WSJ and Sports

Most of us don't get our sports news from that Wall Street Journal, but during the past ten days or so there were two articles that the folks who hang out here might find interesting.

The most important to us concerned the D-III scholarship issue. It was written with the Johns Hopkins lacrosse team as the main subject. Johns Hopkins is D-III and will have to stop giving scholarships if the NCAA rule change is made.

The other article concerned pep bands and the short shrift that they are getting at D-I basketball games. The games are so full of ads and ads masquerading as promotions that many pep bands get about half the playing time that they used to. It is so bad at some schools that the students are losing interest and the bands have unfilled seats. Anyone who had to endure the NCAA ads at Buffalo knows how painful this can be.

If anyone has a way to copy and paste these I'm sure some who haven't seen that articles nor have access to the journal will be thankful.

As I have stated in another thread the WSJ is one of the best newspapers in the world. The writing is tremendous.

Here you go Marty

THE NATIONAL Collegiate Athletic Association convention isn't exactly
the entertainment equal of, say, the annual gathering of Harley- Davidson riders in Sturgis, S.D. Not even the free boxed lunch
promised on the NCAA's Web site could get me to attend the session
on "Division II Student-Athletes -- Involving Tomorrow's Leaders
Today."

But the NCAA confab beginning today in Nashville, Tenn., bears
watching for one reason: Someone is trying to reform college sports.
Don't get excited. The money-fed and power-mad (and power-fed and
money-mad) schools of Division I aren't facing big change. It's the
little guys in Division III, where athletic scholarships are verboten
and the quaint notion of books over balls supposedly endures.

Turns out -- shock of shocks -- it isn't so anymore. Division III
teams are playing more games and longer seasons, and traveling farther
to do it. The push to win championships is greater and the corners cut
more alarmingly Division I-like. Some Division III schools dodge the
scholarship ban by giving athletes bigger financial-aid packages than
they qualify for. Oh, and jocks at top-notch small schools routinely
get admission breaks and then underperform academically.

The D-III alarm bells have grown louder with the recent publication of
two books co-authored by former Princeton President William G.
Bowen, "The Game of Life" and "Reclaiming the Game." In them, Dr.
Bowen produces copious statistical evidence that even elite
institutions have fallen under the siren song of sports. "What's going
on in Division I is reflected down through the system," he says.

Attempts at "reform," even in Division III, aren't new. What's
different now is rising pressure on all university presidents from
faculty, alumni and outsiders. In D-III, Dr. Bowen's revelations are
one catalyst. The creeping professionalism is another. The endless
scandals in Division I also are a factor. Around one-quarter of the
presidents of the 420 Division III schools are attending the NCAA
convention, at least twice as many as usual.

On the table are nine reforms designed to return D-III to its stated
academics-first mission. The most important changes would
eliminate "redshirting," the practice of having an athlete sit out a
season to extend his eligibility; reduce the length of playing seasons
and the number of games by about 10% each; and make schools
electronically report financial aid to athletes to monitor compliance
with the no- scholarship rule.

The intent is to reinforce the principles of smaller-college sports
that date to the creation of Division III in 1973. "This is not at all
an attempt to establish a greater or lesser degree of purity," says
Middlebury President John McCardell, who heads a group of D-III
presidents that drafted the reforms. "It's rather to say there are
some basic things we agreed to back then and perhaps drifted away
from."

Reform movements have casualties, though, and there's roadkill here.
One of the proposals would strip eight schools of the right to award
scholarships in sports they historically have played in Division I.
Among them: lacrosse at Johns Hopkins, whose men were NCAA runners-up
last year; ice hockey at nationally ranked Colorado College; and
soccer at Hartwick and Oneonta State, both in Oneonta, N.Y.,
a.k.a. "Soccertown, U.S.A."

The schools received a waiver in 1983 allowing them to continue giving
scholarships. But the NCAA never promised it would be permanent. As
the D-III reform train gathered speed, so did the idea of absolute
standards: no scholarships, no exceptions.

Johns Hopkins has led a campaign against the proposal, filling NCAA
President Myles Brand's e-mail inbox and lobbying D-III presidents to
vote no on Monday. Their argument: The waiver is victimless. The
schools derive no extra benefits from the Division I aberrations. Most
important, the sports in question are central to the identity of the
institutions; Johns Hopkins has won 42 lacrosse titles since
1883. "This is about conformity, not reform," Hopkins President
William Brody says. "With all the issues the NCAA has to deal with
where there are real problems, why are we dealing with a nonproblem?"

