Ivy changes could get scary

The boom dropped with a tap this summer in the world of Ivy League sports.

The Ivy League Presidents blew a lot of smoke in the time leading up to their annual meeting, requesting that league athletic directors conduct a year-long investigation into league policy. They also championed the text The Gane of Life, a statistic-heavy work co-authored by former Princeton University president William Bowen and James Shulman that calls for league reform. However, the substantive changes announced at this summer's meeting were far from apocalyptic.

Yet, this fact alone -- that the changes to Ivy policy were not as great as anticipated -- should not make Ivy athletes content: it should make them nervous.

I sure as hell am.

A five-player reduction in the number of Ivy football recruits per year, a reorganization of the football coaching staff and a minimal decrease in permissible practice time seems to be hardly what the Ivy Presidents were aiming for when they began the process of "re-evaluating" the role of athletic competition in the erudite world of the Ivy League.

This is why the verbiage in the press release from Council chair and Cornell president Hunter Rawlings is the biggest news to come out of this meeting.

And it is the tone and nature of the announcement that should have Ivy athletes prepped for what could be a grand overhaul to come.

The statement begins:

"Intercollegiate athletics ought to be maintained within a perspective," the League statement reads, "that holds paramount the academic programs of the institution and the academic and personal growth of the student athlete."

Fancy words for what Rawlings is really saying: the Ivy League has strayed from its "core mission,"-- being a side-attraction in the world of academics -- and it's now time to put the "student" back in "student-athlete."

It is for this reason that after the ho-hum changes are explained, the Council's final point is what should be given the greatest heed.

"The Council will undertake further data and analysis" leading up to its next meeting this fall.

For those that have trouble interpreting bureaucratic "vague-speak," Rawlings is all-but-assuring future policy changes.

The substance of these changes likely will be shaped by the results of the second report from the Bowen/Shulman duo, which is due for release this fall.

According to University president Judith Rodin, the latest research "looks further at this issue of [comparing the academic success of athletes and non-athletes] and also compares recruited and non-recruited athletes [walk-ons] in the same sport."

This comparison may, in the worst-case scenario for Ivy sports, dictate the need for much heavier scalebacks in recruitment if grade trends show walkons fare far better than recruited athletes.

In the wake of its recent decision, the Council has now embarked on a course of revising the current mold of the Ivy League "student-athlete."

Just how much "athlete" will be left when the Council is finished, however, remains to be seen.

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