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I'm tired of everyone always ragging on the athletes. Schools are more than paying for better athletic teams - they're in a sense advertising for the school and bettering its image. I'm sorry, but there's more to college than schoolwork and athletics is a good way to interact with classmates and other schools.</p>
<p>And seriously, look at how much schools take in each year or how much they pay in FA packages. $1,000,000 is not that much, especially for the Ivies.
<p>this is money well spent. Athletics can do so much for a school. It can build a schools academic reputation. Also if the athlete makes it to the professional league Im sure money will come back to the school in forms of donations and gifts. This money could be used to update facilities. Albeit mostly athletic. I think people who have a problem at this are looking at it too unilaterally.</p>
<p>For me, the surprise in these numbers are those for the Ivy League colleges. Everyone knows and expects the major Division I football playing schools to have high and increasing expenditures dedicated to athletic recruiting. But Princeton, Harvard, etc??? </p>
<p>The average annual spending at the eight Ivies was $781k, which isn't that far from LSU which spent only $990k and won the national title last year in football. Also, look at the average spending by the other conferences:</p>
<p>$1,094,142 SEC (inflated by U Tennessee's $2mm+)</p>
<p>$961,517 Big 12</p>
<p>$921,327 Big 10</p>
<p>$895,683 ACC</p>
<p>$834,470 Pac 10</p>
<p>$781,000 IVY LEAGUE</p>
<p>$765,713 Big East (includes only the 8 football playing colleges)</p>
<p>Frankly, given all of the discussion on CC and elsewhere about the "purity" of Ivy athletics, I expected their numbers to be more like those of colleges like Colgate ($452, 300) which was the biggest spender for colleges that are considered Division I-AA. The median for Division I-AA was $195,600.</p>
<p>hawkette, perhaps the Ivy expenditures are due to the sheer number of different sports they offer. Harvard, for example, has 41 Varsity sports. This is double what most other Division 1 schools offer.</p>
<p>Yes, Bay, that would have an impact on the $$. But whether you count number of teams or $$ spent, no matter how you look at it, the ivy league schools obviously place a great value on athletics & look favorably on athletes.</p>
<p>Bay,
I hear you on the sheer number of sports, but we're talking about dollars spent on athletic recruiting. If this was for operating dollars spent on athletic programs (coaches, equipment, travel, etc.) and the Ivy colleges had more sports to support, I could understand it. But recruiting? Also, for the minor sports outside of football, basketball and ice hockey (and not all Ivy colleges field teams), would you really expect a significant difference in athletic recruiting expense between the Ivies and the Division I-AA </p>
<p>It looks like the sports where many Ivies field teams, but others do not, include sports like archery, equestrian, fencing, sailing, skiing, and squash. Maybe I'm just clueless on this, but compared to a college like Colgate, is there really hundreds of thousands of dollars of recruiting cost associated with these sports? </p>
<p>I'd be interested to see the comparative figures for Williams and some other top Division III schools (if anyone has them and other colleges, please post). Some Ivy posters claim a purity in athletic approach similar to these colleges, but at a higher athletic level. As these colleges also field large numbers of varsity teams, the dollars spent on athletic recruiting would be an interesting statistic to judge the validity of these claims.</p>
<p>hawkette, I know from personal experience that the Ivies recruit the same athletes as other top Division I teams, (but obviously don't get them all), so why should their expenses be any different? For example, a local football player here was recruited by USC and Harvard, and he chose USC.</p>
<p>Well, football is the one sport where I would expect large differences as the Ivies play in the lower level Division I-AA. I would attribute most of the differences between the Division I colleges and the Ivies to be caused by the football recruiting which is not only intense and sometimes national in scope, but also involves large numbers of eventual team members, ie, roughly 20-25 new players per year. </p>
<p>Also, the difference with another college that also plays Division I sports but only Division I-AA football is Colgate and their athletic recruiting spending is far lower. </p>
<p>Finally, the median Division I college athletic Division I recruiting expenditure is $632,500 and the Ivies are all above that level. Hard to make firm judgments here as we don't know the details on the full set of colleges.</p>
<p>hawkette, I think you underestimate the competitiveness of the Ivy League. All Division I players, regardless of college, adhere to the same demanding NCAA practice schedules. The "purity" of the Ivy League is obviously found in the non-contract (scholarship) status of its athletes and their academic minimum standards, as well as the integration of the athletes into the student body for housing and academics. Otherwise, I would venture to bet that most Ivy League athletes set their sights on NCAA championships to the same degree as all other Division I athletes.</p>
<p>Bay is right. Ivy athletics, even football, are a lot more competitive to play in than you think. If you weren't all state, you aren't going to see the field, with few exceptions. See the johntreed.com site for his experiences at Columbia.</p>
<p>Ivy costs are going to be reasonably high because they have to find out not only who is good, but who is admittable....a much more difficult task.</p>
<p>And they don't give athletic scholarships, no matter how much people whine that they do. They don't change the financial aid after the kid is injured, or decides he'd rather spend his time getting into law school than learning the spread offense. And if your family is high (enough) income, you won't get anything. </p>
