Football Under Attack: Alum Fight Back

Colleges and Universities A-Z Dartmouth College
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In a letter to the president of Swarthmore College, Furstenberg wrote, "I wish this were not true but sadly football, and the culture that surrounds it, is antithetical to the academic mission of colleges such as ours. . . . A close examination of intercollegiate athletics within the Ivy League would point to other sports in which the same phenomenon is apparent." The letter was written in 2000 but was made public only this month.

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<p>What is interesting about the article is how successful are former Darthmouth football players. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041223/REPOSITORY/412230326/1007/SPORTS%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041223/REPOSITORY/412230326/1007/SPORTS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Interesting. Of course, Swarthmore has a somewhat long and public history with its football choices, so maybe Furstenberg was just buttering Swarthmore up</p>

<p>Or maybe he really feels that way, but I wouldn't worry about it. I would say, however, that football is of course antithetical to an academic mission and especially regarding admissions, but it obviously serves other purposes.</p>

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<p>" I would say, however, that football is of course antithetical to an academic mission and especially regarding admissions, but it obviously serves other purposes."</p>

<p>You would say what, willy? Try reading the article first before responding. I find your conclusion remarkably cavalier. If memory serves, you don't attend Dartmouth, so you wouldn't really know, now would you? My S is a recruited baseball player, with excellent academic credentials (he needed no help getting into Dartmouth), perhaps his credentials were (are) better than yours, i don't know. Furthermore, he did extremely well this first term.</p>

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<p>I remember you because I remember your son's credentials being much better than mine. Congratulations.</p>

<p>Whether you find me cavalier or not, I thought that my use of "of course" in that statement conveyed that it was a natural conclusion-- how is football the thesis of academics? Does having football directly improve any school's academic environment? It does not, so in that way, I agree with Furstenberg's comment. But not improving academic environment does not mean that it shouldn't exist at the collegiate level. I am a huge supporter of sports and athletes in college, and I'm sorry if it seemed that my comment seemed to say that I think all collegiate athletes are stupid.</p>

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<p><a href="http://www.thedartmouth.com%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.thedartmouth.com&lt;/a> -- we did a web update on this topic. Furstenberg says he's sorry, ;) .</p>

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<p>Also, the article mentions that Dartmouth football players graduate at the same rate as other Dartmouth students. Some of the alums want F to resign, and are blaming him for the football team's current poor record because of his perceived admissions bias. I feel bad for him; that was a personal letter which I bet he never dreamed would come back to bite him. I also doubt he's biased in admissions--when it comes to athletes Dartmouth has established criteria, so he can't really be arbitrary about it.</p>

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<p>The timing of this "scandal" couldn't be worse, because Dartmouth just fired the football coach after the worst season in its history, and, to make matters even dicier, the school has just launched a big capital fundraising effort, and can ill-afford to antagonize alumni.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Enews/releases/2004/12/10.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Enews/releases/2004/12/10.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>I don't think anyone, including the Admissions Director at Dartmouth, has suggested that varsity baseball is "antithetical" to the academic mission of an elite college.</p>

<p>All Ivy League and other elite colleges reserve "x" number of admissions slots for recruited athletes with substandard academic credentials. Those reserved slots are allocated overwhelmingly to a few sports. Football gets half of them. Men's ice hockey is next in line. I believe that men's basketball would be third in line. Because these sports consume most of the reserved slots, the remaining men's and women's teams are stocked with kids who are every bit as academically qualified as any other applicant -- with the exception of perhaps one "impact" player slot per team.</p>

<p>The impact of football on admissions standards is no big secret at any elite academic school. It's actually not much of an issue at schools as large as the Ivy League schools. It becomes a very serious concern at small liberal arts colleges where 30 slots are reserved for football players (at varying degrees of substandard academics) out of an incoming male freshmen class of 180 to 200 kids. That's 30 low stat slots that admissions directors don't have available for an inner-city valedictorian with 1300 SATs, or a first generation Cambodian, or whatever. It's a big chunk.</p>

