<p>Okay, here I come again from Gator athletic snobbery, but sports at Stanford, Northwestern, Vandy, Notre Dame, etc. are a sad undertaking. Being a student at these schools is like marrying a wealthy woman and talking about how pretty she is. Sorry, she is a wealthy woman. Good enough.
As for the Ivy schools jumping on the hope of sports respectability- good luck. Maybe for squash, fencing, figure skating, rowing and a few others. But for sports that would unite and excite the campus? It is not going to happen.
My college kids so far have gone to the wealthy woman schools. My son went to Dartmouth. Didn't go to a football game all four years and doesn't feel it diminished his Dartmouth experience one whit. 2008 was the first year in Dartmouth history with no Ivy wins. Maybe a forgone opportunity, but no cost in the loyalty and identification students have with the College, as far as I can see.
My daughter called me from Princeton, where she watched the Gator game with a girlfriend and several Princeton football players. I don't have the heart to tell you some of the comments about the Princeton football team from the players.
Trying to claim that the Italian sports cars of academia get great gas mileage is a losing effort. They are Italian sports cars.<br>
As for me, I am a Gator graduate. One great week and a part of Gator Nation. My daughter will be a Princeton graduate. Better off commanding the Italian sports car, IMO.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think that Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame have shown that a college need not sell its soul to the devil in order to field these nationally competitive/relevant teams
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Like it or not, it is not possible to be "nationally competitive relevant" in major Division I sports without athletic scholarships.</p>
<p>Like it or not, "athletic scholarships" = "selling soul to devil" in certain academic circles. I suspect that even some in the Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame communities would agree.</p>
<p>Like it or not, the Ivies rejected athletic scholarships more than half a century or so, and the policy shows no sign of changing. </p>
<p>Like it or not, schools like Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame are finding it increasingly difficult to stay "nationally competitive/relevant" in major D1 sports, even with athletic scholarships. Northwestern's record 34-game losing streak is the most obvious example, and even Notre Dame football is hurting. </p>
<p>The Ivies were once "nationally competitive/relevant" in athletics. But they deliberately walked away, as the emphasis on college athletics grew to a degree perceived as excessive. And so did other schools, like Army and Navy, the University of Chicago (once a Big 10 football power), or Swarthmore College (which once rivaled Johns Hopkins for lacrosse supremacy). </p>
<p>These schools made their decisions while fully understanding and accepting the consequences. They're not looking back.</p>
<p>I don't know what this "32 years ago Ivy football wasn't important". I went to plenty of football games in the late 70's (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown to be specific) and they were very well attended with plenty of school spirit to go around. We went back for my husband's big reunion a couple of years ago (Harvard Princeton game) and couldn't believe how empty the stands were. It was so depressing.</p>
<p>"Like it or not, the Ivies rejected athletic scholarships more than half a century or so, and the policy shows no sign of changing."</p>
<p>However, some people have expressed concern that the new policies of offering free tuition to everyone admitted who has family income less than a certain amount of money might become perverted into effectively becoming a de facto athletic scholarship program.</p>
<p>Danas,
I knew you’d chime in and I always love your posts on U Florida. Congrats to the Gators on another national football championship. I doubt that the party has stopped yet in Gainesville. </p>
<p>As for your assertions about Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame, there are plenty of major colleges, not so well known for their academic strength, that would love to have similar athletic results to this group. They’re not Florida, but Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame all had very successful football seasons, qualified for postseason bowl games and WON. And I am pretty sure that the fans of all of these schools (students, alumni, even faculty) had a whale of a time during the season. And all have achieved excellence in other sports on a scale equivalent to what goes at Florida or anywhere else. I think that is pretty noteworthy and should be applauded. </p>
