Question the parentheses

I, too, read the news that Orange County, North Carolina schools had been given a clean Title IX bill of health. This article from the Chapel Hill News goes so far as to say that any statistical disparities favored girls--but not the detriment of boys.
Notes the writer: "[girls'] coaches were paid more than coaches of boys' teams when compared to the proportion of students participating in athletics by sex (excluding football)." (emphasis added)
So this is a little confusing. Orange County clearly met one of the three prongs regarding equitable opportunities. But it was not necessarily proportionality. How does this affect our understanding of the above statement? (And as Erin noted, just because it seems that salaries are equitable, does not mean there was not discrimination against the one fired coach--the catalyst for this investigation.) And more importantly, why was football excluded from these calculations? And how many other statistics do not include football?
I haven't been able to find any answers yet, but would love to be enlightened.