<p>Actually, there is a great deal of information about the distribution of football recruits at Dartmouth. The Ivy League has a formula. Using Dartmouth's 1-9 academic index rating (8s and 9s are academic superstar auto-admits, 6s and 7s are your normal 1400 to 1500 SAT kids), assume for the sake of discussion the the "mean" rating for the freshman class is a "6.5". They can allocate eight recruited football players down to a "5.5", thirteen down to a "4.5", seven down to a 4, and two down to the absolute cutoff -- usually a "3" for elite colleges (academic 1 & 2s would not qualify for admission to many state universities -- SATs down in the combined 600 to 800 range).</p>

<p>I think it is pretty easy to understand why an adcom would find admitting football players in the 3 to 5 range "antithetical" to Dartmouth's academic mission.</p>

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<p>At one point in the 1980s, Swarthmore was headed in the same direction as Williams with a "big time" (for Div. III) football program. They had five or six consecutive undefeated (or nearly undefeated) seasons and then fired the football coach. He was fired because, during that stretch, the football program had become less and less a part of the campus community and more and more an isolated "sub-culture" that really didn't fit at Swarthmore, academically or socially. </p>

<p>From the point that they fired the coach, they basically never won another game. It finally hit a make or break point in the late 1990s when the Athletic Director told the Admissions office that he could not field a competive team without 33% of all admissions slots being reserved for recruited athletes. The admissions office told him to go pound sand, that 33% of the slots for recruited athletes would cripple their ability to build a class.</p>

<p>From there, it went to an Ad Hoc Committee and on to the Board of Managers that ultimately decided football was not sustainable at a school with only 750 male students and a primary emphasis on academic excellence.</p>

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<p>It has the smallest enrollment, with no concrete plans to expand. The next larger Ivies - Princeton and Yale - are both planning to expand enrollment by 10-15% in the not too distant future, which will allow them to continue athletic recruiting while doing a better job of meeting "diversity" goals. Harvard has longer-term plans for a 10% enrollment increase.</p>

<p>Not too many years from now, the size disparity between Dartmouth and the other Ivies will present an even more serious problem for Dartmouth if it wishes to compete in the full range of Ivy sports.</p>

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<p>Only if there is an (unreasonable) expectation of winning. Certainly, you don't want to go 0-10 every year, but elite schools like Dartmouth really should view varsity athletics as amateur club sports.</p>

<p>Dartmouth is certainly big enough to support a football team and still maintain an academic campus culture, but probably not big enough to maintain a winning football program. </p>

<p>15% of Dartmouth male students play varsity athletics. That's a perfectly healthy percentage -- not one that overwhelms the campus culture. Because of its size, Swarthmore is 22%, even without a football team. Still a reasonable number -- one out of every five. Things get a little hairy at a liberal arts college with a serious athletic program, like Williams. There, 40% of the male students play varsity athletics. Nearly one out of two. That has a serious impact on the campus culture, especially when the school is so focused on athletics that they expect to win the overall Division III championship Sear Cup (against much larger schools) every year.</p>

<p>The amazing thing is that Dartmouth's Admissions director is going to end up getting fired over a perfectly reasonable letter he wrote four years ago. And, that Dartmouth's President is falling all over himself to throw the guy under the bus. Just goes to show what a hot-button issue football is among alumni groups.</p>

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<p>As I understand it, Dartmouth currently has 883 varsity athletes, and 4,095 fulltime undergrads - which translates to about 22% of the student body.</p>

<p>You also have to bear in mind that the Ivies have to "over-recruit" since they don't have the "hammer" of athletic scholarships to keep people on the teams when enthusiam wains.</p>

<p>The bottom line: as a rule of thumb, from what I've been told, 25-26% of each Dartmouth freshman class consists of athletic recruits.</p>

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<p>Yes. The 883 number is the number reported on the most recent Common Data Set. However, I think that double counts any student who plays two varsity sports. The same data shows 15% of the male students and 17% of the female students play varsity sports, which would be 314 male athletes.</p>

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<p>I guess it depends on the definition of "recruits".</p>

<p>There are really three categories of athletes at elite colleges. The first group is commonly referred to as "impact" players. These would be admissions slots available to the athletic department, almost without regard to academic qualifications, i.e. kids that would have zero chance of getting into Dartmouth without the coach using an "impact" slot. Let's say, academic "3" and "4" and "5" on Dartmouths 9 point scale.</p>

