Athletes For All

After the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Council turned down his proposal to legalize a year at prep school for prospective service athletes, Navy athletic director Captain Slade Cutter remarked, "I guess we will have to operate a prep program, the way the Ivy League colleges do."

"We know what they're doing, because we go after the same boys," he added, "only we don't have the wealthy alumni that they have."

Now this is not the first charge that has been levelled against athletic recruiting in the Ivy League, nor is it a particularly serious one, since Section Eight of the Ivy League Agreement specifically prohibits subsidation of secondary school education by member institutions, individuals, or groups of alumni. There have been violations of this ruling, of course, but they have been few and far between and dealt with quite severely when discovered.

What Captain Cutter probably objects to most of all is the recent spurt of "alumni recruiting" in the Ivy League, a facet of alumni activity which, by virtue of its unfortunate label, suggests an attempt to hustle unsuspecting lummocks into football uniforms before they or their parents realize what has happened.

Since Harvard has just begun to taste the fruits of its alumni's toil, and since there will be increasing outside criticism as Harvard football gets better (After all, what red-blooded American boy would want to go to Harvard?), it helps to know what alumni do and don't do, why they do it, and what effect athletics has on admissions policy.

As Harvard's academic standards become tougher, the number of admissable--let alone attractive--athletes gets smaller in relation to the rest of the population. When a top "scholar-athlete" is captured by the Big Ten, another Massachusetts college, or even one of the less fussy Ivy League schools, there is that much less material available for a Harvard team. If no other college recruited, or if Harvard's drawing power in small town high schools were as great as it is at Exeter, there would be no problem at all.

As it is, the Ivy League must fight off competition from within and without when trying to attract the limited number of bright athletes to its institutions. It is a matter of "meeting competition where it exists." Football, basketball, hockey, and track--in roughly that order--demand hustle and initiative by coaches or alumni or both, if they are to survive in an Ivy League college.

Harvard's attitude has traditionally been that "coaches ought to coach," not spend the off-season tracking down promising high school stars. Sometimes the line gets rather slim--when Alumni Schools and Scholarship Committees hold special functions for candidates and coaches, for instance. The most flagrant violations--appointments with a boy's parents, special recruiting at a high school--these have been outlawed at Harvard.

But what worries many alumni, faculty members and undergraduates is the possibility that, even as they are cheering themselves hoarse at the game, Harvard may be compromising herself by neglecting the embryo Einstein when seeking the "all-around boy."

First of all, athletic recruiting is only a small part of alumni admissions activity. In some areas, Harvard Clubs tend to be repelled, rather than attracted, when a candidate turns out to be muscular. The best Clubs seek out outstanding high school seniors in all categories, since in these days of high tuition and tough competition, many of the most able boys would otherwise be discouraged from applying to Harvard.

An alumnus cannot offer more to a football player than he can to a regular candidate, since all admissions and scholarship decisions are made in University Hall. If "alumni recruiting" has had any major effect, it has been to interest the alumnus in all types of candidates and to stimulate scholarship fund-raising activity in the Harvard Clubs.

If anything remains to be done with alumni recruiting at Harvard, it is to encourage existing Schools and Scholarships Committees to find more "outstanding boys" in more little known high schools. Indications are that abuses elsewhere in the Ivy League, of which Harvard has been accused, may be remedied in the future. Until then, "recruiting" will tend to be a little frenzied, a little unseemly, but entirely justified.