Change for athletic recruitment policy?

Between May 13th and May 17th, the eight athletic directors of the Ivy League set forth on their annual retreat.

And while there are no formal minutes from the meetings held at the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe,Vt., it is known that one of the hottest topics on the agenda concerned the potential for changes in recruiting procedures in Ivy League athletics -- in particular, football.

Such a discussion concerning recruitment taking place at the annual athletic directors meeting was first known in February when Yale University president Richard Levin disclosed his views on the disparity between the number of NCAA football recruits and Ivy recruits in the Yale Daily News.

"Our request to the athletics directors is that they consider reducing the number of recruited football players," Levin said in January.

While Associate Director of the Ivy League Chuck Yrigoyen III told The Daily Pennsylvanian that there were policy recommendations made by the athletic directors to the university presidents of the Ivy League following upon these initiatives, the actual recommendations will not be made public until June 17, 2002.

On that date, the eight Ivy League presidents are scheduled to convene a meeting of their own to consider the proposals. According to Yrigoyen, at this point a conclusive policy decision -- and perhaps critical change -- will be made.

"Everybody has been told to wait until the presidents take action on June 17," Yrigoyen said. "The [athletic directors] have formed a series of recommendations about football and now the Ivy presidents will take action."

Penn Athletics Director Steve Bilsky alluded to the potential content of these recommendations a few months ago.

In an article published on Feb. 27 entitled "Ivy League set to rethink athletic recruitment," Bilsky told the DP "the presidents want to find the appropriate number of football players to have in the program."

Currently, Ivy League football teams recruit 35 players per year, with a restriction that no team can recruit more than 140 players in four years.

This number is so high that according to James Shulman and former President of Princeton University William Bowen's 2001 book entitled The Game of Life, the number of football players at Princeton during the 1997-98 school year was 109.

This total exceeded the number of players on the rosters of ACC member Duke and Pac-10 university Stanford, where each had only 98 players on their respective football teams that year.

Last season, there were 113 players on Penn's second-place Ivy team -- four more than Ivy champ, Harvard (109). By comparison, IA National Champion Miami had only 105 players on its roster. A Hurricanes' team, that is, which had an NFL Draft record 11 players drafted from its squad in last month's NFL Draft.

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