Reducing the number of recruited athletes at Harvard would stifle campus social life, according to women’s basketball captain M. Katherine Gates ’02.

“I believe it would…kill the social scene—or what exists of it,” Gates says. “Athletes bring a high degree of normality to the Harvard community in that they are the most well-rounded and socially functioning people at Harvard.”

The Roots of Reform

The Ivy League—originally founded in 1945 as a football conference—has for many years been considering the issues raised by Shulman and Bowen’s book.

“It struck a chord of worry that people already have,” McGrath Lewis says.

In 1979, the Ivy League became alarmed at the prospect of big conference-style recruiting wars between league members, and Ivy presidents established an academic index to ensure that colleges were not sacrificing academic excellence for athletic prowess.

Using the index, admissions officers assigned recruits a score based on standardized test scores and high school class rank. The presidents then set a minimum score which recruits had to exceed.

“We didn’t want to make admissions decisions to win conference championships,” Orleans says.

The intense nature of many Ivy athletic programs also first caught the attention of the presidents at that time.

To try to reduce pressure on varsity athletes, the league adopted the recommendations of a 1980 report that limited practice and game schedules.

In 1991, in a move which Harvard opposed, the Ivy presidents decided to cut the number of football players per class from 50 to 35. The league also opted to eliminate freshman-only teams.

The Ivy League has not reformed its recruiting policies since 1991, but the increasing professionalism in college athletics has continued to worry schools in the conference.

The cost of maintaining a football program and the difficulties of complying with Title IX gender-equality legislation have factored into the equation as well.

Anita M. Brenner, who is associate athletic director at Cornell, says finances is “one of the things everyone is talking about” in the debate over whether to reduce football recruiting.

“Football’s an expensive sport,” Lewis confirms. “Everyone is worried about the cost of our intercollegiate program.”