<p>The next group would be kids who are a little low to average academically ("6" and "7"), but close enough that a decent hook would get them in. In this case, the hook would be an athletic department "slot", but there are plenty of other hooks (concert violin, inner-city URM, great essays, exceptional community service, etc.) I don't think anybody objects to athletics being a "hook" for this group of students.</p>

<p>The final group is kids would would get in anyway (academic 8s, 9s), but who happen to also play a sport. Now, these kids may think they are being "recruited" and, in fact, the coaches may well sweet-talk these kids. But, the athletic department is not going to "waste" their allocated slots on these kids, not when slots are at premium and they could be better used on the 300 pound defensive lineman who scored 950 on his SATs. </p>

<p>I tend to think that your 25% figure includes this third group, even though these kids are really not receiving any kind of athletic department "push" in the admissions process. </p>

<p>Unfortunately, the terms are sometimes used in misleading ways. For example, when colleges are trying to show that athletics don't negatively impact admissions, they refer only the the small number of slots used for the first category and neglect to include the kids from the second category, where the athletic depart is still allowed to pick "x" number for varsity teams.</p>

<p>Here's a fascinating link to a report at Williams that outlines how all this works.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.ephblog.com/archives/images/athletic_report.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.ephblog.com/archives/images/athletic_report.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Williams has the opposite problem. Their alumni aren't real happy that the school fancies itself as being a U of Miami-style athletic powerhouse. Williams gives the athletic department 66 admission slots for the first category (low academics) and another 32 slots for the second category (average academics). That's 100 slots out of freshman class of 533 that are selected exclusively by the Athletic department, as long as the distribution meets the agreed upon formula. Plus another slug of athletes who get in on their own academic merits (including athletics as their EC) without any "pull" from the coaches.</p>

<p>As part of dumping football, Swarthmore committed to 54 slots (15%) for the Athletic department (of a freshman class of 370). Of these 54, only 10 are from the first category (low academics), 34 are the second category (average academics), and 10 are for kids who could get in on their own merits. By dumping football, these slots are now used for teams where a small school actually may have a chance of being competitive (tennis, basketball, etc.), so many of Swats teams have improved lately.</p>

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<p>Here's an article you may find interesting.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.harvardmagazine.com/issues/so97/ivy.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.harvardmagazine.com/issues/so97/ivy.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>And a Crimson story about the ouster of Dean Lewis a year or so ago, which many took as a sign the athletic "complex" was going to be reined in.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=347906%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=347906&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>On the matter of the "real" number of recruited athletes, I agree that the number the Ivies advertise or admit to is smaller than the actual number. This is because coaches don't have to "waste" a pick on anybody likely to get in on the basis of (a) academic achievement, (b) legacy status, or (c) URM status.</p>

<p>At some schools, anyway, the coaches are tipped off that "if you want this kid, Charlie, you'll have to burn a pick", or "that's all right, Maureen, don't worry: this girl is going to get in anyway, even if she never picks up a lacrosse stick." I've talked to coaches who are quite candid about all of this.</p>

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<p>From what I understand Dartmouth isn't as lenient about cutting breaks for athletes as some colleges...although being an athlete certainly can help a person in the admissions game. Interesting article about it: <a href="http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2004051301040%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.thedartmouth.com/article.php?aid=2004051301040&lt;/a>. It also says that athletes make up 13-17% of applicants.</p>

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<p>Byerly:</p>

<p>Thanks for the link. The recruiting article was very interesting. In reading the accounts of Swarthmore's decision to dump football, it is clear that recruiting is killing Division III (and Ivy League Div I) athletics.</p>

<p>Conceptually, the sports teams at these academic powerhouse schools should be "walk-on" programs. Admit academically and take the field with what you get. As long as everybody does it the same way, you have a shot of winning some games. </p>

<p>But, with Div III and the Ivys becoming consumed with recruiting, it kills the schools that really don't want to compromise the academic nature of the college. Frankly, not many 300 pound d-linemen with 1450 SATs are going to show up at spring practice. So, if your competitors are out recruiting these specialty kids, you'll not only lose every game, but lose by 30 points. </p>

<p>This is fundamentally what killed football at Swarthmore. Once Williams and the Ivies began heavily recruiting low-stat football players, Swarthmore was dead. They couldn't recruit them because they couldn't get them admitted and the mission of the college simply wasn't compatible with allocating huge numbers (on a percentage basis) of low-academic slots.</p>