<p>As for Dartmouth and Princeton, both great places with lots of terrific people, and I am not saying that the experience is diminished without major athletic life. I see a fun athletic scene as additive to the undergraduate experience. Athletic life shouldn’t define a school or dominate a school, but it can be a great time that exists as part of one’s undergraduate experience. </p>
<p>Corbett,
You know that I disagree with you, yet I share your thought that some in academic circles do perceive athletic scholarships as “selling your soul.” Academia, particularly in the Northeast, has rarely shown much understanding of/belief in the role that athletics develops character in young people. I might add that this perspective differs mightily with those working in the real world who value the experiences and commitment of college athletes. As you probably know, many industries such as Wall Street are replete with former college athletes who are both smart and wired emotionally for a competitive working environment. </p>
<p>I also suspect that many of the academic detractors are unlikely to participate in and enjoy (and thus support) the festivities that can surround popular athletic events. IMO, it’s their loss which I attribute to a lack of understanding or a fear of the unknown as applied to their campus. There is plenty of supporting evidence in other parts of the academic world that corroborates their view, but please understand that that is not where I think Harvard is going or where I see Stanford, Duke et al as going either. I believe that there can be a middle ground for many sports although I would concede that, given the large roster sizes, this is most difficult to achieve in the sport of football. I don’t think that Stanford, Duke, et al are going to admit scores of unqualified candidates and I think that their football histories probably reflect this. </p>
<p>Re your contention of the Ivies not offering athletic scholarships, I concur that it is not publicly acknowledged as such, but there are clearly situations involving Ivy athletes and grants that equate to the same thing, not to mention the admissions tips that are often granted to Ivy athletes. And, if anything, I expect the grants (scholarships by any other name) to expand with the new financial aid provisions introduced over the past year.</p>
<p>
[quote]
As for Dartmouth and Princeton, both great places with lots of terrific people, and I am not saying that the experience is diminished without major athletic life. I see a fun athletic scene as additive to the undergraduate experience. Athletic life shouldn’t define a school or dominate a school, but it can be a great time that exists as part of one’s undergraduate experience.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Places like Dartmouth and Princeton tend to attract people who define a "fun athletic scene" as one in which they participate themselves, not one where they sit in the bleachers watching the semi-pros on the field. It's a different mindset. </p>
<p>
[quote]
Academia, particularly in the Northeast, has rarely shown much understanding of/belief in the role that athletics develops character in young people. I might add that this perspective differs mightily with those working in the real world who value the experiences and commitment of college athletes. As you probably know, many industries such as Wall Street are replete with former college athletes who are both smart and wired emotionally for a competitive working environment.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Please. The Ivy league and the Little Three and all of the other elite northeastern schools are firmly devoted to the ideal of the scholar athlete, and always have been. But it's SCHOLAR athlete, not semi-pro athlete.</p>
<p>And are you seriously suggesting that those schools are under-represented on Wall Street? :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I know you love big time spectator sports, but you've got to recognize at some point that a lot of other people simply do not place the emphasis on them that you do.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I know you love big time spectator sports, but you've got to recognize at some point that a lot of other people simply do not place the emphasis on them that you do.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The fact is that the vast majority of the country loves college sports, and it is only a very small amount of sports fans as a whole who don't like the college scene. College sports are a key component to American life, as is evidenced by Barack Obama's comments on creating a college football BCS playoff system that generated plenty of discussion amongst ordinary Americans.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Academia, particularly in the Northeast, has rarely shown much understanding of/belief in the role that athletics develops character in young people.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Hawkette;</p>
