great news for Dartmouth student athletes in sports affected as well as potential recruits
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It’s unbelievable to me that they could miscalculate Title IX requirements, at this point why not eliminate football to get in compliance (don’t @ me, not looking to debate!).
As the article says these coaches are gone, and some of the students have transferred too. We personally know two impacted players, and one of the coaches.
They only are guaranteeing these sports remain thru 2024/25 season, so will they be able to recruit any current HS juniors (and beyond) for these teams? I expect some will risk it because it’s Dartmouth, but still will give some families pause, and may not be a lot of athletes’ first choice.
At this point, they don’t even know where the golf teams will play because Hanover Country Club is closed and doubtful to re-open (they had already been losing hundreds of thousands of dollars per year pre-pandemic).
Sheesh, what a mess that has negatively impacted quite a few lives.
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Without counting the rosters, it seems that if D violated Title IX with the cuts, they had to be in violation before the cuts, since they eliminated one men’s team plus the M and W rosters of two sports. So more men than women, in theory, were impacted by the cuts.
I also question if D is being translarent, as I would bet money that they solicited funds from team alums for reinstatement.
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Prior to the announcement, the golf team alumni group offered significant funding to keep the Hanover club open and also fund the team. It’s not clear whether that funding is still possible given the school rejected all of their negotiation attempts prior to the lawsuit.
They were definitely in violation before the cuts and the cuts were illogical as they didn’t address Title IX or racial inequality. The data analysis really isn’t that hard - its embarrassing for the school and everyone involved.
IMHO, the athletic director is responsible for much of this mess and should be sanctioned or fired.
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Quite unbecoming for an Ivy League school!
Will be interested to see what options the golf teams have for a home course/courses.
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Title IX prohibits sex-based discrimination in education. When it was passed in 1972, enrollment at full-time 4-year colleges was about 57% male and 43% female. Today, full-time 4-year college enrollment is 55% female and 45% male. Female students in post-postbaccalaureate programs have exceeded the number of male students since 1988, 33 years ago.
There was no “Great News” for the men’s lightweight crew, men’s golf, and men’s swimming. A golf course has 18 holes and the grass needs to be cut, whether only women or both men and women are allowed to play. The Karl Michael Pool has six lanes and needs the same volume of water for one team or two. Same with the Connecticut River.
You asked "why not eliminate football . . . " The answer is that the football team supplies highly valued diversity that Dartmouth would have a very difficult time replacing – well over 10% of the black or African American students on campus.
If Dartmouth is actually able to rebuild these teams (a big if), filling out those rosters is going to limit the University’s ability to build the type of diverse student body they believe benefits all of the students. Their diversity goals may be misplaced, but it would be an incredible stretch to believe that Dartmouth eliminated Men’s lightweight crew, men’s and women’s golf, and men’s and women’s swimming in order to discriminate against women.
The Ivy conference rules require every school to have football. Period.
The Ivy conference has really screwed up for spring sports this year. They won’t announce if they are playing, so players are transferring. Watching the Denver/Duke lacrosse game on Friday, Duke had a player from Princeton (he figured out how to graduate early and still has eligibility left so started a masters) and Denver had 2 from Yale with another set to transfer. I know a woman from Dartmouth is playing for Colorado (also as a grad student)
The announcers were talking about how all the athletes are leaving the Ivy league, so if they ever do decide to play, they won’t have full teams.
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Substitute “highly valued diversity” with “money” for another perspective. Even though Dartmouth, or any Ivy, is far from the UT or UGA level, they will not cut a revenue sport.
Even at schools like Dartmouth, where I’m guessing the gate is not covering the cost of the program, the reality is that many alums, especially the Wall Streeet types, love football. That’s a lot of alums writing a lot of checks.
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Blockquote the reality is that many alums, especially the Wall Street types, love football. That’s a lot of alums writing a lot of checks.
That has to be the explanation for keeping football at many SLACs. I was surprised to learn that Oberlin still has a football team.
At Oberlin and similar SLACs, having a football team can be part of the effort to enroll a diverse student body. I counted 46 players in the most recent Oberlin football team photo. That is about 5% of all male students on campus. Oberlin’s CDS shows that the undergraduate enrollment is out of balance despite football, consisting of 910 men (42%) and 1,256 (58%) women.
While Dartmouth could replace all of its football players, at Oberlin those 46 men would probably just be gone if the team was eliminated. Oberlin is a great college, but it still only enrolls about 20% of its admitted applicants. And, that number is inflated by the number of recruited athletes and by taking about 20% of the freshman class off of the waitlist (both waitlist and recruited athletes generate nearly 100% yield). Getting rid of football would push men below 40% of students. I suspect that the people running Oberlin don’t want that to happen.
