numbers during the panel speakers segment, that all changed when the public comment session began following the lunch break. From that point on, the audience for the two sides was close to 50-50, with women comprising the bulk of the pro-Title IX audience and men comprising the bulk of the anti-proportionality contingent.    David Rodrigues of Marietta, Ga., whose son, Chris, was an NCAA All-American this year for the University of North Carolina, stole the early thunder for the anti-proportionality crowd when he decided to abandon his prepared remarks and speak straight from the heart.    "Do you know how wrestlers in the state of Georgia look at me when I tell them that, if they want to wrestle in college, they have to leave their families - their friends?" Rodrigues said. "When we have a company that doesn't have enough black employees, do we fire white employees to make up the difference? Of course not. In business, advancement is based on merit. Why is college athletics different? I am a parent. We will be watching."    Here are highlights of some of the panelist's remarks:  Panel 1 - The Honorable Birch Bayh, U.S. Senator, D-Ind., 1963-81; Beverly Ledbetter, General Counsel, Brown University; Marcia Greenberger, Co-President, National Women's Law Center    Sen. Bayh railed against the misperception that Title IX forces men's athletics teams to be cut, and pointed out that 72 percent of universities have not made any cuts in men's sports.    "(Congress) had absolutely no intention of eliminating opportunities for young men (by passing Title IX)," Sen. Bayh said.    While acknowledging that wrestling has taken "a huge hit," Sen. Bayh pointed out the increases in men's baseball programs, from 642 in 1972 to 857 in 2002, and similar increases in men's soccer programs.    "Please don't listen to those who say women are not interested (in sports)," Sen. Bayh pleaded. "They are."    Added Greenberger: "The present policies are reasonable. What you (the Commission) represent is the beginning of a process that has never happened - changing principles that have been fought out in courts that schools depend on. Schools have the flexibility to cut men's programs if they have limited funds - they can't ask women to wait in the corner. The quotas are legal, so why wouldn't proportionality be OK?"    Ledbetter, whose tenure at Brown includes the fabled Cohen vs. Brown case of 1996, countered that proportionality, the standard that most threatens wrestling and other men's sports, remains a strong standard that many athletic administrators use as a guide.    "Proportionality is measured against the universe of all students, whether they have an interest in athletics or not," Ledbetter said. "Colleges and universities are committed to opportunities for women. It just simply isn't true that 'if you build it, they will come'; the question is, 'if you build it, they will come, but in what numbers?' Adding teams has simply not generated the participation we had hoped and prayed for. Our effort to design reasonable tests for compliance still leaves much to be desired."    Panel 2 - Leo Kocher, Head Wrestling Coach, University of Chicago; Christine Grant, Associate Professor, Department of Health, Leisure, and Sports Studies, and former Women's Athletic Director, University of Iowa; Steve Erber, Athletic Director, Muhlenberg College; Bob Groseth, Head Men's Swimming Coach, Northwestern University Kocher, a leading advocate for the elimination of the proportionality standard, devoted his presentation to the prototypical (based on actual averages) Division III athletic program, showing the effects of squad caps on men's and women's participation. Kocher's "average" Division III program included 16 athletic programs - eight men's, eight women's - with totals of 190 men and 154 women.    "There are no scholarships in Division III schools, and yet they are the hardest hit by program reductions," Kocher said. "Right now we have 209,000 male athletes and 151,000 female athletes in NCAA schools. Projections show that male enrollment in NCAA institutions will be down to 41 percent by 2009. You do the math."    Erber, a former wrestling coach and athletic director at now-Division I Binghamton, pointed out that his program at Muhlenberg has 11 men's sports and 11 women's sports - all with a $400,000 budget.  Twenty-six percent of Muhlenberg's student body participates in varsity athletics.    "We could not become proportional without eliminating about 125 male athletes," Erber said. "We want to provide opportunities. But we had so much trouble finding women to fill our (six-man) golf team that we had basketball players filling those spots."    Groseth, who coached men's and women's swimming at the University and Cincinnati and Tulane before coming to Northwestern, recalled how difficult it is to run a college program when squad caps are a fact of life.    "Roster management and capping of teams has become a major factor in the loss of teams," Groseth said. "The capping of teams is a taboo subject. Everybody's ashamed of it, and nobody wants to have to explain it. The current enforcement of Title IX has caused anger and resentment against a good law."    Groseth closed his remarks by recalling a conversation with the parents of a prospective freshman last year.    "They said, 'Brad's not going to make an Olympic team or anything, but swimming has been such an important part of his life. He'll work hard, and he'll be a productive swimmer for you,'" Groseth said. "I explained our squad size policy to him and you could just see their shoulders slump.    "The 'Rudy' story is the soul of sport. It's what keeps us in the business. But after I had to tell those parents that, I felt like a bag of dirt."