<p>Your above quote infers that somehow athletic involvement at colleges bears some correlation with the school's investment in spectator sports such as fotball or basketball. I would argue that the correlation if any would be inversely related: i.e. the greater the focus on 'big money' sports the lesser the involvement of the average student in any athletic activity. </p>
<p>How many students do you believe at Stanford actually play football? If the extent of the involvement is tailgating or watching the cheerleaders, I wonder how much character development actually occurs during a typical game. There is much evidence that the incidence of binge drinking, violence, burglaries, date rape is linked to big time sports. </p>
<p>As an MIT alum and father to a current MIT student, I find your comments both ignorant and condescending. MIT has taken an absolute "no compromise" approach to college sports, with no athletic recruiting whatsoever. No SAT "discount" for athletes, no quotas for coaches, nada... Still, the athletic involvement of the student body is one of the highest in the nation: with around 4,000 undergrads, MIT fills rosters in over 41 intercollegiate sports. In the past 10 years, the Engineers have received 189 All-America honors, and sponsored individual national champions in seven sports. It fields a Div I team in rowing and has national level athletes in a number of sports, generally in so-called "pirate" sports, involving either a weapon (pistol, archery, fencing) or water( rowing, sailing, swimming..). </p>
<p>MIT also has over 30 club sport programs and 23 intramural sports. Over 80% of students are involved in an intercollegiate, club or intra-mural sport. PE is a requirement for all students and every student is still required to pass a swim test. </p>
<p>At my D's sorority, half the girls have sports practice before class and again in the afternoon, not counting competitions on weekends, a schedule they have to juggle with homework that keeps them up on average until 2 AM most nights. Contrast that with the average schedule at State U where the weekend starts on Wednesdays with beer pong!</p>
<p>So, please don't confuse "bleacher potato" sports involvement with actual athletic participation. Some students actually feel that the satisfaction that comes from personal involvement and achievement is greater than that derived from just watching somebody else play. True athletes don't care how many people watch them perform: they do it first and foremost for themselves. If my D and friends feel the need to watch some big time sport, they will just go see a Red Sox or Celtics game. </p>
<p>If you want to see school spirit at Harvard or MIT just come to Cambridge during the Head of the Charles. Since you have apparently not visited the Northeast, you may actually discover how college athletics and academics can truly mesh. In ancient Rome, citizens were involved in sports to stay fit. When they wanted to see gladiators, they went to the Colosseum.</p>
<p>The spectators at Ivy sporting events don't seem to take the competition seriously. They seem to appreciate it on a different level. It more like a celebration of a tradition, continuing the tradition. Playing the role. Fans are philosophical about the outcome. Many of the die hards at Cornell hockey who waited in line all night for their season tickets went mostly to participate in the heckling which is an art form at the Ivies. There is a sense of high comedy when fans get excited. That was my sense, anyway, even among the alumni. Anybody else feel that way? Maybe its just me.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Academia, particularly in the Northeast, has rarely shown much understanding of/belief in the role that athletics develops character in young people.
[/quote]
This is flatly wrong. Many northeastern schools believe quite strongly in athletics for character development. But they believe -- correctly, in my opinion -- that participation in intercollegiate athletics is far more effective for character development than watching intercollegiate athletics. </p>
<p>The Ivy athletic philosophy is closer to that of Division III LACs than to that of Stanford or Northwestern. For hawkette, Division III schools are probably beneath any serious consideration. But to the Ivies, a school like Williams -- with 30-40% participation on varsity sports -- is an example of a school that understands athletics and character development. They aren't interested in emulating Vanderbilt -- which sponsors a grand total of six men's varsity teams.</p>
<p>
[quote]
As you probably know, many industries such as Wall Street are replete with former college athletes who are both smart and wired emotionally for a competitive working environment.
