Ivy’s Dark Underside

The Ivy League is justifiably proud of its athletes. The vast majority of Ivy athletes are serious students who graduate and attend graduate schools at the same rate as their non-athletic peers and who earn more money in the workplace. But the Ivy League’s pride in having higher principles and greater integrity than any other Division I athletic conference is unwarranted. As one Ivy coach put it, “The irony is that the Ivy League, by trying to be ‘holier than thou,’ has made the athletic recruiting process uglier than in any other Division I conference in the country.”

In every Division I athletic conference but the Ivy League, high school senior athletes sign what amounts to a written contract, known as the NCAA letter of intent, to attend a college or university and receive an athletic scholarship. On signing day, which falls on the first Wednesday in February, the recruiting process ends.

The Ivy League, however, does not honor the NCAA letter of intent because the Council of Ivy Presidents cannot overcome the “pay for play” overtones of such a letter. This view is delusional, though, as some Ivy-bound athletes presently choose one Ivy over another based on need-based financial aid packages, which are often juicier at the better endowed schools—in particular Harvard, Princeton, and Yale.

The flaw in the Ivy League’s recruitment and commitment process stems from the arrangement used instead of the letter of intent. This system relies on what is known as a “likely letter”—a one-way written commitment, mailed by deans of admission to high school seniors who have already made a verbal commitment to a coach. The letter, which can be mailed at almost any date, confirms that the athletes are likely to be admitted come April. But Jeff Orleans, the executive director of the Ivy League, confessed to me that he believes the NCAA letter of intent fosters greater integrity, honesty, and morality than the Ivy likely letter because “the likely letter is inviting problems the way it’s set up now.”

The problems stem from the fact that likely letters are generated based on a spoken commitment exchanged by coaches and athletes. Though the majority of Ivy recruits keep their word, some players and parents make multiple verbal commitments, often because coaches pressure them to make a decision prematurely. This pressure leads to all sorts of dirty gamesmanship between schools. For instance, some coaches offer likely letters with an arbitrary deadline in order to force a decision from an athlete or only if a player cancels an official visit or withdraws an application to another school. Other coaches ignore verbal commitments altogether and continue to recruit players who have told a rival coach they’re coming. Harvard in particular does this with impunity, according to several Ivy coaches and administrators. “Harvard does whatever the hell they want,” says John Lyons, a Penn and Dartmouth football coach for over 25 years. “That’s the bottom line.”

Because most recruits and their parents enter the process ignorant of the Ivy system, they are vulnerable to its pitfalls. Last year, a recruit was assured by a Dartmouth coach that his early decision application looked “very good” and told that he should turn down an offer from Notre Dame. “Tell them you have committed to Dartmouth,” the coach advised in early October. In December, Dartmouth sent a rejection letter. Stunned, the player’s family sought an explanation from admissions and the coach. Each party blamed the other for “miscommunication.” Such a lack of accountability is built into the current Ivy system. The student was lucky; he scrambled to revive interest from other coaches and eventually got into Yale. In the meantime, he received a crash course in Ivy League ethics—or the lack therof.

The shady dealings are no secret. Pat O’Leary, an Ivy League coach for 20 years, told me that “it’s a disaster.” Similarly, Dartmouth President James Wright admitted that “it does get ugly.”

There is, however, a simple solution to this chaos. The Council of Ivy Presidents should adopt a “letter of Ivy intent” with a common date. By placing the emphasis on the word Ivy, the inherent message would be clear and forceful: athletes who signed it would be intent on pursuing an excellent education while playing their sport for passion, not for a scholarship. By instituting an Ivy signing date, players would be free to visit several schools and collect offers before making a final decision. This would reduce the pressure on athletes to make a quid pro quo verbal commitment to a coach, alleviate the amount of lying from all parties, and put an end to the tampering that occurs when coaches do not honor a player’s verbal commitment to attend another Ivy institution.

The Ivy presidents cannot cloak themselves in sanctity until they change the rules that govern the league’s athletic recruiting. Right now, their league is not “holier than thou” but “uglier than thou.” And the presidents’ pride looks more like hypocrisy.

A former recruited athlete and dean’s list student at Middlebury College, Chris Lincoln is the author of “Playing the Game: Inside Athletic Recruiting in the Ivy League” published by Nomad Press.