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LINCOLN, Neb. , May 19, 2000 --

For sale: mats, singlets and headgear. Program cut. Everything must go.

The number of college wrestling teams has dropped dramatically over the last two decades because of budget constraints and gender equity.

Although the sport is as popular as ever at youth levels, opportunities for wrestlers to extend their careers into college are decreasing every year.

"We are probably the No. 1 sport right now that once you graduate high school you have less opportunity to go on and compete in college," said Dan Gable, the former Iowa coach who started the Hawkeyes' wrestling dynasty that includes 20 national championships in the last 26 years.

NCAA wrestling programs have dropped from 374 in 1979-80 to 238 this season. The number of Division I teams has fallen from 152 to 91, a figure that will drop again next season when Brigham Young cuts its program.

"Wrestling is strong right now at all levels except college. That doesn't mean that we are weak, but we are getting picked on," Gable said.

Reasons for the cuts are generally a combination of finances and Title IX, the federal law that requires schools to give men and women equal athletic opportunities. As a non-revenue sport that schools are not adding for women, wrestling has often been the first on the chopping block.

"It's tough to see them go," said USA Wrestling president Bruce Baumgartner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist.

One of the schools that has saved its wrestling program is Nebraska, although it is looking for a new coach. Tim Neumann resigned last month amid accusations of improper scholarship payments.

With an athletic department funded by a national powerhouse football team, Nebraska is secure in financing, and gender equity after adding women's bowling and rifle teams over the past three years.

Not every school is so lucky.

Baumgartner, athletics director and former coach at Edinboro University in Pennsylvania, said there should be another way to meet gender quotas.

"Everybody blames the dropping of a sport as gender equity and it's not always," Baumgartner said. "Title IX is an excellent law -- there is nothing in it that says that you have to drop and remove programs. Unfortunately in a lot of college atmospheres the money is not there to add programs."

The money might not be there, but the fan support is. This year's NCAA championships set an attendance record of 96,994 over the three-day tournament at the Kiel Center in St. Louis. The event is nearly an annual sellout, no matter where it's held.

"I don't think college wrestling is in danger of extinction by any means. But I am concerned if one program drops," Gable said.

Gable isn't worried about the sport at wrestling powers like Iowa, Iowa State, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. And for good reason -- the four schools account for 33 of the last 34 NCAA titles.

Arizona State, which edged Iowa for the 1988 championship, is the only school outside the group to sneak in a title since 1967.

That leaves dozens of programs that can't compete and are hard-pressed to find the funding to keep the sport alive.

"It's easy to pinpoint us and say, 'We can get rid of this to get where we want to be,'" Gable said.

Remaining college programs are not having a hard time finding wrestlers. According to USA Wrestling, 238,334 athletes participated on high school wrestling teams in 1998-99, an increase of more than 7,000 from the previous year.

The totals have been helped by an increasing number of girls. In 1990-91, 132 girls competed in high school wrestling. That number was 2,361 last year.

Membership rose from 90,523 in 1989 to 142,065 last year at USA Wrestling, which governs amateur wrestling in the country from the youth level to the Olympics, excluding high school and college. The number of sanctioned events rose from 1,193 to 1,537 during that time.

Gable, now an assistant athletic director at Iowa and college wrestling's unofficial ambassador, worries that those numbers will level off if wrestlers see fewer collegiate opportunities.

"If we all of a sudden get too low there's not going to be a lot of incentive for kids to keep wrestling," Gable said.

Some schools use fund-raising to keep their programs out of danger. At Stanford, coach Chris Horpel sends out an annual alumni newsletter. It netted the program more than $45,000 last year, he said. Horpel, a former Cardinal wrestler, has been raising money for the program since taking it over 20 years ago.

But donations aren't always enough. At Miami of Ohio last year, wrestlers came up short in a fund-raising effort to save the program. Soccer and tennis also were dropped.

Athletes from the sports who were given two months to come up with at least $13 million said the time wasn't nearly enough. They raised $3 million.

"Anybody who has ever wrestled can't sit back and do nothing right now," Gable said. "We are not football. We are not baseball. We're not basketball. It's real simple to think there's not a lot of us out there. But there is and you've got to stay active in it one way or another."