LFN: New Realities: Presidential Control

[Lehigh Football Nation]

Part II was just released of my epic piece on the state of the Patriot League, this one talking about presidential control.

http://lehighfootballnation.blogspot.com

Part III - about the AI - is coming Friday.

[carney2]

Great stuff. Keep it coming.

I have never been an Art Rothkopf fan and, as you indicate, I am "one of the many Lafayette sports fans [that was] not sad to see [him] go..." I think that the following quote deserves some clarification, however:

Many Lafayette sports fans were not sad to see their former president, Arthur Rothkopf, go in 2005. A fierce opponent of athletic scholarships, he oversaw a movement within the college in the late 1990s to de-emphasize athletics, possibly disband their football team, or drop to a Division III conference.

Rothkopf was anti-scholarship and pro-deemphasis. Still, the casual reader here may conclude from your words that Uncle Artie actually proposed elimination of the football program and/or dropping it to D-III. Not so. He actually commissioned a study of athletics that was to consider all options and all potential outcomes. These are, obviously, two (of many) options that found their way into the final report. They were not necessarily recommended; they were not highlighted; they were merely included. The problem, as it turned out, was not the study, nor was it the inclusion of these two options in the study. The problem was the leak of this information to the press and general public. Whether or not Mr. Rothkopf had a hand in the leak, I cannot say.

Having, for a moment, raised at least some semblance of an argument supporting Mr. Rothkopf, I can now rejoin the lynch mob.

[ngineer]

Thte old firm I was in had four Lafayette grads..I was the only Lehigh (although one of the LC's had a masters from Lehigh), but I felt we were evenly balanced;)
However, when Uncle Artie's report came out and the roof blew off, I got a hold of some Lafayette stationary and put out a 'press release'--faxing it to a number of my LC friends. It stated that the 'big meeting' in NYC was going to result in LC petitioning the NCAA to create a new Division IV, wherein Lafayette would be the originating charter.....and only member. For in that way, Lafayette could focus on what 'we do best'...."play with ourselves":D
Needless to say I got some nice retorts back, but all in good fun.

Actually, a good number of Lehigh people were helping behind the scenes in lending their support for those that were fighting the 'eggheads'...Of course after the last three years, some of were wondering why..but the worm will always turn;)

[ngineer]

Part II was just released of my epic piece on the state of the Patriot League, this one talking about presidential control.

http://lehighfootballnation.blogspot.com

Part III - about the AI - is coming Friday.

Nice job. I think the Board of Trustees at Lehigh were pretty careful in screening the new presidential candidates when they selected Gast. She is a jock, herself, having run track and field at USC, I believe. So I expect her to keep things balanced.

[Fordham]

Great stuff, LFN. I really appreciate some of the history behind the Ivies structure that led to what we have in the PL. It really brings up an interesting idea that the admissions dept. could be critical, if brought into the fold, in potentially helping our cause in going scholly. I understand that this is a bit of a twist of your main message which I interpreted as the admissions office being more of a potential barrier for us overall but I'd also argue the following.

Assuming that we're not dealing with an admissions office hell bent on eliminating football, there is a clear way to raise the academic profiles of our incoming classes and that is simply to go scholarship. As it stands now, our needs-based financial aid packages really limit us to a small portion of the overall market of potential football players. Kids who meet our academic requirements but come from middle to upper class families are going to be faced with a decision to pay either full or partial tuition (keep in mind here that 50% coverage still results in ~$20K annual bills for a family), and while we may grab a kid here and there, for the most part we're going to lose that battle when competing against the plethora of full scholly schools in FCS. The result is that the sweet spot for PL recruiting has now become the inner city and very rural areas, where we're more likely to find kids from poorer families who can receive financial aid on par with full scholarship offers from other FCS schools.

The idea is that by not limiting ourselves to just a portion of the potential market from which to pull student-athletes and allowing ourselves to target the entire market (kids from middle and upper class families) by being offering full football scholarships will allow us to raise our academic requirements for incoming players. The rub here for football fans is that we'd likely lose out on some potential players since some of the guys we're bringing in now might not make the new academic floor.

This article really made me wonder if Admissions Directors could be turned into strong advocates for us in moving to full scholarships if approached. Thoughts?

[Lehigh Football Nation]

Fordham, glad you enjoy the piece so far. I think you'll want to read the rest of it, which is coming out over the course of the next couple weeks.

[DFW HOYA]

Assuming that we're not dealing with an admissions office hell bent on eliminating football, there is a clear way to raise the academic profiles of our incoming classes and that is simply to go scholarship...Thoughts?

The problem with this argument is that when you say "athletic scholarship", some people equate this with recruiting anyone regardless of class rank or SAT's. Would a kid pursuing a football scholarship at Lehigh need the same minimum grades as say, Temple or Penn State? No, but that's the perception.