Ivy League Debates Recruiting Reduction

This weekend in the mountains of Vermont, athletic directors from across the Ivy League will meet to make recommendations on an issue which could change the nature of athletics at all Ivy League schools.

The immediate issue at hand is reducing the number of recruited football players from 35 to 25—which some Harvard football players estimate could knock the team to Division III quality within five years.

Ivy League policy makers, however, may not stop at football. Also under consideration, as ordered by Ivy League presidents, is an across-the-board reduction in the number of athletic recruits.

Attempting to limit the population of recruited athletes, however, is nothing new—the Ivy League was actually founded as a football conference designed to set league-wide recruiting policies and academic standards—but the issue has recently been brought to national attention by a book, The Game of Life, which suggests that a radical overhaul of collegiate athletics is needed.

This book, according to Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68, is a major factor in driving the current discussion.

But Lewis also said presidents and administrators at many Ivy League schools have noticed a disturbing professionalization of collegiate athletics.

“The seasons are too long, there are too many contests, there are too many travel dates, the offseason is too formal and there’s too much training and practicing,” Lewis says of the overall Harvard athletic program. “All of the time and effort that intercollegiate athletes have to spend on their sports result in too often students having to make compromises between their athletic experience and their overall Harvard experience.”

The Problem

At first glance, Lewis’ spacious University Hall office might seem like that of an athletic director—not a dean of the College. Adorning his walls are pictures of Harvard Stadium, the 1989 NCAA champion men’s varsity ice hockey team and the 1998 women’s basketball team, which defeated perennial power Stanford in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

But sitting on a small shelf next to his desk rests a more portentous omen for big-time collegiate athletics—the groundbreaking The Game of Life, co-authored by former Princeton President William G. Bowen and James L. Shulman, which criticizes collegiate sports for what the authors view as their professionalism and commercialization.

Lewis, who is Harvard’s representative on the Ivy League policy committee, outlines two problems he sees with the state of Ivy League athletics—the intensity of the experience and the changed nature of recruiting.

He notes that sports with no traditional season—such as crew—envelope the entire academic year and leave athletes with little time for anything else. In sports with a clear off-season, such as football, Lewis worries that “the off-season is almost as burdensome as the season.”

Because Lewis says he believes the intensity problem gradually builds as one sport sets a precedent for another, the Ivy policy committee refers to the process as “creeping incrementalism.”

Many Harvard athletes, however, vigorously oppose Lewis’ characterization of a problem of over-intensity. These athletes say that athletic participation actually helps their academic performance because of the time-management skills their sport teaches.

“When tennis demands the most time from me, I am more productive in my academic life because it forces me to manage my time more efficiently and effectively,” says Dalibor E. Snyder ’02, a member of the men’s varsity tennis team.

Varsity baseball’s pitching ace Ben Crockett ’02 says athletes who choose Harvard accept the school’s academic demands and make a “rational choice” to sacrifice more extracurriculars or social activities than if they had gone to another school.

“There are many other universities that offer more focused and prominent athletic programs than Harvard, so the desire to be an athlete here is based on the desire for academic excellence first,” Crockett says.

William S. Lee ’02, another member of the tennis team, says the recruits he knows choose Harvard “because they wanted a very academically intense experience.”

Some athletes say sports do not limit their collegiate career to the playing fields.

Brendan J. Reed ’03, a pitcher on the varsity baseball team, is an editor of The Crimson, the Advocate and the Lampoon, a semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization which used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine.

Reed says baseball teaches skills that he can then apply to other extracurriculars.

“I’ve always made time to do the things I wanted outside of baseball, without sacrificing my commitment to the team and my teammates,” he says. “Often times it means late nights, early mornings, but we all deal with that.”

In addition to the intensification of practice and game schedules, Lewis also says that the recruiting process often places too much pressure on athletes to follow the dictates of the coach.

As recruiting has increased in intensity nationally, Harvard has been forced to go along. For many years, Harvard prohibited coaches from traveling to visit potential recruits even though the rest of the Ivy League allowed it. But a 1987 NCAA ruling that forbade alumni from contacting recruits left Harvard without a way to sell the school to standout athletes.

Harvard was forced to change its policy and now coaches travel across the country and the world seeking additions to their team in what Lewis describes as an “arms race.”

In this race, unethical practices sometimes prevail, Lewis says.

“It’s very hard to document when it happens, but it does happen,” he says, but makes clear he is not referring to Harvard coaches.

The ambitious recruiting coaches now undertake, according to Lewis, is not necessarily detrimental to the College—it is an important stimulus for diversity.

As coaches crisscross the country, they are able to reach constituencies the admissions office may not be able to find.

“It draws people from places and backgrounds and parts of the country where excellence and achievement is much more identified with athletic prowess than with academic prowess,” Lewis says.

Many athletes share Lewis’ belief that recruiting increases the general diversity of the school.

“The genre of ‘athlete’ includes many races, economic levels, intelligence levels, and social levels,” says women’s basketball captain Katie Gates ’02.

History of The Issue

The Ivy League was founded—originally as a football conference in 1945—in an attempt to set academic standards, eligibility requirements and financial aid regulations.

The presidents of the Ivy League schools declared in a 1954 agreement that recruited athletes should be “representative” of the academic standards of their school.

The need to avoid intense competition in admission for athletic stars, led the Ivy League presidents in 1979 to institute the academic index—a score assigned to recruits based on their standardized test scores and their high school class rank—that is still in place today. The presidents set a minimum score which all recruits must exceed.

