Tevis Jacobs: A bad plan for Ivy League sports

To the average Penn student, athletics are at best, just another way to show domination over Princeton, and at worst, students wasting their time and the University's money.

The average Penn athlete sees his or her sport differently. Student athletes devote what seems like half of their lives, work themselves to total exhaustion and give up precious weekends for competition. Do they do it because they have nothing better to do? Perhaps, they do it just for the hell of it.

Or maybe collegiate sports have a more important role than it seems at first glance.

Penn and the rest of the Ivy League are discussing whether to rein in athletic recruiting and reduce the number of hours that teams can practice per week. These proposals are as insulting as they are misguided.

All of this scrutiny comes on the heels of the recent publication of The Game of Life, a book discussing intercollegiate athletes and a possible tendency for them to underperform academically.

The first problem I see with the current scrutiny is the intense focus on grades. Students, faculty and job recruiters alike will agree that as important as a good GPA is, it is a very narrow window into the life of a person. It seems intuitive that any student with more commitments outside of school may be more likely to have a slightly lower GPA.

But does this mean the student is less intelligent, less worthy to be at Penn or less ready to enter the job world?

Personally, my sport has taught me more self-confidence, hard work and responsibility than I could ever have learned in the classroom alone. And at a time when employers so strongly emphasize ability to work in groups, how better to prepare than to be part of a collegiate athletics team?

There are two separate but related proposals under consideration. The first seeks to reduce the recruitment of high school athletes. Some administrators believe that Ivies are focusing too much on athletic recruitment, and that it is unfair to the non-participating applicants.

In reality, however, this recruitment is an attempt to level the playing field, since the Ivy League is at a disadvantage in terms of athlete matriculation as its member schools cannot offer athletic scholarships. The Ivies need to do extensive recruiting because an athlete may be faced with a choice between paying $35,000 a year to play for Penn versus paying absolutely nothing to attend Berkeley, Georgetown or Stanford.

Limiting the ways in which we currently recruit will only increase the competitive advantage of our non-Ivy opponents. This might serve, for instance, to lessen the basketball team's chances in the NCAA tournament or the crew team's chances to medal at the national championship race. Cutting back on recruiting would force many intelligent athletes to choose between an Ivy League education and a respectable sports experience. These should not be mutually exclusive.

The second proposal at issue involves further restricting the number of hours per week that teams can practice. The rationale is that if participants spent less time practicing, their GPAs would improve.

But if athletic GPAs are such a genuine problem, why don't universities work harder at programs like mandatory study halls or athletic tutoring? We should take a positive approach in actively helping students with rigorous athletic commitments. Instead, this proposal presupposes that students cannot succeed both academically and on the court, field or river.

The mission statement of this university claims that "Penn inspires, demands, and thrives on excellence, and will measure itself against the best in every field of endeavor in which it participates." And while there is no doubt that academic success take precedence over athletic success at a university, the proposal at issue creates a false choice between the two. A better strategy would be to work harder to make help students excel in all aspects of their lives.

Both of these proposals, if implemented, would serve only to decrease the quality of athletics at Penn and throughout the Ivy League. It would send the message that the universities do not value their athletic programs, nor respect the intelligence or responsibility of the athletes. Tevis Jacobs is a junior Material Science and Engineering and Mechanical Engineering major from San Fransisco, Cal., and a member of the men's varsity lightweight crew team.

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