[/quote]
Wall Street is full of former college athletes. But a non-scholarship football player from the Ivies, or even a Division III athlete from Amherst or Williams, is far more likely to make it there than the average athlete from Division I-A.</p>
<p>The National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) annually rates the overall success of NCAA athletic programs, at all levels, and awards trophies to the top-performing schools. Since 1993, a total of 54 “Director’s Cup” trophies have been awarded. </p>
<p>But two schools stand out in the NACDA rankings, as they have accounted for almost half of all trophies that have ever been awarded: Stanford (with 14) and Williams (with 12). As it happens, these two schools are both noted for Ivy-level academic standards. So they are both reasonable potential models for Ivy League schools.</p>
<p>Under the “Stanford model”, academically elite schools provide financial awards for athletic (rather than academic) performance, and compete in leagues with schools which may have significantly lower academic standards (e.g. Arizona State). Participation in intercollegiate sports is largely limited to recruited athletes. At best, such schools may be nationally competitive (e.g. Duke basketball; historically Notre Dame football). At worst, such schools may be completely outmatched by the other schools in their league (e.g. Northwestern’s record 34-game losing streak in football; Rice’s football “rivalry” with U of Texas). </p>
<p>Under the “Williams model”, academically elite schools do not provide financial awards for athletic performance. They compete in leagues with schools that have comparable academic standards. Student participation rates in intercollegiate sports – and the associated character development -- are significantly higher than under the “Stanford model”. Such schools are typically not nationally competitive, but may have intense rivalries within their leagues (e.g. Harvard-Yale, Williams-Amherst, Army-Navy). </p>
<p>Sadly, Hawkette can’t seem to acknowledge the existence of the “Williams model” -- much less its advantages. But it’s a perfectly viable model, and it’s the one that the Ivies have chosen.</p>
<p>Harvard needs basketball like a fish needs a bicycle, to recycle an old phrase.</p>
<p>No surprise that my athletic life comparisons of Ivy and other NE elites with other top privates have ruffled a few feathers, but let me try to set a few things straight:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>My comments have consistently identified top academic colleges (Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame) and yet most of the responses have been about an athletic culture in Division I-A in general. I think that Stanford, Duke et al are special for many reasons, one of which is the fact that they combine the academic strength of Ivy level institutions with athletics that are nationally competitive and relevant. I would agree with many of the comments about the degree to which athletics have compromised academics in the broader universe of colleges. </p></li>
<li><p>It’s disappointing that the responses continue to malign students who enjoy the spectator events as “bleacher potatoes.” If you’ve ever visited places like Stanford, Duke et al, you will know that there are very strong club and intramural programs in which a great number of their students participate. I would wager that the student body at places like Stanford, Duke et al are every bit as fit as those in the Ivy League/MIT and probably are more energetic in outdoor activities. After all, most of them actually see and feel the sun from Thanksgiving to Easter. </p></li>
<li><p>Re the comedic relief provided by fans at college games, do you really think that this is unique to the Ivy League? You know, people are smart and clever elsewhere as well. For example, even been to a Stanford or Duke basketball game? The student chants are highly inventive and spirited. Or how about the hilarious signs at Vanderbilt that were displayed on national TV when the ESPN Game Day college football show did its telecast from there. And Northwestern and Rice students have been notoriously funny for a long time at their school’s major sporting events. </p></li>
<li><p>And finally, I think the issue of a good athletic life is important for only a portion of each school’s student body (and this includes Stanford, Duke et al). But some students do enjoy it, including some in the Ivy League. And students who do enjoy it, inside and outside of the Ivy League and even at the state schools (gasp!), aren’t automatically idiots. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>IMO, there is room for both academic and athletic life excellence. The schools that presently do it best are Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Rice, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame and athletic life is certainly a part of the student and alumni experience for these schools. I believe that some Ivies, like Harvard, want to improve their athletic life and my view is that this can be an additive experience for the undergraduates who attend.</p>