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Without scholarships, the $75K per year for tuition, room and board for each football player adds up. It may not be the case at Dartmouth or the other ivy league universities, but at small liberal arts colleges there are absolutely coaches looking for athletes who do not require need-based financial aid. D3 athletics is an extension of admissions.
Revenue almost certainly isn’t the reason for keeping a particular sport like football at an Ivy school. Ivy conference revenues and payouts to each school are a small fraction of those at P5 conferences/schools. Not just smaller but orders of magnitude smaller, and even less significant when viewed in the context of the overall budgets and endowments.
Administrators and trustees at these schools like football for other reasons, some of which have been mentioned. Diversity (racial and socioeconomic) is an important part of the picture with sports like football, basketball, track. Especially at schools with crew, field hockey, lacrosse teams.
I do agree that many of the D3 LACs use athletics as a tuition draw, and that’s made pretty explicit to the coaches.
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There are no athletic scholarships at Ivy or D3 schools. Athletes get the same financial aid that non-athletes get. They either earn merit (if offered) or get need based aid.
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Exactly. The athletes at Ivy and D3 schools are paying customers on the same terms as everyone else. When one of these colleges can attract enough paying customers who want to play football (or be in a marching band or be a cheerleader), they offer a football team.
Possibly at some of the D3s. But I don’t think it’s true of the Ivies. A lot of those players chose Ivy due to the generous financial aid. So I don’t know how much tuition revenue these athletes are generating. And of course Dartmouth would have no trouble replacing those players with full pay prep school kids if that was the preference. But again, it isn’t about the revenue for these schools. This is where football started; it’s intertwined with traditions and culture at most of these schools (along with other sports and activities). And it carries other benefits for the schools. If the schools were after revenue, they’d start the season earlier, end it later, and add some midweek games. All of that for the TV revenue. They choose not to do that.
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To answer the question on this tangent, I’m going to go down another one very briefly.
Football is a lot more profitable at most schools than they report, because they use creative accounting. For example, a football team is probably getting charged for the stadium that the soccer team plays in. I don’t think that is spread equally in most programs. Also sometimes weight rooms, etc. Except for a few schools where even creative accounting can’t hide it (looking at you Alabama), the schools don’t want to look like they are making money off football and basketball because it helps the argument that they should be compensating the athletes.
Not to say it is profitable everywhere, at Ivies and high academic D3’s it still probably isn’t.
But to @twoinanddone 's point, at a lot of D3 schools that do not meet full need (and also D2 and NAIA, who are frequently full of sports including football that do not have the full allotment of scholarships) those athletes generate revenue dollars. At a school struggling to maintain enrollment (most schools in the country other than the top 5% mostly talked about on CC) those athletes are on average good paying customers. They pay tuition, and usually at least freshman year pay room and board. I know lots of kids who paid as much or more at a D3 or NAIA school as they would pay at the state flagship so they could play football or baseball or whatever. Plus dad could brag about the $20,000 scholarship (to the $50,000 school, which is usually not mentioned).
The local D2 had to cut a few sports a couple of years ago (not Covid related). I’m friends with someone in the school’s finance office. She said they tried to do everything they could to keep one of the programs, because even though officially they lost a lot of money on the program, they knew they netted out $150-200,000 after accounting for tuition. But they were so far out of Title IX compliance the only way to meet it was to cut a big men’s program, so they did. They lost 30 kids who transferred, and 10 tuition scholarships. That’s 20 tuition checks, plus room and board for the freshmen, that they lost. This isn’t Dartmouth who just replaces them with 30 other students. They are already down 200 from their peak a few years back and taking every warm body they can. Not having the program costs them enrollment numbers, and therefore money. And this is a mediocre D2 baseball team, not Notre Dame football.
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I think it is the sport that attracts some kids, not that the school discovers it has 15 volleyball players so starts a volleyball team. My daughter would not have gone to her school if it didn’t offer her sport. She couldn’t have afforded it because I don’t think the school would have given her $20k in financial need money but it did give her that as an athletic scholarship. Worked for us. If they hadn’t offered the money, she’d have found somewhere that did (or was cheaper).
The conferences can require the schools to offer certain sports. The Ivy league requires football, as do several other conference. SUNY Buffalo converted hockey to a club sport (still very competitive but school doesn’t have to give scholarships or cover the costs of the team, and hockey doesn’t count toward Title IX compliance) but was required to keep football.
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