Fans and their appetite for a bigger, more competitive state championship football tournament this season might have to hold off on the feast for the time being.

Despite being approved by the HHSAA, and executive director Chris Chun’s insistence that all requirements have been met, there’s one lingering question. It is posed by Jill Nunokawa, civil rights specialist at UH-Manoa: Is the football expansion Title IX compliant?

Chun says yes. Nunokawa isn’t so sure.

Nunokawa is concerned about the overall numbers that will change with eight more football teams participating in the state tournament in the newly approved format. Right now, the HHSAA projects 4,174 male athletes to participate in the 2016-17 state tournaments, including those in the expanded football format. Also projected: 4,006 girls.

That makes the percentages fairly close: 51.1 percent boys and 48.9 percent girls. The math on male-female athlete ratio for all state championship tournaments, even with the addition of eight football teams, is acceptable by Title IX standards, he wrote via e-mail.

“The projected numbers for this school year, including changes to football: boys teams 138, girls teams 166. … For the past six years, at the HHSAA level, we have had more girls participating than the boys. This satisfies the first prong of the Title IX test.”

Chun added that his staff has been in contact with Nunokawa “to address any concerns and/or receive any input she may have. Since this is a pilot program, we will continue to work with her and use her expertise as to any needed changes,” he wrote.

Nunokawa is not planning to take any formal action.

“I’m always in wait-and-see mode because I’m hopeful that people with the knowledge and obligation to enforce Title IX would intervene and ensure that it would be enforced,” she said.

The numbers projected by the HHSAA include the state championships for cheerleading, which is not recognized by Title IX as a sport. Approximately 300 athletes compete in the HHSAA cheer championships.

The HHSAA could offset most of those minus-300 cheerleader numbers by expanding, for example, water polo (Division II), softball (D-III) and girls volleyball (D-III). That would add roughly 300 female athletes in sports with strong interest. Chun has considered the possibilities, but nothing is concrete in terms of proposals, especially for the current academic year.

“He needs to implement (expansion via pilot programs) for girls simultaneously (with football expansion),” Nunokawa said. “It would help them a lot.”

In addition, Nunokawa disagrees with the projected number of football players in the state tournament, and she is also not satisfied with the “climate” — or perceived special treatment — at which expansion takes place.

“If the boys can benefit from such a fast turnaround, why can’t you do it for the girls? What’s the rush?” she asked.

Some involved with the football format dispute this, saying football expansion has been discussed for as long as five years.

“I’m all for expansion,” Nunokawa said. “I’m tired of hearing that Nunokawa is against opportunities for the high school kids. I’m not. I’m saying the federal law states that you need to (balance) these kind of equal opportunities. That’s all I’m saying and I’ve been saying it since 1993. I just think that you have new principals and they ran with the moment saying, hey this is possible! Which is fine. But you still have to do a Title IX analysis.”

The three prongs of Title IX compliance: The number of male and female athletes must be reasonably equal, finance and facilities. Chun said none of the prongs is an issue.

It’s not just about numbers, but the swing number that derives from cheerleading is potentially crucial. According to the National Federations of State High School Associations (nfhs.org), for classification as an “activity” or “sport” for Title IX purposes depends on whether teams meet criteria, and that was established in 2008 by the U.S. Office for Civil Rights.

“To date,” the NFHS article states, “the OCR has not ruled that any cheer program, college or high school, sideline or competitive, sufficiently satisfies the criteria … for cheerleaders to be counted for purposes of the ‘substantial proportionality’ component of Title IX’s ‘three-prong test.’ “

The HHSAA begs to differ, apparently, and the other side of that coin is that the Office for Civil Rights has not ruled against cheerleading as a true sport, either.

In 2012, a federal court judge presiding over “Biediger vs. Quinnipiac University maintained that competitive cheerleading doesn’t meet the criteria.

“I do not mean to belittle competitive cheer as an athletic endeavor,” he wrote. “I have little doubt that at some point in the near future … competitive cheer will be acknowledged as a bona fide sporting activity by academic institutions, the public and the law.”

The NFHS article added, “… the acknowledgement by the OCR of even one high school competitive cheer squad as fulfilling the criteria and therefore constituting a sport for Title IX purposes would provide a blueprint of compliance by other schools.”

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The Star-Advertiser’s Ferd Lewis contributed to this report.