<p>Back in the dark ages, I played a minor varsity sport at Princeton. I was mediocre but I started and was a very good team player and made my teammates better. We practiced from 4-6 on weekdays and typically had tournaments on Saturdays. I played intramural sports off-season. Fundamentally, I was a student first. I just like playing sports but if the demands had been too high, I would have switched to just playing intramural sports.</p>
<p>I spent my first year after graduation at Stanford. I played with members of the Stanford team, who were generally significantly more talented than my Princeton teammates and thus significantly more talented than me. (I think they were willing to play with me because I made them better.) With perhaps a couple of exceptions, there was a significant difference between the intellectual inquisitiveness and general intellectual sharpness of the Stanford kids from the Princeton kids. While there was a general difference between the two schools at the time (at Stanford, it was cool to act as if one wasn't working hard and not cool to display intellectual excitement while at Princeton (at least among a large segment of the students), being intellectually inquisitive was cool). But, among the athletes, the difference was a little greater -- the Princeton kids were, like me, students first and generally seemed brighter. People I've stayed in touch with from both groups have been successful in life (from Princeton, dean of a well-known law school, Fortune 500 CEO, regional head of a big charity, Broadway actor, Goldman partner; from Stanford, partner in Silicon Valley law firm, magazine publisher). And both groups had lots of nice people. But, I think there was a difference between student-athletes and athlete-students. I also used to play in a pick up basketball game with some Stanford football players who were superb athletes (at least one of whom went pro). I didn't know them well but didn't get the impression that they were deeply intellectually inquisitive. Oh, and hawkette, just so you don't think I missed out, I played on an intramural football team at Stanford as well as at Princeton. </p>
<p>One final observation regarding my experience: I think that students at both places got a fair bit of exercise, but that because the weather at Stanford was a whole lot nicer, more students played sports for more of the year at Stanford. If there was any connection to having a real football team and students getting exercise above and beyond great weather, I didn't see it, but it could have been there.</p>
<p>My son had an alumni interview two days ago with someone who was the hockey star on his Ivy team. When my son asked him what he would have wanted to change if he had to do it again, he said hockey. He loved the hockey and it was magical but it was like a 30 hour a week job on top of being a student and it gave him a lot less opportunity to explore things in depth. (I suspect the intensity of his Ivy hockey time was a lot less than of the Stanford basketball team). He said he did pretty well in his classes but could do more because he had hockey. His experience is consistent with my experience. There is room for athletic excellence at a school, but for many athletes, it may come at a cost in terms of intellectual excellence and intellectual exploration. As a student body, one can have both intellectual inquiry/excellence and athletic excellence as Stanford does, and a few exceptional kids can do both, but for most kids at an Ivy school or Stanford (I don't know Duke, Rice, Vandy, etc.) would have to make significant tradeoff. That's the difference. It's a matter of choice about what makes the best kind of school. While it is a matter of degree, Stanford has made one choice; the Ivies largely another. But, whatever the choice, one shouldn't pretend that most individual athletes do not have to sacrifice academically to make the grade athletically in Division I sports. </p>
<p>This discussion presumes that one doesn't have to take athletes who are less strong academically to populate one's sports teams. Even if athletic talent and academic performance were totally uncorrelated, to fill a disproportionate number of places with athletes probably means lower average grades/SAT scores. But, I suspect that athletic prowess and academic performance are probably negatively correlated (e.g., is the proportion of students who are star HS athletes in AP classes as high as the proportion of star HS athletes in non-AP classes?) If they are negatively correlated, recruiting great athletes would mean dipping lower into the academic pool (it would be interesting to see the average HS GPA's and SAT scores at Stanford of the student body as a whole versus recruited athletes). And as such, this would place even greater need for trade-offs among the recruited athlete-students to just get the work done in courses they can manage rather than explore intellectually. If these assumptions are correct, there's no single right choice of how to handle athletics within an academically strong school. But, the questions are </p>
<p>1) what kind of tradeoffs a) the schools want to make in choosing their students; and b) schools want to ask their student athletes want to make;
2) whether shooting for serious Division I athletic prominence would produce for the Ivies the benefits hawkette thinks they would and would be valued by the Ivies; and
3) if shooting for Div I prominence would produce the benefits and the Ivies would value them at no cost, would these benefits be worth the trade-offs?</p>
