Ivy Presidents Slash Recruits

Beginning with the Class of 2007, the number of football recruits per class at Ivy institutions will be decreased from 35 to 30, the Council of Ivy Group Presidents decided last month.

In addition, all Ivy league sports teams must set aside seven weeks during the academic year in which neither required athletic activities nor coach-supervised voluntary activities occur.

Football teams must also limit the number of institutional football coaches to seven full-time and three part-time starting in the fall of 2003—a reduction from the six full-time and six part-time coaches previously allowed at Ivy institutions.

“The review that we are undertaking will strengthen our commitment to the opportunity for a positive Ivy League athletic experience, within the context—and serving the goals—of a liberal undergraduate education,” said Hunter R. Rawlings III, who is chair of the Council and president of Cornell University, in a press release.

Earlier this year, the Ivy presidents had instructed the league’s athletic directors to consider cutting the number of football recruits to 25. But when the athletic directors met in May, they agreed on a compromise recommendation of 30. Agreeing with the athletic directors’ compromise, the Ivy League Policy Committee made a recommendation to the Ivy presidents, who made the final decision on June 17 to cut recruits to 30.

Harvard Director of Athletics Robert L. Scalise has previously said he opposed a reduction below 35 football players per class. He said that a cut like the one just approved could significantly weaken Ivy junior varsity football programs, which provide underclass football players with a place to hone their skills.

Members of the Harvard football team have expressed concern that reductions in recruiting would hurt the Ivy League’s competitiveness in Division I-AA athletics.

“We finished 19th in the nation this year, and diminishing the number of recruits will have a negative impact on our competitiveness.” defensive end Michael L. Armstrong ’03 said last month.

In 1991 the Ivy presidents reduced the number of football recruits per class from 50 to 35—a decision that Harvard opposed at that time.

But while opposition to a cut in recruits “may have been [Harvard’s] stance going in,” to the meeting last month, all the Ivy schools agreed to a reduction to 30, said Jeffrey H. Orleans, executive director of the Ivy council.

“Presidents look periodically as a group at these issues,” he said. “It’s not that it came from a particular school or president.”

Orleans said that decreasing the number of recruits will be “easy,” and that the Council of Ivy Group Presidents will work with the individual schools to work out the no-activity and staffing changes—and to enforce that the changes are made.

“Certainly every school will have to work out some practical issues on gym schedules, that sort of thing,” Orleans said.

The seven week no-activity period is an expansion of the previous policy that prohibited required athletic activities during final exam periods and limited practice during the off-season.

The presidents’ decision to limit athletics comes after the release last year of the book The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, co-authored by former Princeton president William G. Bowen, which criticizes college athletics for becoming far more like professional athletics than an extracurricular activity.

While Orleans said that “it’s certainly a book that people have read,” he said the recent changes are more a result of the council’s periodic review than Bowen’s arguments or statistics.

“We have tried to take seriously, on our own initiative, that athletics needs to be in a good perspective with academics and not have a life of its own,” Orleans said.

—Staff writer Stephanie M. Skier can be reached at skier@fas.harvard.edu.