“@JBStillFlying Whether student athletes are athletics or academics focused depends entirely on the culture and quality of the school they attend.”
That sounds about right but I'd be hard pressed to think that Stanford is less in academic quality than Yale, although it probably does graduate many more who go on to compete professionally.
“The whole point of the Ivy League, snooty as it may sound, is to essentially quarantine America’s oldest and most esteemed universities from the perils of sports-based admissions and to maintain the highest level of academic performance. Ivy League football teams are barred from competing in the postseason despite being the progenitors of the American game of football.”
This is not entirely correct anymore, since the Ivy's do have admissions standards for the athletes that are way lower than what the average entrant has achieved (although likely to be way higher than what the average athlete at the average D1 school is expected to produce). I know someone who just went through this for his/her sport, and there were thresholds and "golden areas" for standardized testing and so forth. Those who produce over-and-above make it easier for others who might not have the stats to squeak in, since the higher score bolsters the team or athletic division average. Sad, but true. The ivy's are out scouting just like any school - seen 'em with me own eyes. You can't officially "commit" but arrangements are worked out anyway. Whether they are under the table or you are just reading their tea leaves - who knows? It probably depends on the indifvidual sport, and some sports get less press than others so might be able to get away with more.
“HYPS shouldn’t be grouped together when it comes to athletics. Athletes in the Ivy League are competing for the most part in the D1 subdivision and rarely pursue professional sports careers.”
Depends on the sport as well. Football, basketball - I'd agree with you (Jeremy Lin and no other comes to mind). But I believe that the NHL is peppered with some Ivy Leaguers (though perhaps not as prevalent as other schools like MN or WI). And then for the women it might be a whole new ballgame :)
How much more change will really be done to incoming classes though? Hasn’t the formula now (more or less) been conpleted?
I think the class of 2018 looks significantly different (and probably significantly more athletic) than the class of 2008, but will the class of 2020 really be that different than the class of 2024?
It seems as if the big changes in the class - getting more athletes, getting more well rounded and diverse classes with probably a lower percentage of pure nerds - has already happened, no?
Locals attend Stanford games especially against Cal, and whoever the top contender of their conference is.
Bay Area companies buy tickets too and give it away to employees who would go since its free. If UChicago had skybox suites that had climate control and food and booze, I would watch too.
I have a friend who does a back of the envelope analysis every Olympic year, to prove to us that if Cal and Stanford were one country, they would be at the top 3-10 of all Olympic medal rankings, especially the Summer Games. Their athletes may not turn pro, but they are definitely going for that olympic medal.
If you did that calculation for the whole Pac 12 (or whatever it is now), it would be even more impressive. USC and UCLA also produce/house a whole bunch of Olympians, and Colorado and Utah have a good share of winter-sports athletes.
A diversion from the mission of an otherwise serious university. It appals me to think of that spirit getting even a toe-hold again at the University of Chicago. The problem with sports on a college campus at this level of intensity is that it is both too grindingly serious and too frivolous. The serious part comes in the form of the professional-in-all-but-name training regimes at these places, the frivolous part in the devotion of that sort of energy to activities of no consequence - unless you count unlocking the wallets of feeble-minded alumni.
It is all very well to say that Stanford has the best of both worlds, but those are two very discordant worlds. Student culture must be quite schizophrenic. Ugh.
@marlowe1 - is the student culture there schizophrenic? Are there any Stanford students around who can comment on that? Do the stanford athletes not fit in on campus?
I know little about Stanford, but I am utterly fascinated by it.
@marlowe1 I don’t think you’ll have to worry about it. In fact, I predict that in my lifetime high-dollar-Division I athletics will become less sustainable. I’m working now and don’t want to search the NCAA database, but the latest report I saw shows a great number of Division I programs are cash negative (spend more than they make). And then, when you look at things like the Penn State scandal, the recent Maryland Scandal, and the biggest is the Shoe Company Scandal in NCAA Div. I Basketball, something will give. I think the rest of the university sports machine will begin to approach the DIII model.
I do believe that UChicago does sports the right way. My son tells me that everyone on the XC and T&F team is first and formost focused on their education. Sure they love the competition, but they love more the UChicago pursuit of knowledge. He has already picked out his apartment mates for the next three years and they inherited their apartment from four XC/T&F seniors. It is almost more like a Fraternity than a sports team.
Hmmm. I don’t know if that’s going to make @marlowe1 happy or not.
Stanford: I think what rationalizes everything is that Stanford (like Harvard, and completely unlike Chicago) is not primarily about what goes on in the classroom for the majority of students. The feeling is that everyone is smart (that’s true), everyone is focused (or pretends to be), everyone takes him- or herself pretty seriously but without being pretentious about it, and everyone expects to have ultra-high achievement in something. That can be academics, and is for some students, but it can also be sports, or business, or politics, or art, or inventing things.
If you see a kid you know do the work necessary to be an Olympic swimmer or a professional football player, that inspires you to dedicate yourself with similar zeal and focus to whatever it is you think you are going to have equivalent success at. It’s not like those kids are dumb and coddled. They are as smart as you are, and you are as coddled as they are, and neither of you is necessarily getting most of your validation in the classroom. Some kids, of course, do get their validation in the classroom, probably a significant portion of the student body, but not enough to make that the norm. It’s just one of the options life offers. And lots of those kids have ulterior motives: law school, medical school, consulting jobs. Their classroom focus is a strategy, like the football player’s weight training, something you have to do well to make the first team, but not an end in itself.
All of which makes Stanford a lot like Harvard, but with less pretentiousness and less weight of history, more engineers and entrepreneurs (and more Olympic athletes) and fewer Intellectuals. So there’s somewhat less anxiety if you are not Olympic-quality whatever yet, and in any event the weather is great and almost everything is pretty new and it’s easy to kick back for a few hours when you want to do that. And it’s in the ethos of the place that everyone pretends to kick back a lot more than they do – the “duck syndrome” (relaxed and placid above the waterline, paddling furiously below).
@JHS - the best summary for your post is, at some universities, many students view academics as sport - the performance and results matter the most.
That’s not the uniform case at Chicago, although I think the contingent of students who take a performance/result-oriented approach is growing.
Related question - can we agree that the College is pretty much done changing? Yes, there will be more low SES students in the future, and maybe some minor modulations, but is the general reform complete? This is now a done deal, right?