<p>Given my experiences, I think the trade-offs are real. I am not clear that the benefits are so great or are so valuable to HYP at least. And I suspect they are not worth the trade-offs that would be required. But that's just a matter of taste/values. Each school can make will make its own choices.</p>
<p>Shawbridge,
I always value your posts even if we have sometimes disagreed. Thank you for taking the time and making the effort to so eloquently post your thoughts. </p>
<p>First, it sounds like you were/probably still are a pretty darn good athlete. Princeton and Stanford were probably fortunate to have you on their teams. </p>
<p>Your comments about the trade-offs of academic exploration/athletic commitment are well put and I would not dispute much of what you wrote except to add that a large time commitment is required in any endeavour in which one aspires to truly compete at a national level. Students will make choices about how to expend their energy and use their time and I would agree that it is the rare student that can fit everything in and still achieve at the highest levels in academics and in her/his extra-curricular college activity. </p>
<p>I strongly agree with your observation about the exceptional post-graduate success of both the student-athlete and athlete-student groups (as you call them) from Princeton and Stanford. Plenty of folks who have modest academic resumes, but excellent athletic ones, have gone on to great success and prominence in the working world. I would add that both sets of students can be outstanding contributors to a school’s community, both during and after their undergraduate years. But I think it should go without saying that these students need to be treated like students and tracking things like graduation rates can reveal whether a school is attracting and developing its student-athletes/athlete-students or just exploiting them. Like others, I have seen the latter as well and believe that that is the wrong and unethical approach. </p>
<p>Finally, while your post dealt with athletic accomplishment, a large part of my argument for strong athletic life is not necessarily about what happens on the field or on the court. I like the fact that a strong athletic life can add an undeniable, broad vibrancy to a college’s campus and the non-classroom experience that an undergraduate has. This has also happened occasionally at Ivy institutions or smaller elite schools (eg, Davidson mens basketball) when they enjoy unexpected success on the national level. Surely the unexpected nature of the success is part of what creates the excitement, but there is also something to be said for college-wide experiences and a nationally competitive/relevant sports environment creates a regular opportunity for this to take place. This is certainly true at Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame, slightly less at Northwestern and even less at Rice. </p>
<p>Finally, while I don’t expect large, wholesale changes in Ivy athletics, I do think it would be pretty neat if Harvard’s moves paid off and their men’s basketball program was able to challenge the Boston Colleges (and maybe even the Dukes and Stanfords) of the collegiate men’s basketball world on a regular basis. I also suspect that if this came to pass, many Harvard undergrads and alumni would greatly enjoy and be buoyed by the experience.</p>
<p>
[quote]
After all, most of them actually see and feel the sun from Thanksgiving to Easter.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Ever heard of skiing, just to mention one winter sport?</p>
<p>Are you a Southerner, by any chance?</p>
<p>hawkette, thanks for your kind words generally and for your projections about my athletic ability. Unfortunately, I was an OK athlete who got by not on physical talent but on hard work and out-thinking the other guys. Fortunately, I was a very strong student. </p>
<p>I think we agree more or less on the costs. Now let's talk about the benefits.</p>
<p>I was at Princeton during the Pete Carril era. He was a sensational basketball coach. One year Princeton basketball beat North Carolina when it was ranked number 1 in the country and Princeton was ranked in the top 20 for much of the year. One year it won the NIT. I went to a number of the basketball games. It was exciting, and Jadwin Gym for games was full but I don't think it was riveting to big parts of the student body. We also had the number one squash team in the country most years. That defintely didn't rivet the campus. And, I often went to football games, which were fun social events although there was nothing impressive about the quality of the football. But, the school culture does draw everyone together in a very impressive way (over 60% of alums give and my wife thinks the place is like a cult). Incidentally, Harvard does not seem to be able to create that kind of unifying culture. It is more atomic. </p>