Fair points all. It would indeed be a shame for a respected
institution like Johns Hopkins to lose its distinctive place in a
sport. Go Bulldogs! But this is about more than tradition, and here's
where the arguments lose steam: The eight schools could keep playing
in Division I, just without scholarships. Indeed, Ivy League schools
manage to win an occasional D-I championship without them. (Dr. Brody
argues the richer Ivies can offer athletes more need-based grants than
schools like Hopkins, which rely on loans.) "If your history is as
distinguished and honored as you claim it is, the honor itself ought
to have appeal and oughtn't to require financial enticements,"
Middlebury's Dr. McCardell says.

The real issue is that without scholarships Johns Hopkins et al.
wouldn't be as successful on the field because they couldn't recruit
the best athletes. And if they aren't as successful, alumni might get
antsy, donations might decline, administrators might feel the heat. "I
don't want to be the president who lost lacrosse," Dr. Brody says.

He doesn't have to lose it. But he might have to admit that
championships aren't as important as one of the few remaining
principles in college sports.

pavlov wrote:

The real issue is that without scholarships Johns Hopkins et al.
wouldn't be as successful on the field because they couldn't recruit
the best athletes. And if they aren't as successful, alumni might get
antsy, donations might decline, administrators might feel the heat. "I
don't want to be the president who lost lacrosse," Dr. Brody says.

He doesn't have to lose it. But he might have to admit that
championships aren't as important as one of the few remaining
principles in college sports.

Aw, crap. The last thing we needed was an article in a major newspaper that supports the proposal.

Right you are. In fact that bit of editorializing illustrates a trait that is all too common in the WSJ. It allows too much opinion in many of the otherwise superbly written articles.

pavlov wrote:
The
schools derive no extra benefits from the Division I aberrations. Most
important, the sports in question are central to the identity of the
institutions; Johns Hopkins has won 42 lacrosse titles since
1883.

Horseshit. JHU has *won* 7 National Titles - the other 35 "championships" were awarded by the good ol' boys in a smoke filled room.

NCAA Lacrosse Championships
7 JHU
7 SU*
6 Princeton
4 UNC
3 Cornell
3 UVa
2 Maryland

* does not include SU's 1990 Championship that was vacated by the NCAA Rules Committee

Was this article in today's (1/12/04) Wall Street Journal or some weekend edition?

John E Hayes '98 '00 wrote:
Horseshit. JHU has *won* 7 National Titles - the other 35 "championships" were awarded by the good ol' boys in a smoke filled room.

What's wrong with that?

big red apple wrote:
What's wrong with that?

I prefer this list

Or, for what we care about:
[cfbdatawarehouse.com]



Post Edited (01-12-04 14:59)

The D-III sports article that Dr Pavlov posted was in Friday's paper.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- The University of Louisville men's basketball team
was expected to romp through its game last month against the College
of the Holy Cross. Instead, with a nifty layup early in the second
half, Holy Cross took a one-point lead on Louisville's home floor. A
befuddled Louisville called timeout as the crowd of more than 19,000
fell into a nervous silence.

Time for the school's 30-piece pep band to rouse the crowd and team
from their funk? That would have to wait. Up above, on the giant
scoreboard sponsored by Pepsi, a commercial for the Kentucky Lottery
whirred to life. Lottery ping-pong balls swooped across the four
screens, each measuring 108 square feet. The band members, dressed in
matching red nylon sweat suits, were left holding their instruments,
staring at the video while the arena's 110-decibel sound system boomed
overhead.

At colleges across the country, bands say their musical tradition is
falling victim to revenue-hungry athletic marketing departments. Video
advertisements, audio promotions and on-court gimmickry are eating up
the lulls in action that once were filled with blasts of live music.
The band plays on, but barely.

"It's looking like ultimately there might not be a need for us," says
21-year-old Ryan Tinsley, a senior engineering student and trumpet
player in Louisville's pep band. As he warmed up with a jazz tune
before the game, a video ad for Pepsi featuring the comedian Bernie
Mac echoed in the empty Freedom Hall. Mr. Tinsley says that because of
such promotions, the pep band's playing time during games has dropped
by about half since his freshman year.

