By now I'm assuming everyone knows about Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and his "not intended to be a factual statement". Kyl's statistics were a little off. He said that over 90% of Planned Parenthood's resources were tied to abortion services, when in reality it is about 3%. He knew that but used the 90% because it was more effective-- not true but more effective.

Speaking about saying things that one knows are not true (BTW when did we lose the word lie?), thanks to the New York Times, we now know that colleges and universities, especially athletics departments are also happy to issue statistics that are not intended to factual.

The problem:

That pesky Title IX requires colleges and universities who receive federal monies (that would be all but 2 or 3) to provide equal opportunites for women and men students in athletics and they don't want to

Add women's names to team roosters without actually having the women participate (University of South Florida)
Require women cross-country runners join the indoor and outdoor track teams so they could be counted three times (Quinnipiac).
Call the fencing team a women's sport and count the male fencers as women (Cornell)-- that's my personal favorite.

Ah it's good to know we can trust what we hear from our elected officials and our colleges and universities.