<p>As far as learning you are in before the others, all ivy schools will send likely letters to athletes who are considering going to another D1 school where they use NLI and have early signing periods. At the Ivy schools who are at the top of their respective sports, most of the starters could have secured D1 scholarships (maybe not to a top 15 program, but D1 nonetheless).</p>
<p>Regarding athletics helping schools, I've seen more Rutgers "R" stickers in the past year than I've seen in the last 40. I am willing to bet that their stats are up a lot more than anyone elses in the past three years.</p>
<p>Dadx, it does seem that every other car here in NJ sports the "R" sticker. Every college will vouch for the measurable applicant bump & alumni $$ bump that occur when their football team does well or the basketball team makes it to the Sweet 16.</p>
<p>I don't agree about the competitiveness of ivy league teams in football or basketball, however. Only the tippy top kids would have a shot at a solid Div1 program. And the academic review for an athlete has to be done for every player on every team in the NCAA. So the ivy costs would be no greater than any other school in that area. In fact, that would probably be charged against the general university admissions budget & have no impact on the recruiting budget at all.</p>
<p>Basketball is a little more problematic because of the small numbers, but I'd stand by my assertion that most Ivy starters (more than half) on the best Ivy teams (say the top three) had a D1 scholarship offer available. I didn't say it was to Florida state, but Duke, Northwestern and Stanford are all D1. </p>
<p>In the sport I was involved in, I know for a fact that two of our years recruits were recruited at MSU and PSU. In swimming, track, and other objective measure sports, I suspect the performance numbers would bear me out. </p>
<p>There aren't a lot of D1 caliber athletes with academic credentials that fit the Ivy league, but there are enough to make getting a spot there very difficult. One phenomenon that has taken root is that some offspring of pro coaches and players have figured out that the Ivy league is a good alternative to the upper D1 grind-em-into-the-ground-and-let'em-major-in-sportsmanagement-syndrome. Shula had at least one kid at Dartmouth, Madden had one at Brown and one at Harvard. Cowher's daughters are at Princeton. Les Stoeckl's boy played at Princeton. Steve DeOssie's boy was at Brown before joining the Giants. In any case, I'm not arguing that they can play with Ohio State or Kansas.....just that a lot of them could have had scholarships to schools in those conferences.</p>
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Also, for the minor sports outside of football, basketball and ice hockey (and not all Ivy colleges field teams), would you really expect a significant difference in athletic recruiting expense between the Ivies and the Division I-AA
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<p>Sure.. those "minor" sports that the Ivy schools have make a big difference! 35 "minor" sports are going to spend a lot more money on recruiting than another school which has 10 "minor" sports.</p>
<p>bay,
Sorry but I must disagree about the competitiveness of Ivy athletics. On the national level, almost never is the Ivy League seen as setting the athletic standard in a sport. Ivy athletes may set their sights on national achievements, but wishing and achieving are not the same thing. And for the major sports of football and basketball (and baseball if you want to include that), the Ivies are a complete non-entity on the national competitive scene. </p>
<p>To further understand the relative strength of the Ivies, consider a broader measurement like the Directors Cup. This considers results from 26 different sports and a school can claim points in their highest 20. </p>
<p>As you correctly point out, the Ivies field more teams than nearly all other Division I teams, but even with many more chances for points, their comparative results in the Directors Cup standings reveal their weakness. In the 2007-08 Directors Cup standings, the highest ranked Ivy was Princeton, 60th nationally. While Princeton fielded teams in all 26 sports in order to gain its Ivy-best # 60 spot, all of the USNWR Top 30 Division I privates and publics except for Rice and Georgetown finished higher, often while participating in many fewer sports. </p>
<p>And beyond the differences in national competitiveness, more important to me, I would argue strongly that the non-Ivy colleges offer far more in terms of a great athletic scene in support of their athletes. This is really the greatest difference in how the undergraduate life is touched at these various schools as a basketball game at Stanford or Duke or a football game at Vanderbilt or Notre Dame is a vastly different experience than anything available at any of the Ivy colleges.</p>
<p>dadx,
The comparisons that I often make are meant to be apples-to-apples, ie, comparing a top undergraduate academic institution to another with similar levels of quality. I consider Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame to be in the same league academically as the Ivies, but I think that these schools offer, for student-athletes and regular students alike, a more compelling athletic scene than their Ivy counterparts and sometimes significantly so. </p>
<p>I agree with some who might claim that the Ivies could be a good choice for a student-athlete choosing a school where he/she has low professional prospects, is not interested in competing at the highest levels, and is most likely to get on the field. But for those student athletes who truly want to compete at the most elite, national levels in nationally prominent sports, the Ivies rarely are the best choice. </p>
<p>Furthermore, and perhaps more relevant to most undergraduate students, the non-Ivies of Stanford Duke, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame (and Northwestern and Rice to a lesser extent) offer a significantly more vibrant athletic scene that factors into the social life and entertainment value for an undergraduate student.</p>