National Review story on admission of athletes (including FB players) at Harvard

[Go...gate]

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/harvard-admission-policies-on-athletics-dont-make-sense/

[RichH2]

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/harvard-admission-policies-on-athletics-dont-make-sense/

Great article. I remember some years back Harvard coach, not football, said that Harvard's goal was to pursue excellence in athletics and academics. Being a football fan , I was puzzled by the quote. Spent quite a while over on the Ivy board where they were having own angst over the Ivy intransigence to additional games or perhaps the playoffs. There was a move to allowvparticipation but it was quashed by H and Y. I follow recruiting and H brings in classes with multiple 3 and 4* recruits that would rival a number of P5 teams. Even so Murphy dropped schollie Patriot teams because of schollies.
An odd fact I've noted over the years, very few of these touted recruits ever progress. There are exceptions but quite few given the quality of these players coming out of high school. We play Princeton this year. Like H and Y they bring in very highly touted recruits. They dont usually put it together to be dominant but admit I dont look forward to facing them.

[Go Lehigh TU Owl]

I'm still not sure the point of this article. I don't find this as a surprise or anything out of the "normal". Harvard simply wants high achievers. A great athlete who's a very good student can carry the Crimson banner just as well as a genius who has no athletic ability.

What's Harvard's acceptance rate for legacies?

[DFW HOYA]

There is a faulty analogy here, in that only those athletes that are recruited by Harvard are applying, so the accept rate would naturally be higher.

Alabama has a 53% acceptance rate overall (better than many schools represented here) but I would suspect it's 100% for football.

[Son of Eli]

There is a faulty analogy here, in that only those athletes that are recruited by Harvard are applying, so the accept rate would naturally be higher.

Alabama has a 53% acceptance rate overall (better than many schools represented here) but I would suspect it's 100% for football.

The conclusion of the article for the Ivy League to drop to Division III is nonsense and reflects a misunderstanding of the value the Ivy League places in athletics. It's true that the Ivy League doesn't value athletics for its revenue. They do however value it greatly for its role in instilling values like teamwork, leadership, preserverence, sportsmanship and time management. They also value it for giving students the opportunity to compete against the nation's best in any of their chosen pursuits and in boosting school spirit. A downgrade to Division III would hinder the development of these values and goals by making the competitions less relevant.

Additionally, the assertion that the Ivy League doesn't compete for National Championships in majors sports is both inaccurate and irrelevant. Yale won the National Championship in Hockey in 2013 and Lacrosse in 2018. Both are major college sports. Harvard competed in the Frozen Four in 2017. Regardless, an Ivy League Championship has great value to the alumni and students and is reason enough to admit the best athletes available, so long as they're academically qualified within the restrictions of the Ivy League's Academic Index.

I noticed that the author is an intern. Looks like he needs some more work in journalism school.

[Go Green]

A story like this comes out about once every five years. Sometimes it's in a Ivy school newspaper. Sometimes it's in a national publication.

I wouldn't get too worked up for it. It's just re-runs.

[DFW HOYA]

The conclusion of the article for the Ivy League to drop to Division III is nonsense and reflects a misunderstanding of the value the Ivy League places in athletics.

It's also reflects a misunderstanding of the place of Division III in athletics. The division was meant for smaller schools with a minimum of five men's sports and ten overall--in most cases, within Div. III, a lack of scholarships is not some high-minded restriction but a matter of economics.

To suggest Harvard (total enrollment=20,324; operating budget $4.5 billion) is somehow better suited to the likes of Curry, Endicott, and Becker simply on scholarship aid is a fundamental misunderstanding of the writer re: the divisional structure within the NCAA.

[Go Green]

The conclusion of the article for the Ivy League to drop to Division III is nonsense and reflects a misunderstanding of the value the Ivy League places in athletics.

I'm not going to bother reading the article because I'm certain that I've read it before (many times) over the years.

The short rejoinder to the contention that the Ivy shouldn't even bother trying at all in sports if we're not going to be like Alabama is that the same can be said for lots of departments in the league. Are our screenwriting programs as good as USC's? Then drop them. Are our bands as good as Ohio State's? Then drop them. Are our religion departments as good as Notre Dame's? Then drop them. Are our oceanography departments as good as UCSD's? Then drop them.

If you want to eliminate every part of the Ivy experience that isn't bona fide world-class, then you're basically advocating the Ivy become like U. of Chicago, Cal Tech, and MIT. But if you want the experience offered by those schools (which I personally think would be boring as hell), then go to those schools. If you can get into the Ivies, you should be able to get into those schools as well.

[Go Green]

. Even so Murphy dropped schollie Patriot teams because of schollies.
An odd fact I've noted over the years, very few of these touted recruits ever progress. There are exceptions but quite few given the quality of these players coming out of high school. We play Princeton this year. Like H and Y they bring in very highly touted recruits. They dont usually put it together to be dominant but admit I dont look forward to facing them.

In Murphy's defense, at the time the decision was made to move away from the PL rivals, the Ivies thought that the PL would become like the late 1980s/early 1990s Holy Cross behemoth teams.

