Ivy League Caps Athletic Recruiting

The Ivy League will for the first time cap the number of athletes its eight members may recruit and enroll and subject those athletes to tougher academic standards, the presidents of the schools decided June 17.

At its biannual meeting, the Council of Ivy Group Presidents limited the number of recruited athletes who may matriculate to 1.4 times the number needed to fill the travel squads for the 33 “Ivy Championship” sports.

The minimum Academic Index (AI), a measure of eligibility that incorporates SAT scores and GPA or class rank on a 240-point scale, was also raised from 169 to 171, and a requirement was added that the mean AI of recruited athletes be no more than one standard deviation below the mean of all undergraduates at the particular college.

“As a group we expect to maintain and likely increase the academic strength of the athletes,” said Jeff Orleans, executive director of the Ivy League.

The move is part of a drive supported by a number of presidents—including University President Lawrence H. Summers—to tighten academic standards.

At the meeting, the presidents also mandated that admission of recruits for men’s basketball and men’s ice hockey will now be regulated along with the rest of the Ivy Championship sports for a two-year trial period. In the recent past they had been regulated independently.

They amended as well one aspect of the unpopular “seven week rule” the presidents adopted at last June’s meeting, that forces athletes to spend seven weeks of off-season time without “required or coach-supervised activities.”

In a step to ease the impact of last years ruling, the presidents eliminated the requirement that the seven weeks be in blocks of at least seven consecutive days.

The 49 days may now be distributed throughout the year, adopting a proposal Harvard originally made to the council.

Academic Changes

Orleans said the adoption of the 1.4 “multiplier” allows for “attrition” of players who, due to injury or some other reason, do not play. But it also limits the previously unregulated total number of recruits.

Previously, there were caps only on how many recruited athletes a school could accept in football, men’s basketball and men’s ice hockey.

Orleans said the incorporation of basketball and hockey into the general pool of sports is meant to strike a balance between academic standards and competitiveness.

“[There is] a feeling that overall...the most effective way to regulate both academic credentials and the number of recruited athletes and to give every institution the best chance [to win] is to put all the sports except football in one pool,” Orleans said.

Orleans said the establishment of a mean AI within range of the overall undergraduate AI, may involve balancing recruited athletes of all sports that have different academic credentials.

“The mechanism is very simple,” he said. “We said to every school, you can make the allocation you want across sports, you can use whatever considerations your dean of admissions wants, but every time you take an athlete whose AI is below a certain level you’re going to need one or more athletes above that level to balance them out.”

Men’s basketball head coach Frank Sullivan declined comment, and men’s ice hockey head coach Mark Mazzoleni could not be reached.

Football remains the only Ivy Championship sport to be regulated separately because the League has recently—and successfully—modified its regulation of football, Orleans said.

But football in the Ivy League also has “peculiar competitive considerations,” he said.

“We’ve worked very hard to get an admissions structure in which everyone is competitive,” he said. “We’ve reduced the numbers in football twice in the past ten years, and I think [this time] there was some unwillingness, given all the other changes we’re making, to risk upsetting both the academic success and the competitive balance.”

Athletic Director Bob Scalise declined comment on any of the presidents’ changes, but a spokesman said he will comment in the fall.

“Perhaps, as the 2003 fall season gets underway, and Bob has had occasion to get a better feel for the implications of these changes, he will comment on the issue,” assistant Athletic Director for Sports Media Relations John Veneziano wrote in an e-mail.

Dov Grumet-Morris ’05, goaltender for men’s ice hockey, said the league-wide changes to the academic standards will not have a great impact at Harvard.

“All personnel involved will make the appropriate adaptations and I’m sure that there will be no major problems,” Grumet-Morris wrote in an e-mail. “I know, at least from our end, that our coaching staff does an excellent job of bringing in the type of student-athletes who are capable of adding to the academic community as much as they do to the athletic one.”

He added that the rule changes “will not be the deciding factor” in the team’s ability to compete beyond the Ivy League.

Mandatory Rest

The change most likely to have an immediate impact and incite the greatest response is the alteration to the mandatory rest period.

This spring, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’69, Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 and Scalise—at the time Harvard’s representatives on the Ivy Policy, Admissions and Administration committees—jointly presented the “Harvard Proposal” to spread the 49 days over the course of the year.

Lewis, who is departing as dean next week, wrote in an e-mail that the rest period would “really help with the problem of intensity” if applied during the season as well as in the off-season.

“The main point is to give athletes a break at the times of year when they need it the most, when the competitive schedule and the academic schedule are both at high intensity,” Lewis said.

Grumet-Morris said the change to the rest period will likely be well-received by coaches and athletes alike.

“The switch to a non-consecutive 49 day lay over will allow for more maneuverability, on the coaching staff’s side, for giving athletes days off,” he said.

But men’s heavyweight crew coach Harry Parker said the proposal may hinder his team’s ability to prepare. The seven week rule, was last year reduced to 33 days for crew, because there are not 49 days between the regular fall and spring seasons.

Parker said that after the presidents’ ruling, “we are back where we were last fall.”

“If the 49 day requirement holds for crew, we will be forced to take days off during either the regular fall season or the spring season or both,” he said. “That will interfere with our training.”

But some continued to argue that the Ivy League’s time-off requirement should be eliminated altogether.

“Limits have already been set by the NCAA, and these are the only limits that Ivy League sports should adhere to,” said Wes H. Kauble ’06, a student representative on the Faculty Standing Committee on Athletics.

“No activity other than athletics is being scrutinized in such a way by the Ivy League presidents, and their actions in continuing to require an additional 49 days off is an act of utter discrimination,” he said.

—Staff writer David B. Rochelson can be reached at rochels@fas.harvard.edu.