As loud and as partisan as crowds at the Stan Sheriff Center could be, former Fresno State volleyball coach Lindy Vivas liked to say the experience was preferable to some aspects of playing at home.

"It was a lot friendlier for me to go there (to UH) and play than play in front of the administration here (in Fresno)," as Vivas put it.

Yesterday a Fresno jury put a price on the gender equity hostility the Punahou School graduate said she endured from that FSU administration: $5.85 million.

What we're told might be the largest award to a coach charging retaliation under Title IX is a wake-up call far beyond the Bulldogs' bitterly divided campus and the Western Athletic Conference.

It is a resounding reminder from the nine-woman, three-man jury that coaches, like the athletes they instruct, are protected. It necessarily underlines that retribution meted out for speaking up for those rights won't be tolerated.

Those are lessons Bulldog-stubborn FSU seems intent on learning the hard — and expensive — way given its abysmal track record on Title IX. In 1994 FSU was found in violation of Title IX and though the U.S. Department of Education finally declared it in compliance seven years later, the atmosphere apparently hasn't changed much. Two more suits, one by an administrator and the other by a former basketball coach, are scheduled to be heard in coming months. Softball coach Margie Wright has a federal complaint pending.

Testimony in the Vivas case painted a sordid picture of an athletic department at "civil war," much of it drawn along gender lines with administrators cheering volleyball losses, organizing an "Ugly Women Athletes" day and dividing coaches by perceptions of sexual preference. Opposing it and standing up to the administration that allowed it, Vivas took a courageous stand at the expense of her coaching career.

FSU maintained Vivas was fired for not advancing the program far enough. A contention that wilted when the athletic director who fired her said, under questioning from his own attorney, he wasn't sure how many players took the court at a time.

Even before the jury's decision, the Bulldogs already paid a price for firing their most successful volleyball coach (263-167) and three-time WAC Coach of the Year. A team that usually furnished UH's toughest competition in the WAC going 59-27 in Vivas' final three years has been 13-44 since her ouster and the subsequent departure of three Hawai'i players, including Tuli Peters, an all-WAC selection as a sophomore whose transfer boosted Brigham Young-Hawai'i.

Thirty-five years since its adoption, Title IX is still the law of the land. Yesterday's jury award was a reminder that flouting it comes at a steep price.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.