The football team, according to many players, faces a high attrition rate due to injury and to the intensity of its competitive schedule, but many former players go on to leadership positions in other areas.
Brandon A. Gayle ’03, recruited as a cornerback after starring on his high school team, is one such football dropout. After quitting the team, he went on to become the president of the Black Students Association (BSA).
Gayle says there would have been “no way” he could have become so involved with the BSA were he still playing football, but that his football experience “had a very big influence on me in how I budget my time and how I lead people in general.”
The Uncertain Future
If the Ivy presidents choose to cut the number of recruits, the debate will likely shift to the question of how they will be cut.
This promises to be a contentious process, since some schools may favor cutting the five recruits with the lowest academic indexes, while others may seek to eliminate recruits with the least athletic promise. Yet others may seek to trim recruits more evenly from among the various academic groupings, or “bands.”
According to Siedlecki, cutting from the lowest bands could increase rates of attrition and could decrease racial diversity, since students with lower academic indexes tend to stick with the team and also are more likely to be racial minorities.
Harvard football coach Timothy L. Murphy would not comment on the implications of reducing the number of recruits.
Ultimately, though, it will be Summers and the other Ivy presidents who will decide the matter—a fact that is not lost on Bowen and Shulman, who urge university presidents to halt the increased professionalization of collegiate athletics.
If nothing is done, Shulman and Bowen’s outlook for the future is dire.
“Intercollegiate athletics has come to have too pronounced an effect on society to be treated with a benign neglect,” they write.
“Failure to see where the intensification of athletic programs is leading us,” The Game of Life continues, “could have the unintended consequence of allowing intercollegiate athletics to become less and less relevant to the educational experiences of most students and more at odds with the core missions of the institutions themselves.”
But Harvard traditionally has had its own priorities and does not seem likely to have its “core missions” dictated to it from outside Cambridge.
To many administrators, students and alumni, the long-time success of Harvard athletics is a major—if not core—mission of the University, and some believe that mission would be compromised by recruiting reform.
“The fact of the matter is that if the Ivies decide to reduce the number of recruits they will become a non-factor on the Division I-AA level,” says defensive end Michael L. Armstrong ’03. “We finished 19th in the nation this year and diminishing the number of recruits will have a negative impact on our competitiveness.”
But as Siedlecki notes, it seems inevitable that athletic recruiting will be scaled back in the coming years.
Former director of athletics John P. Reardon ’60 agrees that change is in the air.
“I suspect football will be the beginning, not the end,” he says.
—Staff writer William M. Rasmussen can be reached at wrasmuss@fas.harvard.edu.