True, it didn't work out that way. But if the Ivies ever get sick of the NEC and PFL teams, I'm sure plenty of alums would welcome a return to the games against PL teams.

[DFW HOYA]

Even so Murphy dropped schollie Patriot teams

To be fair, he dropped the non-scholarship one, too.

[ngineer]

Makes no sense since the IL has upgraded their recruiting the past five to ten years. With a number of the schools offering full rides to admitted students with family incomes of under $150K, they have the ability to recruit against most of the big-time football powers in the country and can walk into any living room in Florida and California and compete with the best of them, as long as the student meets the admissions criteria.

[ElCid]

The conclusion of the article for the Ivy League to drop to Division III is nonsense and reflects a misunderstanding of the value the Ivy League places in athletics. It's true that the Ivy League doesn't value athletics for its revenue. They do however value it greatly for its role in instilling values like teamwork, leadership, preserverence, sportsmanship and time management. They also value it for giving students the opportunity to compete against the nation's best in any of their chosen pursuits and in boosting school spirit. A downgrade to Division III would hinder the development of these values and goals by making the competitions less relevant.

Additionally, the assertion that the Ivy League doesn't compete for National Championships in majors sports is both inaccurate and irrelevant. Yale won the National Championship in Hockey in 2013 and Lacrosse in 2018. Both are major college sports. Harvard competed in the Frozen Four in 2017. Regardless, an Ivy League Championship has great value to the alumni and students and is reason enough to admit the best athletes available, so long as they're academically qualified within the restrictions of the Ivy League's Academic Index.

I noticed that the author is an intern. Looks like he needs some more work in journalism school.

I agree with your estimation of the value of competing in Div I. That's pretty much how we view it, and VMI as well.

However, while winning those Nats is good, I am not sure I would classify lacrosse and hockey as "major" sports. I think there are only 70 or so teams in Div I for lacrosse and even less for hockey. They are seriously regional sports. With nearly 350 div I schools, a sport sponsored by only about 20% of its members is not major. FB, BB, Baseball, and soccer, sure. Everything else, no.
Just saying.

[Laker]

However, while winning those Nats is good, I am not sure I would classify lacrosse and hockey as "major" sports. I think there are only 70 or so teams in Div I for lacrosse and even less for hockey. They are seriously regional sports. With nearly 350 div I schools, a sport sponsored by only about 20% of its members is not major. FB, BB, Baseball, and soccer, sure. Everything else, no.

Men's hockey- 60. Women's hockey- 36.

[Son of Eli]

I agree with your estimation of the value of competing in Div I. That's pretty much how we view it, and VMI as well.

However, while winning those Nats is good, I am not sure I would classify lacrosse and hockey as "major" sports. I think there are only 70 or so teams in Div I for lacrosse and even less for hockey. They are seriously regional sports. With nearly 350 div I schools, a sport sponsored by only about 20% of its members is not major. FB, BB, Baseball, and soccer, sure. Everything else, no.
Just saying.


The people at The Capial One Cup would disagree with you on Lacrosse. They assign a National Championship in Men's Lacrosse the maximum 60 points, the same as football, basketball or baseball.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_One_Cup_(college_sports)

As a result Yale is currently ranked 5th in the country in Division I Men's sports.

https://www.capitalonecup.com

[Go...gate]

Son of Eli hit it on the head:

"The conclusion of the article for the Ivy League to drop to Division III is nonsense and reflects a misunderstanding of the value the Ivy League places in athletics. It's true that the Ivy League doesn't value athletics for its revenue. They do however value it greatly for its role in instilling values like teamwork, leadership, perseverance, sportsmanship and time management. They also value it for giving students the opportunity to compete against the nation's best in any of their chosen pursuits and in boosting school spirit. A downgrade to Division III would hinder the development of these values and goals by making the competitions less relevant."

Amen.

[Ivytalk]

A totally stupid article. Factually inaccurate in terms of admit rates as well. By the way, in head-to-head competition, 55% of those admitted to both 1-A Stanford and 1-AA Harvard choose Harvard.

[FUBeAR]

I noticed that the author is an intern. Looks like he needs some more work in journalism school.

I, too, always like to exercise the old axiom, to “consider the source,” when I see something like this article, which, by the way, I kept looking for the rest of it. His rush to his conclusion was, literally, striking.

Anyway, it seems Mr. Warner, most likely, recently completed just his 2nd year as a student at Harvard, possibly majoring in Economics. http://news.saintviator.com/news/2016/06/07/saint-viator-senior-admitted-to-harvard/#sthash.l2XvjQJU.dpbs . I noticed that in HS, he led his Golf Team to a Championship, but did not see his name listed on the Crimson’s Men’s Golf Roster. Perhaps, there is more to that story that could get at his motivation for penning this very short piece and landing on his sweeping conclusion.

By the way, you know how some Football Message Boards do a weekly thread of doppelgängers using the upcoming opponents’ Players & Coaches? I would imagine that kind of thing is frowned upon among the staid fans of the Ivies, but I am a low-brow SoCon guy, so I couldn’t resist...(At least the selected doppelgänger is a REAL journalist. xlolx)

http://news.saintviator.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/1217.jpg

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/xxx-d01-mad-alfred-18.jpg