Ivy League eligibility rules

[dbilmes]

Kudos to The Sun for an excellent article on the Ivy League's stubbornness and hypocrisy of its rules about fifth-year eligibility. Players who are caught cheating, like at Harvard, can withdraw from school before the start of the semester and still play after their class has graduated, while other athletes, like Cornell's Errick Peck, get screwed for excelling academically and trying to play by the rules.

[Chris '03]

I can't remember a better piece in the Sun. Thanks for posting it.

[ugarte]

It is a very well done article that I had a lot of trouble caring about. Given the cesspool that is the NCAA, and on the heels of the 9th Circuit driving a nail in the coffin of the pay-the-players movement, forcing a guy to transfer to Northwestern for a Masters degree seems like very small beer.

[marty]

I hope Joon Lee is still eligible to write about hockey.

[nshapiro]

Just more collegiate stupidity.  I work with someone who was a very good HS Swimmer and did not plan to swim in college. He went to Virginia Tech, and after his freshman year, walked (swam?) on to the team, never received a penny of athletic scholarship money, and swam for three years.  He decided to stay for grad school at VT, applied and was accepted into a PHD program, and received a typical grad student stipend.  He was planning to swim the first year since he still had eligibility, but was told that he had to choose between his stipend and swimming because the stipend would count against the swim team's scholarship allotment, and he was not the stud you need to be to get money for swimming.

[Jim Hyla]

Just more collegiate stupidity.  I work with someone who was a very good HS Swimmer and did not plan to swim in college. He went to Virginia Tech, and after his freshman year, walked (swam?) on to the team, never received a penny of athletic scholarship money, and swam for three years.  He decided to stay for grad school at VT, applied and was accepted into a PHD program, and received a typical grad student stipend.  He was planning to swim the first year since he still had eligibility, but was told that he had to choose between his stipend and swimming because the stipend would count against the swim team's scholarship allotment, and he was not the stud you need to be to get money for swimming.

It may seem stupid, but if athletic departments were able to have money given to athletes from other school funds, you can easily see how it would be corrupted.

[nshapiro]

I know, and the most difficult (impossible?) thing to do is to write common sense into a set of rules.  I wonder now that the NC$$ has decided it is ok to have different rules (paid players) for revenue producing sports, maybe they could take a look at making reasonable rules for non-revenue sports where there shouldn't be the institutional incentive to cheat.