<p>My comments at the end were about the benefits you see for building serious Division I teams (e.g., the vibrancy that is caused by the university-wide unifying feeling). The Carril-era basketball teams were pretty good and generated a fair bit of excitement but I didn't see significant benefit -- there was not that much buzz because the swimmers were still getting up at 4 AM to swim and the math and physics geeks were still doing math and physics (in walking distance of the stadium) and the art history majors were doing whatever art history majors were doing and the seniors were working on senior theses. I have a hard time believing that, for their own reasons, a strong basketball team will be enough of a unifying experience for either (Harvard would be hard to unify and Princeton already has something working). No doubt I could be wrong. So, if the benefit is generating, with some probability, a campus-wide buzz and a unifying experience, I don't know if it is worth it. If it is for alumni giving, maybe, but both institutions seem to be doing pretty well as is on that score. But, if Harvard does put together a good basketball team by dropping down the academic spectrum, there will be a segment of the undergraduate body that goes to games and has fun. Is that enough to justify the costs?</p>
<p>To be clear, I didn't think the costs of letting in a few basketball players who might not have gotten in otherwise were noticeable. I used to ice my ankles with one of them. I suspect a number of the basketball players would have gotten in anyway, but I'm sure there were a few for whom the scales had to be tipped. But, Pete Carril was a bit of a magician, taking a team with one legitimate Division I college player and a bunch of hard-working guys with good jump shots and that's about it into a team that could play against legitimate Division I teams and win some of the time. If Tommy Amaker is equally good, he won't need to dip so low in the academic pool to win Ivy championships and I'd guess the benefits could exceed the costs. If he needs 15 kids who would otherwise not have a shot at getting into Harvard, I'd say the costs exceed the benefits. The costs of having a legitimate football team, like Stanford and Northwestern do, would be much higher than that. It would be hard to believe that the benefits could exceed the costs for football.</p>
<p>There have been articles in the Stanford alumni magazine about the trade-offs for athletes vis a vis academics, especially during the season, and the effect on classroom performance. It will be interesting to watch the experience of my daughter's friend as she goes through the water polo season. As an alum, I have very mixed feelings about how prominent athletics is at Stanford and how it's almost impossible for students from our area to be admitted unless they're also tipped as athletes (although most of them end up being walkons). To be fair, my daughter's friends who got in last year should have been admitted anyway, but it still seems like athletics maybe over-emphasized, to the detriment of students who should have been admitted who weren't. (And then again, I'm being exposed to SC football this year and that's a whole different animal!) I wonder how the current football team compares to the team when I was in school in terms of grades/SAT's--the current students probably have higher stats.</p>
<p>I've also seen some students from our high school be admitted to various Ivies for athletics; everyone knows that these students wouldn't have had a snowball's chance in **** of getting in without the athletics. It certainly makes the other students pretty cynical.</p>
<p>Not being affiliated with an Ivy, I don't know which way is better. It sounds to me like the jury is still out.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So, please don't confuse "bleacher potato" sports involvement with actual athletic participation. Some students actually feel that the satisfaction that comes from personal involvement and achievement is greater than that derived from just watching somebody else play. True athletes don't care how many people watch them perform: they do it first and foremost for themselves. If my D and friends feel the need to watch some big time sport, they will just go see a Red Sox or Celtics game.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Sorry, but parts of this post are downright ridiculous. Schools with big-time sports programs also have big-time intramural programs. Students get the best of both worlds-they can cheer for incredible athletes on the football field and basketball court, and then can play against people of their own skill level on the intramural playing field. And say whatever you want about the Celtics or the Red Sox, but most people will agree that with perhaps the exception of the NFL, college sports are much more entertaining than pro sports.</p>
<p>And MIT has nothing on most schools when it comes to athletics. I go to a flagship public with big-time sports programs and I'm 100% positive that we have better athletic participation here than MIT. MIT is a great school, but sports just isn't the first thing that come to mind when you hear the name.</p>
<p>Both Stanford and the Ivy League relax their standards for student athletes. The differerence is that Stanford admits elite athletes who are more serious about their sports, while the Ivy League admits non-elite athletes who are less so. While Stanford and the Ivy League relax their standards, Duke, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame and others severely compromise them (especially for revenue sports). The latter admit athletes whom Stanford and the Ivy League could not begin to consider recruiting.</p>