“We didn’t want to make admissions decisions to win conference championships,” says Jeffrey Orleans, the current executive director of the Ivy League.

The presidents also worried that Ivy sports may be growing too professional, and in a 1980 meeting unanimously adopted the “Parry-Ryan” report that limited practice and game schedules in an effort to downscale the demands on athletes.

Athletic directors involved in the current meetings this spring say further reforms of what were initially laid out in this report could be the chosen route of the presidents to reform the League’s athletics.

The last major alteration to the recruiting policy occurred in 1991, when the presidents decided to reduce the number of football recruits from 50 to 35 and allow first-years to play on the varsity team, rather than on a separate first-year squad.

Fueling these movements toward reduction, Orleans says, is the natural impetus of admissions committees of Ivy League schools to seek to limit the number of recruits because of the relatively small student bodies.

Last June, Orleans says the Ivy presidents made it clear to the athletic directors that they once again wanted to look into the number of recruits.

At a meeting last November, Orleans says, the presidents formally asked the athletic directors to consider reducing not only the number of football players from 35 to 25 but also reducing recruits in other sports for which there had not been any previously set limits.

Currently, only men’s hockey, men’s basketball and football face restrictions on numbers of recruits.

Orleans says that the presidents, in submitting the agenda for possible reforms, did not question the basic Parry-Ryan framework, but rather asked—as Orleans summarized—“within that structure, what can we do additionally?”

The Solution

While The Game of Life paints a largely negative picture of the role of athletes on collegiate campuses, another influential book—Harvard Professor of Education Richard Light’s Making The Most Out of College—offers a different perspective after interviewing students at 20 different colleges. Light concludes that athletes as a whole are happier than the average student.

While Orleans says that he thinks most Ivy League policy makers have read—or at least heard of—these two books, they do not play a significant role in the debate.

“It would be mistaken to take [The Game of Life] as gospel,” Orleans says.

Orleans says athletic directors have been discussing these issues long before the books hit the shelves. He adds, however, that Light’s study has added to the debate by saying, “let’s ask students what they think and then let’s value that answer.”

Light’s characterization of athletes as “happier” than the rest of the student body is one that Harvard players strongly accept.

Reducing the number of recruited athletes at Harvard, according to Gates, would stifle the social life.

“I believe it would…kill the social scene—or what exists of it,” she says. “Athletes bring a high degree of normality to the Harvard community in that they are the most well-rounded and socially functioning people at Harvard.”

The Debate

Harvard seems to be lining up unanimously against reducing the number of recruited football players from 35 to 25.

Lewis believes that cutting the numbers will not solve the intensity problem and will only increase pressure on the few athletes that remain to be “the gladiators for Harvard.”

Athletic Director Robert L. Scalise, who will be attending his first spring Ivy athletic directors’ meeting, has cautioned that such a cut would effectively eliminate the junior varsity football program. He says this would go against Harvard’s athletic mission to provide opportunities to all students.

In an interview in April, Scalise warned that simplistic moves like cutting numbers of recruits would have “unintended consequences” that have to be considered.

Members of the football team are also adamantly opposed to any tinkering with recruiting numbers.

“It would be a shame to reduce the number of recruited athletes. I think they are some of the most dynamic people I have ever known,” quarterback Neil T. Rose ’02-’03 writes in an e-mail. “How many prominent citizens, businessmen and leaders out there were Ivy League athletes? Those who think Harvard should limit recruiting probably don’t know many athletes very well.”

While the Ivies do not offer scholarships for athletics, Harvard’s football team went undefeated this year and was competitive on the Division I-AA level.

“The fact of the matter is that if the Ivies decide to reduce the number of recruits they will become a non-factor on the Division I-AA level,” says defensive end Michael L. Armstrong ’03. “We finished 19th in the nation this year and diminishing the number of recruits will have a negative impact on our competitiveness.”

Scalise says that nothing is final and that the meeting, to be held in Stowe, Vt., will be where the athletic directors make their decisions.

But even though Harvard does not seem favorable to widespread cuts, other institutions have been more vocal in expressing their concerns.

Yale University President Richard Levin is often credited with pushing the presidents to make the initial request.

Several athletic directors said that they will go into the meetings with an open mind and listen to the debate. However, there is obvious disagreement among the directors.

“They want what’s best for the League, [but] they’re also thinking about what’s best for their institution,” Scalise said. “A smaller school like Columbia would be more concerned about the numbers than some of the larger schools. Thirty-five people take up a higher percentage of the class at Columbia than they do at Cornell.”

Lewis agrees with this assessment of the impact of the proposal on other schools.

“Columbia’s the place at which I have the most sympathy,” Lewis says, citing the New York City school’s small class size—only slightly above 4,000—and non-contiguous athletic facilities.

Decision Time

Athletic directors will retire to the mountain resort tomorrow through Sunday to discuss all end-of-year business, including the mundane. But all ears will eagerly be awaiting their proposals on the football cuts as a sign of where the League is heading in the future.

In June, the Ivy presidents will meet to decide on the directors’ proposal.

According to Orleans, athletic directors will not consider raising the league-wide academic standards for athletic recruits.

The presidents, he says, did not ask the athletic directors to look into that possibility—all they put on the agenda was a consideration of whether or not to reduce the number of recruits.

—Staff writer William M. Rasmussen can be reached at wrasmuss@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Rahul Rohatgi can be reached at rohatgi@fas.harvard.edu.