No more expert panelists. No more endless public testimony. No more demonstrations, Save Title IX t-shirts, movie stars and 11-year old girls asking that nobody take their sports away. No more special interest groups questioning the integrity of the process and the participants.    The public portion of the work of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics is over, perhaps to the relief of the 15-member blue-ribbon panel that has met four times since August to review Title IX. It is time to roll up the sleeves and get to work on the most difficult aspect of this process, crafting the recommendation to be presented to the Department of Education on this complex and contentious issue.    The Thursday session in San Diego again provided the individual Commissioners the opportunity to talk with their peers about what they had learned, and in some cases, still had not learned, through this long process.     However, for whatever reason, the core issues of the debate were not addressed. The time for decision and judgement had been delayed, at least for a few more weeks.    The day's work was delayed by one final panelist, Debbie Corwin of the Southeast Conference, who reported on her work in Title IX compliance. She had travel problems and missed her opportunity to speak on Wednesday. She was involved in the court activity with the landmark Peterson case, when she was an LSU employee and the university was found in violation of Title IX.    "There is tremendous confusion regarding Title IX," said Corwin, who advocated no change in the three-part test. "Title IX is supposed to be good for everybody and not hurt anybody. That is why it is so beautifully written."    Concentrating on Prong 3, the interest and abilities prong, Corwin suggested that colleges evaluate whether there is sufficient competition in the region before a school considers interest and abilities of students. "Athletic Directors don't know how to work with Title IX," she said.    When asked about whether Prongs 2 and 3 could lead to the elimination of men's opportunities, Corwin said "You can be in compliance and still add opportunities for men, but later, it would be difficult to reach proportionality. Test 2 and 3 have not bearing on men's opportunities."    When Corwin was finished, the Commission cut off the public forum, and turned to itself to work on completion of the task.    "10 weeks from tomorrow, we need to turn in our report to Secretary Paige," said co-chair Cynthia Cooper.    The first order of business was to discuss the meeting schedule for the next two discussions in Philadelphia and Washington D.C., when the group gets together in full for the final two times. The Commissioners heard from the editor hired by the OCR to write and finalize the document, Jay Diske.    Diske showed some sample reports of other commissions, including a 64-page commission on college costs, which Diske joked that "this report has not stopped college costs from rising." Diske also questioned the January 31 deadline for turning in a document, because of the tight schedule and the process of printing the document. He noted that he would not write a single word until after the December meeting in Philadelphia, where the commission would make specific findings and recommendations.    Two commissioners discussed problems with the proposed process. Julie Foudy was concerned there was not enough opportunity for feedback from any written drafts of the document. Ted Leland also suggested that some commission members were worried about the document becoming "politicized." Foudy asked for a written draft by December when they meet again.    A number of commission members asked that the "findings" part of the report be worked on today, and that they be written for them to use in December. Percy Bates requested a sub-committee to work with the writer. The commission continued to question whether they could make their deadline, with Foudy saying "we are being asked to do the impossible."    As in Colorado Springs, the issue of  the Commission's specific questions came up, and Rita Simon and Donna DeVarona made some suggestions to change the first question. With input from Ted Leland, Percy Bates and General Counsel Brian Jones, the group once again decided to answer the specific questions, with the ability to add other information or additional perspective somewhere else in the report.    When discussing some of the written materials, Lisa Keegan mentioned the group was "up a creek," if they were charged with figuring out the definition of a sport. Foudy read a document from the OCR with its current interpretation of what a sport is, and asked that the commission use the existing literature on that topic. This kind of tedium continued, even to the point of a commissioner pointing out a spelling error in one of the documents.    Leland then read a document asking the Commissioners to create their own list of findings for consideration for the final report. One of the concrete things that emerged is that "findings" could be contradictory to each other and still included in the report. Another 10 minutes were spent determining what the word "finding" meant with individual commissioners commenting on grammar.    By 11:00 a.m. not a single word was spoken about the Title IX issue, just about the process of coming to a recommendation. The 50 in attendance, and the journalists on press row, grew a bit restless, hoping the commissioners might begin evaluating the testimony that was heard.    Executive Director Debbie Price again reminded everybody that the deadline for getting materials from the public to the Commission members was Nov. 29. She noted that all submissions would be sent to each commissioner, and would be on the public record.    Then, a "sub-committee" to review the work of the editor was formed with Donna DeVarona, Percy Bates, Tom Griffith and Rita Simon volunteering to take an active role in the writing process.    Considering a lack of time to meet its goals, the Commission asked for an extra day in December to meet. The idea was to start the next meeting in Philadelphia a day earlier, on the afternoon of December 3, to allow for more discussion, and work the entire day on December 4.    Mike Slive noted that he did not feel prepared to discuss the issues today, considering the amount of input they received on Wednesday. Julie Foudy insisted that they speak on the issues, as the time was way too short.    The first vote of the day was whether or not to adjourn. A motion was made to stay until noon was passed. The commission could not even agree to that. Leland needed to hold the vote twice. The vote was 5-3 to keep meeting. But then, the question came up if the group had a quorum and could meet because a few commissioners had to leave for flights. Finally, Leland called a recess, and no decision was made if the meeting was over or not.    After the break, the Commission did start work again, and Julie Foudy grabbed the microphone and started going into the "arms race" in college sports. She asked the commission to consider "sensible controls for things that do not affect competitive balance."    Gerald Reynolds answered her question, first saying that he "is not much of a sports fan." He did not believe that these "across the board" controls could be done. "I don't see how we can control or prevent people from making stupid mistakes," said Reynolds. He noted that  the circuit ruled in the Brown case that how a school came in compliance was a school decision.    Foudy came back saying if nothing was done about the spending issue, more and more men's teams would be dropped. "You are going to keep going down the road to a train wreck," said Foudy.    "If it was easy, we would have done it," said Bob Bowlsby, explaining why the college community has been completely unable to deal with the arms race issue. "We aren't going to sit around this table and solve the issues about the athletics arms race."    "But one of the reasons we are here is the loss of men's sports," countered Foudy.    Bob Bowlsby noted that the issue is much larger than just the finances. He noted that when a university