<p>What the people calling for the Dartmouth Dean's head don't understand is that it's the "regular smart white kid" who is the loser when slots are allocated to low-stat football players. Dartmouth isn't going to suddenly decide that an an average SAT of 1350 is OK -- it would kill their USNEWS rank. They certainly aren't going to say, "OK, we won't use any low-stat slots for affirmative action and diversity". So, guess what? If you have low stat slots for athletes, low stat slots for diversity, and you want to maintain a 1450 median SAT, then the rest of the people you accept have to be extremely high-stat, probably higher stat than you would really like if you want the freedom to accept the kid who is passionately one-dimensional in art, or theater, or community service, or just an all around great kid from a farm in Iowa with 1375 SATs. It's especially tough when you know you are going to lose your highest-stat kids to Harvard. People just don't seem to understand that slot-based admissions is truly a zero-sum game. You can give slots to football players with 950 SATs, but each one is a slot that is taken away from somebody else. The next time a third generation Dartmouth alum is irate because his 1390 SAT legacy kid got the polite deferral letter, he should stop to ponder where his kid's "slot" went.</p>

<p>Instead of calling for the Admissions Dean's head, the Dartmouth community should really be sitting down and asking him to explain why he feels the way he does. The sentiments expressed in his letter are shared by many Admissions Deans and faculty members at elite colleges.</p>

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<p>Dartmouth doesn't do slot-based admissions. From the article I posted:</p>

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<p>Athletic admissions statistics are not released by the admissions office. Some speculate that athletes -- particularly those for big sports -- are given the highest preference of all. This does not appear to be the case at Dartmouth, although athletes do benefit from having a lobbyist in their coach. Coaches submit ranked lists of their recruited athletes to the admissions office. The admissions office then reviews the applications, taking into account the applicant's athletic talent and coach's recommendation.</p>

<p>"Athletic talent works in the same way other kinds of talent do. The only difference is it's a much more organized and structured recruiting process and that's a function of the NCAA and the Ivy League rules," Furstenberg said. "They tell us who they want, but there are no guaranteed number of slots."</p>

<p>But even with the ability to submit a list, some coaches expressed frustration with how little say they really have.</p>

<p>"How much clout do I have? Minimal," men's swimming coach Jim Wilson said. "If you look at my SAT scores and compare to the average SAT scores, my kids may be getting in with a 1450 instead of a 1460."</p>

<p>Wilson did, however, speculate that some of the "higher-profile sports like football may be getting a little more help."</p>

<p>Coaches are given little feedback from the admissions office before submitting their lists, according to Wilson. "I'm shooting blind," he said, adding that other schools, even in the Ivy League, are actually more lenient with athletic admissions.</p>

<p>"Some schools will say 'if he has this GPA and this SAT score were going to let him in.' Our admissions doesn't do that," Wilson said.</p>

<p>Michele Hernandez '89, who worked in the Dartmouth admissions office in the mid-1990s and is currently a private college counselor, concurred.</p>

<p>"Dartmouth actually has higher standards for athletes than most schools," she said. "Many athletes that are walking straight into Harvard couldn't get into Dartmouth."</p>

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<p>Just some food for thought. I understand your point, though. Fortunately it looks like Furstenberg is not in any danger of getting fired. From the other article I posted:
"College administrators have reportedly not taken action to replace Furstenberg...Despite his disappointment in Furstenberg's comments, Wright made it explicit that Furstenberg has carried out college policy."</p>

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<p>Yeah. And the check is in the mail. All elite college admissions is "slot" based.</p>

<p>Here's an excerpt from this week's damage control at Dartmouth that explains the 30 slots allocated to the football program in great detail:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Enews/releases/2004/12/27.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2004/12/27.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"Football is the most closely monitored sport in the Ivy League. Given the range of competitive pressures surrounding football, it is monitored through a more detailed system of AI bands, or ranges, with very specific numerical limits on the number of football recruits that may be enrolled in each AI band. There are four bands corresponding to: class mean AI -1 S.D., 1 S.D.-2 S.D., 2 S.D. -2.5 S.D., and 2.5 S.D. - the Ivy AI floor. An average 30 football recruits may be enrolled each year distributed 8, 13, 7, 2 across the four bands top to bottom. No more than 120 recruited players may be enrolled over four years. Every Ivy school is obligated by the same system. This is an attempt to create a "level playing field"in terms of admissions standards. "</p>

