Great article. I remember some years back Harvard coach, not football, said that Harvard's goal was to pursue excellence in athletics and academics. Being a football fan , I was puzzled by the quote. Spent quite a while over on the Ivy board where they were having own angst over the Ivy intransigence to additional games or perhaps the playoffs. There was a move to allowvparticipation but it was quashed by H and Y. I follow recruiting and H brings in classes with multiple 3 and 4* recruits that would rival a number of P5 teams. Even so Murphy dropped schollie Patriot teams because of schollies.Originally Posted by Go...gate
An odd fact I've noted over the years, very few of these touted recruits ever progress. There are exceptions but quite few given the quality of these players coming out of high school. We play Princeton this year. Like H and Y they bring in very highly touted recruits. They dont usually put it together to be dominant but admit I dont look forward to facing them.
In Murphy's defense, at the time the decision was made to move away from the PL rivals, the Ivies thought that the PL would become like the late 1980s/early 1990s Holy Cross behemoth teams.
True, it didn't work out that way. But if the Ivies ever get sick of the NEC and PFL teams, I'm sure plenty of alums would welcome a return to the games against PL teams.
To be fair, he dropped the non-scholarship one, too.
Georgetown: "We play where we do not compete, and compete where we do not play."
A totally stupid article. Factually inaccurate in terms of admit rates as well. By the way, in head-to-head competition, 55% of those admitted to both 1-A Stanford and 1-AA Harvard choose Harvard.
Harvard 2023: Back in the saddle again! A bit crowded, though.
I'm still not sure the point of this article. I don't find this as a surprise or anything out of the "normal". Harvard simply wants high achievers. A great athlete who's a very good student can carry the Crimson banner just as well as a genius who has no athletic ability.
What's Harvard's acceptance rate for legacies?
Temple B.B.A., DePaul M.Ed., Kansas State Ph.D. (in progress) & Lehigh Blood! Go Mountain Hawks!
There is a faulty analogy here, in that only those athletes that are recruited by Harvard are applying, so the accept rate would naturally be higher.
Alabama has a 53% acceptance rate overall (better than many schools represented here) but I would suspect it's 100% for football.
Georgetown: "We play where we do not compete, and compete where we do not play."
The conclusion of the article for the Ivy League to drop to Division III is nonsense and reflects a misunderstanding of the value the Ivy League places in athletics. It's true that the Ivy League doesn't value athletics for its revenue. They do however value it greatly for its role in instilling values like teamwork, leadership, preserverence, sportsmanship and time management. They also value it for giving students the opportunity to compete against the nation's best in any of their chosen pursuits and in boosting school spirit. A downgrade to Division III would hinder the development of these values and goals by making the competitions less relevant.
Additionally, the assertion that the Ivy League doesn't compete for National Championships in majors sports is both inaccurate and irrelevant. Yale won the National Championship in Hockey in 2013 and Lacrosse in 2018. Both are major college sports. Harvard competed in the Frozen Four in 2017. Regardless, an Ivy League Championship has great value to the alumni and students and is reason enough to admit the best athletes available, so long as they're academically qualified within the restrictions of the Ivy League's Academic Index.
I noticed that the author is an intern. Looks like he needs some more work in journalism school.
Last edited by Son of Eli; July 11th, 2018 at 07:09 AM.
It's also reflects a misunderstanding of the place of Division III in athletics. The division was meant for smaller schools with a minimum of five men's sports and ten overall--in most cases, within Div. III, a lack of scholarships is not some high-minded restriction but a matter of economics.
To suggest Harvard (total enrollment=20,324; operating budget $4.5 billion) is somehow better suited to the likes of Curry, Endicott, and Becker simply on scholarship aid is a fundamental misunderstanding of the writer re: the divisional structure within the NCAA.
Georgetown: "We play where we do not compete, and compete where we do not play."
I'm not going to bother reading the article because I'm certain that I've read it before (many times) over the years.
The short rejoinder to the contention that the Ivy shouldn't even bother trying at all in sports if we're not going to be like Alabama is that the same can be said for lots of departments in the league. Are our screenwriting programs as good as USC's? Then drop them. Are our bands as good as Ohio State's? Then drop them. Are our religion departments as good as Notre Dame's? Then drop them. Are our oceanography departments as good as UCSD's? Then drop them.
If you want to eliminate every part of the Ivy experience that isn't bona fide world-class, then you're basically advocating the Ivy become like U. of Chicago, Cal Tech, and MIT. But if you want the experience offered by those schools (which I personally think would be boring as hell), then go to those schools. If you can get into the Ivies, you should be able to get into those schools as well.
Last edited by Go Green; July 11th, 2018 at 10:40 AM.
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