Ivy football recruits to decline

After much anticipation, the Council of Ivy Group Presidents made reached several decisions regarding Ivy athletic policies at their meeting last week.

Upon recommendations from the eight Ivy League athletic directors, the Council issued three principle actions on June 17, the most crucial of which has to do with football recruitment.

The Council has decreed that the number of football recruits made each year drop. In the past, Ivy League teams were permitted to recruit 35 players per year, with the restriction that no team can exceed 140 players in four years.

Effective with the class of 2007, however, the number of recruits who may enroll at an Ivy school in a four year period will drop to 120, averaging out to 30 per year.

"The football action really has to do largely with squad size," University President Judith Rodin said. "The idea that there needs to be 35 recruited athletes a year to maintain our football program is something that the athletic directors and policy directors labored at over a year... the recruitment of athletes needs to go down by five."

Rodin also stressed that the decision to downsize Ivy football rosters has nothing to do with Title IX -- an act which makes it illegal for educational institutions to discriminate in athletics based on gender -- or the recent debates over the provision.

Another action which will be put into effect this fall will require each sport to set aside at least seven weeks during the academic year in which its athletes will have no required athletic activity. It also states that voluntary activity with coaching supervision, common in many sports, will also not be allowed.

This action, according to Rodin, comes in lieu of the Council's concern over the time commitment involved in Ivy League athletics.

"This focuses on the issue of time commitment," Rodin said. "It's about whether in the off-season, for those sports that have off-season, that there couldn't be a little more time off for the students to focus on their academic work fully.

"This said there needs to be seven weeks of time off," she added. "This includes exams, reading week, et cetera."

These new "no-activity" provisions add to past Ivy League regulations. Teams are already prohibited from competition during examination periods and are also confined to significantly fewer off-season practice sessions than other Division I institutions.

Included in the Council's minutes was a statement from Council Chair and Cornell President Hunter Rawlings.

"The Council's actions will continue the Ivy League tradition of strong athletic competition which is, in the words of the original 1954 Ivy Agreement, 'kept in harmony with the essential purposes of [each Ivy League] institution," Rawlings said on June 20.

The third regulation, which will also take effect in the fall of 2003, limits the number of football coaches. Currently, each Ivy school is allowed six full-time and six part-time coaches. However, a year from now, each squad will be allowed seven full-time and only three part-time coaches.

In the making this resolution, the Council stated that it will "undertake further data collection and analysis," leaving the door open for more changes in the future.

This discussion was spurred in large part by the 2001 release of James Shulman and former Princeton President William Bowen's book, entitled The Game of Life. The book has stimulated debate across the nation by using empirical datae to highlight the relationship between athletics and admissions.

Bowen and Shulman's book notes that student-athletes who participate in high-profile sports -- such as football -- tend to not perform as well academically as their non-athletic counterparts.

"We have discussed not only data from The Game of Life, but there are new datae in a book forthcoming that we contributed Ivy data to.

"The [upcoming] book is by Bowen and his colleagues again and it looks further at this issue and compares over time recruited and non-recruited athletes within the same sport," Rodin said.

Rodin also added that the book addresses the question of time commitment in sports.

Rodin stressed the complexity of this issue by explaining that the Council does not intend to eliminate varsity sports in the Ivy League. The debate comes down to a question of balance between athletics and academics.

"We want to make sure that we field really competitive teams, because we care about athletics and that we think it is an important tradition," Rodin said.

"The tension is some Presidents are saying 'do we want to win an NCAA Championship?' Or, 'do we want teams that compete against one another to succeed in this sphere?

"And the question is, what is the cost of that goal? That is why we are still really struggling with it."

Penn head football coach Al Bagnoli and Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky were unavailable for comment yesterday.

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