<p>In layman's terms, they are outlining 30 slots for football players below Dartmouth's mean academic qualifications (SAT, class rank, GPA). These slots range from a little below average to a LOT below average. </p>

<p>The swimming coach was telling the truth when he said he had minimal input. But, what he didn't tell you is that this is only because the atheletic department doesn't allocate its "slots" to the swimming team. The majority of the slots go to football and ice hockey, two sports that require HUGE rosters and two sports where players with 1450 SATs don't win many games. Most other coaches get one slot per team.</p>

<p>It's not just Dartmouth. The same system is used at every Ivy League and elite Div III college and university. The only differences are the total number of slots the university agrees to allocate to the Athletic Department, set by rule in the Ivy League and the NESCAC (where Williams dominates) or as a matter of Board of Managers policy (such as at Swarthmore). These are not slots where the athletic department suggests students. These are slots where the Athletic department decides who get accepted (as long as the overall group of "slotees" meets the guidelines negotiated with the admissions office -- a minimum cutoff and then x number of really low, sorta low, and a little low stats)</p>

<p>The Williams document I linked earlier is a very comprehensive explanation of how the system works. It was not intended for public consumption -- an alumni blogger got a copy and posted it. The same report blows some rather big holes in the propaganda that recruited athletes perform just as well academically. Yes, they graduate. Yes, their GPAs are OK. But, there are significant qualitative differences in their academic programs relative to the norm at a place like Williams or Dartmouth.</p>

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<p>"Dartmouth doesn't do slot-based admissions. </p>

<p>Yeah. And the check is in the mail. All elite college admissions is "slot" based."
ID, I guess I was misled by Furstenberg's quote.
"Athletic talent works in the same way other kinds of talent do. The only difference is it's a much more organized and structured recruiting process and that's a function of the NCAA and the Ivy League rules," Furstenberg said. "They tell us who they want, but there are no guaranteed number of slots."
I never disagreed that some athletes, especially in football and hockey, are accepted with lower academic qualifications. They divide it into three groups--group one being the athletes with the highest stats. To be accepted from the third group the athlete must demonstrate really exceptional athletic ability. This is on par with any low-stat student who demonstrates a really extraordinary ability being accepted. I'm not arguing the point about academic performance; I agree with you. And there's a lot of interesting info in that link.</p>

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<p>Kelsey:</p>

<p>Adcoms tend not to talk about "slots". The word "slot" is just a euphemism for "quota". Quotas are unconstitutional in college admissions. So let's just say there is a lot of skirting of the issue.</p>

<p>It is technically true that there is not a fixed quota on athletic admissions. That's because the number of high-stat atheletes floats from year to year, based on admissions department decisions -- as mentioned earlier, the Athletic Department doesn't waste its slots on these kids. However, there is a fixed number or "slots" for athletes that the Athletic Department choses.</p>

<p>It is also true that athletic admits are conceptually no different than cello-playing admits. In one case, it's a coach filling a needed slot. In the other, it's the college orchestra/music department. In practice, however, the athletic department controls by far the biggest number of "EC" slots and has more control over who is picked. Also, the cello player is not going to get into Dartmouth with 950 SATs like the All-State defensive end.</p>

<p>BTW, I have no objection to a slot-based atheletic admit system. In fact, I think it's a good system because it allows the university (in theory) to quantify the impact of athletics in the admissions process as a matter of Board level policy. However, I do think that schools need to be more forthcoming about how the system works and what the compromises (academically) really are. Specifically, I think it would be enlighting for people to know that, if you take football and hockey out of the equation, the academic qualifications of varsity athletes are pretty much on par with the entire student body. A lot of very qualified athletes get unfairly tarred by the lack of data. Conversely, I think students, faculty, alumni, and board members have a right to see the true cost of football and hockey admissions at an elite academic institution.</p>

<p>Notice that even the Williams report stopped short of giving average GPA for the football/hockey players. They gave specific numbers for every other category, but only stated that the football/hockey GPA was "signficantly" lower than the average GPA of male varsity atheletes as a group. I have a hunch that the "signficantly" would be breathtaking.</p>