Since 1998, bands at basketball powerhouses like Boston College and
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign also have yielded as
much as half their total performance time to commercial promotions,
which can command as much as $15,000 a spot. Gone are their once
rollicking full-length renditions of "Louie Louie" and "Heartbreak
Hotel." In their place are 15-second song snippets, known as shorts,
played only after promotions are shown on large video screens or
staged on the floor.

Purdue University used to have as many as 100 students vie for slots
in the 50-member pep band that performs at men's basketball games.
Then came a wave of new promotions on the basketball floor, such as
one in which a uniformed FedEx delivery person marches a package to a
fan inside 14,000-seat Mackey Arena. Those promotions have taken their
toll on the band's playing time, which in turn has dried up student
interest in joining, says band director David Leppla. This year, Mr.
Leppla had to give a marketing talk at the beginning of music classes
to recruit new members. Even then, the band is still three trumpets
and two trombones short of full strength.

"Five years ago, all the fun was in the band," says Mr. Leppla. "You
had a sense that you were an integral part of the game. Now you've
become much more peripheral."

Purdue's assistant athletic director, Jay Cooperider, agrees that the
band's playing time has decreased as the school moves in the direction
of being a "pro venue." Fans, accustomed to pro basketball, like all
the marketing razzle-dazzle, he says: "Our fan experience is a mix of
the pep band, in-game promotions that incorporate band music and ones
that don't. It's all a show for our fans."

The College Band Directors National Association recently began a fact- finding survey on how bands are coping with less playing time. Go
Bulldogs! The goal is to develop guidelines for better cooperation
with universities and marketing companies that develop the in-game
promotions.

In the meantime, it's every band for itself. At the Dec. 7 Louisville
game against Holy Cross, that tension over playing time -- and some
signs of compromise -- were on full display.

In the first timeout of the first half, Cingular Wireless staged a
free-throw-shooting promotion, giving away 100 free wireless minutes
for each free throw made. A recording by Sly and the Family Stone
filled Freedom Hall, and to healthy applause from the crowd, a fan
sank six free throws. Next, cheerleaders lofted T-shirts into the
stands to promote a health club. Mr. Tinsley and the rest of the band
were silent throughout.

Later in the half, a boy played basketball against a giant inflatable
milk carton promoting a dairy, and the Pepsivision scoreboard became
an optician's "eye cam," panning the crowd for the "most beautiful
eyes" in attendance.

The band, with some time to play after these promotions, launched into
a minute-long version of "Give Up the Funk." Go Yale! The drummer
bashed out a long solo during a timeout late in the first half. In
all, the band played for only about four and a half minutes in the
first half.

Mr. Tinsley says the allotted playing time was better than in some
previous games, but added that "you lose some of the spirit of the
game when you can't play from the very start after the timeout." Once
the promotions start, "the crowd's enthusiasm dies down."

Spirit does not pay the bills. Last year, Louisville's sports programs
generated about $2 million from the sale of radio and television
rights, advertising spots and signs in its football stadium and
basketball arena. A school spokesman says the advertising revenue
helped Louisville add three women's sports programs.

Directing the promotions inside Freedom Hall was Elizabeth Mandlehr, a
harried 23-year-old who spent the game wearing a black headset. Each
of the 29 promotions were listed in detail on a one-page photocopied
timeout script that took Ms. Mandlehr two days to plan.

Frustration over such scripts has been a big part of the battle of the
bands and marketing departments. Has the home team mounted an
incredible comeback, bringing the game to the verge of overtime? A
band can launch into a spirited number and get the crowd even more
excited. Too often schools adhere too religiously to the script, and
post a commercial on the video screens, say band members and directors.

"It's like throwing a wet blanket on the crowd," says Gary Smith, who
directed the marching band at Illinois from 1976 to 1999. "This is
affecting the whole psychology and spontaneity of college basketball."

Some band directors have fought back against the scripts, including
Brantley Douglas, an assistant band director at James Madison
University in Harrisonburg, Va. He and colleagues employ what he
calls "the unwritten rule of emotional override" when the school's
team is in the midst of a comeback or has just surged ahead. Ignoring
the directions he is receiving over his headset from the marketing
staff, he will instruct the band to play. "Sorry we missed that," he
tells the marketers.

Band members have begun voting with their feet. At both Illinois and
Louisville, directors say bands have begun to prefer playing at
women's basketball and volleyball games, rather than football and
men's basketball. With much less advertising, "our women's games are
still like they used to be," says Mr. Smith. "The band feels
important."