Committee on Future of Athletics Presents Findings Faculty, Committee Discuss "Unintended Consequences" of the Role of Athletics

Author: Caroline Stauffer

The Middlebury College faculty voted nearly unanimously in favor of recommended revisions of College athletic policies this Monday. An Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of Athletics presented the "unintended consequences" of the role of athletics at Middlebury.
The committee recommended refocusing the College on a common standard of academic excellence for all students.
"I believe that athletics is an important component of the education, broadly defined, offered at Middlebury," said President John McCardell. "There has been a concern expressed that perhaps we, and other NESCAC institutions, have placed an undue emphasis upon athletics, both in terms of emphasizing the winning of national championships and in the pressure such competition places upon us to admit strong athletes for admission."
McCardell recently attended a meeting of New England Small Collage Athletic Council (NESCAC) Presidents to discuss the issue. "I share the concerns of my fellow NESCAC presidents that we not allow athletics to occupy a disproportionate share of our students' time," he stated, "and that we not allow a separate subculture of or for athletes to develop."
According to McCardell, the NESCAC presidents reiterated support against out-of-season practice, which they feel take up too much of students' time. (see article, pg 4)
The faculty convened on Monday, in a closed executive-session, to address the issues of athletics and the College. Although the specifics of the discussion cannot be released, the faculty voted nearly unanimously in support of the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of Athletics, according to committee chair John Emerson, Charles A. Dana professor of mathematics. The report was submitted in May 2002 and amended on September 6, 2002.
Goals of the committee included summarizing findings about the circumstances of athletics in NESCAC colleges, identifying relations between Intercollegiate athletics and Middlebury's mission statement, identifying long-range goals for athletics at Middlebury and other NESCAC schools and identifying potential changes in the future of athletics.
The committee gathered information from a study performed by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation regarding the role of athletics at liberal arts colleges, from James L. Shulman's 2001 book, The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, from Middlebury's Office of Institutional Research and Analysis, and from interviewing staff from Middlebury and other NESCAC schools.
The Committee determined three "unintended consequences," as a result of changes in collegiate athletics in recent years in the NESCAC athletic system and at Middlebury College.
First, "Intercollegiate athletes, especially those who are recruited, perform less well in college than measures of their abilities and past achievements suggest that they should." The Mellon analysis, which takes into account factors such as high school grades, standardized test scores and socio-economic status, found that athletes get lower grades in college than non-athletes.
Next, "Recruited athletes, especially male athletes, have disproportionate representation in the lower percentages of class rank when they graduate." For instance, the median GPA for Middlebury graduates in 1999 was 3.29 for non-athletes and 3.05 for athletes, according to the Committee report.
Finally, "the trends among recruited athletes at selective colleges raise serious questions; as recruiting has increased, measures of under-performance increase or materialize where they did not exist before." According to the Mellon study, 68% of men's football, basketball, and hockey players in NESCAC colleges are recruited, meaning the players name appeared on a coach's list that was sent to the admissions office. In Middlebury in 1995, recruited athletes had Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores that averaged more than 100 points lower than those of other students.
The committee report also states that while there are no firm figures on the percentages of recruited intercollegiate athletes at Middlebury, it believes that these percentages are higher than the NESCAC averages. "All the members of the athletics staff we interviewed pointed to recruiting as the single biggest change in their jobs over the last 10 to 15 years," the committee report states.
The report recommends a list of goals that Middlebury should work with NESCAC to achieve through the development of a five to ten year plan in order to reverse the above trends.
The first two goals deal with reconsidering the role of athletic recruitment. For instance, "the admission of recruited athletes should be curtailed so that other student-athletes have ample opportunities to participate in intercollegiate sports." In 2002, 905 of 1617 admitted students hoped to play an intercollegiate sports. Most students who played on intercollegiate teams were among the 206 who had been rated by a coach.
The second goal states that coaches should only have influence on the admission of athletes when the student ranks "relatively high" among those students who are admitted.
The third goal is to level the academic achievements of athletes and non-athletes. An appendix urges Middlebury and NESCAC to develop plans for monitoring this goal.
Fourth, the committee emphasizes the importance of maintaining and advancing gains in women's athletics through the passage of Title IX in 1972.
The fifth goal discourages NCAA post-season competition, when the educational goals of NESCAC schools are threatened.
Sixth, the committee recommends that Middlebury and NESCAC work with the NCAA to establish a new athletic division for highly selective liberal arts colleges in order to focus more on academics. For instance, an NCAA Division IIIA or IV could be formed, according to the Committee.
According to McCardell, a study is underway seeking to reestablish common understandings within the near 400 institutions that make up the NCAA Division III conference. The NCAA national convention in January will address this issue of what McCardell calls "Division-I type behavior" in Division III schools.
"My hope is that the Division III members will reach consensus about the need to reform," McCardell said.
Adopting the definition of "recruited athlete" utilized in the Mellon foundation would fulfill the Committee's request in its seventh goal. This defines a recruit as "any potential intercollegiate athlete who is rated by a coach and recommended for admission to the college."
Finally, the committee states that Middlebury and NESCAC should develop plans for monitoring progress toward the achievement of these goals.
"Our committee sees these efforts as being aimed in part at returning athletics to the students at the NESCAC colleges," Emerson said.
Members of the Ad Hoc Committee, which was appointed by the Faculty council, include Steve Abbott, co-faculty head of Ross Commons and associate professor of mathematics, Jim Ralph, professor of history, Grace Spatafora, associate professor of Biology, and Emerson.
The committee report expresses optimism towards the work of the Mellon foundations and NESCAC Presidents and points out that the targeted reduction of athletic admits exceeded the goal for fall '06 admitted students.
Director of Admissions John Hanson said, "these are issues we grapple with every year. Our goal continues to be to admit the strongest, best balanced, diversified class that we can."