The Michigan State men's gymnastic team is preparing for next weekend's NCAA Championships as if this is just another year.

They have no choice. Wallowing in self-pity, they decided, will only make the situation worse. They want to go out with class, with dignity, and with their best performance ever.

Most of all, they want to show the school what they will be losing.

All indications are that Michigan State will drop its men's gymnastics program at the end of this season.

Actually, they tried to quietly cut the program last spring. They just didn't bother to tell anyone.

"It was so eerie," Michigan State junior Jon Plante said. "They just sort of told us to stay out of the gym. Some of us kept practicing, but we were never there as a team. Coach (Rick Atkinson) had to call us one day and make sure we would all be there so he could tell us."

To justify the move, the Michigan State Ahtletic department used that old fall back: Title IX. The NCAA law, enacted back in 1972 to prevent discrimination based on sex in all aspects of NCAA operations, has been phenomenal for the development of women's sports the past decade and a half.

At the same time, it has clearly had an adverse affect on men's athletics.

Last spring, the Spartan gymnasts were close to being the latest casualties.

But after several parents threatened to speak with the Board of Directors, the school granted them a stay of execution.

Plante, who won the Big Ten title on the pommel horse last weekend and is currently ranked first in the country on the event, set in motion his own investigation into the matter, resulting in a 77-page study defending the program. He made a formal request for the statistics concerning male and female enrollment and athletic participation at Michigan State.

"It took a while for them to get me the information," he said. "But I did a comprehensive study and found that the numbers, at least to me, didn't justify the Title IX excuse."

The basic gist of the law is that the ratio between male athletes and males enrolled at the school must be about equal to that of female athletes and female students, or at least within five percent.

Plante says there is no such number.

"I couldn't find that stipulation anywhere," he said. "And besides, I ran the info through myself and found that we were very close to complying."

When confronted with this information, the Michigan State Athletics department dodged the issue and started a systematic and bureaucratic cover-up. And they are very apt at doing that.

Anyone who knows anything is too busy to discuss the men's gymnastics situation, either refusing to return calls or declining to comment.

With the men's basketball team in their third consecutive Final Four and the ice hockey team advancing to the Frozen Four, the craziness is excused.

But it seems also to be the heart of the problem.

Men's gymnastics isn't racking in the cash. There's no Flutie-factor if the Spartan gymnasts have an especially strong season, which, by they way, they are.

One day it's scholarship funding, the next day it's something else. One department says it's up to another department, and that department has no clue.

A committee run by the Michigan State student government met with University officials once and then disbanded.

"Anybody who asks questions, they get rid of them real quick," Plante said.

After trying to get clarification from Michigan State officials in the athletic and other departments, I myself can attest to this.

Between the big money and the big hype of big time men's college athletics and the political correctness of women's athletics, non-revenue sports are lost.

Behind the whole athletics department façade, there's a team still in the gym. Five juniors, four sophomores and six freshman face decisions they never thought they would have to make.

They can end their gymnastics careers early and give up the dreams they've had since they were just tikes. Or they can try to transfer to a new school, adapt to a new environment and find a niche on a new team.

Nobody talks about it in the gym, or even the locker room. Atkinson coaches the same way he always has. His situation is perhaps the most precarious. He wants to work in athletics and has an offer to stay on with the Michigan State athletic department. But that would mean working with the people who dropped his program.

Maybe when someone from the Athletic Department decides to cut straight to the truth, this will all become reality for the gymnasts.

"They've never come down here," Plante said. "They haven't told us what is happening or why. That's what stings the most, that lack of respect.

"When (former football coach) Nick Saban left, the Athletic Director left a banquet to go meet with the football players. Has anyone said anything to us?

"Not a chance."