Harvard, Yale and Princeton perennially finish among the top five in rankings of universities for their academic offerings and research. Could they, one day, also compete for the Final Four of the NCAA basketball tournament?
Ivy League colleges have not been serious competitors in major sports since the signing of the Ivy Group Agreement in 1945, which banned the use of athletic scholarships. Harvard and Yale dominated college football in the late 19th and early 20th century but de-emphasized sports in the aftermath of a series of controversies over gridiron violence. (Harvard's invention of the "flying wedge," in which a mob of defensive players targets a single opposing player, led to the creation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association.)
But now two Harvard initiatives—a dramatic restructuring of tuition assistance and aggressive recruitment of the nation's best high-school basketball players—could spur Harvard and other Ivy League schools to produce basketball teams worthy of March Madness. Basketball is likely to see the greatest change from these new rules, since one good player can significantly improve the fortunes of the team; see, for instance, the career of Bill Bradley, who led Princeton to the Final Four in 1965. Because of the volume of elite athletes needed, the initiatives are less likely to impact sports such as football or baseball.
Under Harvard's new tuition policy announced in December—and matched by Yale, Penn, Brown, and Dartmouth—families with incomes under $60,000 could send their children to college for free. Families earning up to $180,000 would pay, at most, 10 percent of their incomes on tuition. Other grants could make tuition nil for many other students.
"For everyone who is highly qualified, if their income is $80,000 to $180,000, the incentive to go to Harvard is going to be huge," says Sandy Baum, an economist at Skidmore and the College Board. "You could see vast numbers of new people deciding to give Harvard a try, and that could include some [superior] athletes." Already Harvard has seen a spike in applications with the new tuition policy.
"This will definitely benefit our coaches in recruiting," Amy Backus, a longtime women's basketball coach at Yale who is now associate athletic director, said in an e-mail. But she doubts "the extent that we will be competing for a national championship in basketball," she said, noting the challenge of finding athletes who can compete academically at Yale.
But the new tuition policies could enable schools like Harvard and Yale to compete for athletes who might otherwise attend other elite schools with major sports programs, like Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown and Vanderbilt.
"The old notion [in the Ivy League] is that athletes are treated no better than anyone else, and that's still going to be true," says Richard Vedder, an education economist at Ohio University. "But this is going to make them financially competitive in a way they weren't before. Harvard has always had a subjective approach to picking students—after all, they get more valedictorians applying than they have seats. Now expertise in throwing a ball around might matter. The probability of finding some Bill Bradleys has been enhanced."
The power of the big Ivies could expand in sports even more if the tuition revolution goes even further. At this point, Harvard can afford to provide free tuition to all of its 6,648 students. Given its $25.9 billion endowment, a 5 percent return on investments would produce almost $1.3 billion annually. With an annual tuition of $31,456, giving every student a full scholarship would cost less than $210 million a year.
Not so fast, says Dave Telep, the national recruiting director for scout.com, who says Ivy League programs face a long, tough road to putting an elite team on the floor. "This is certainly going to have an impact in expanding their pool," he says. "It's going to put guys on the map that weren't there before. It will have a big impact, but there's a cap on that impact."
"One in 25 guys who has that much value," Telep says, will choose an Ivy League program over other schools. "These guys want to compete at a higher level," Telep says. "Rare is the high-level basketball player who would pass on the opportunity to play in a high[-caliber league] for the academic rigors of the Ivy League. I'm not saying they're not there. They're rare."
Admission standards pose a rigid barrier to Ivy success. Ivy League programs require a minimum score of 171 on its Academic Index, a scale that takes into account several factors, including grade-point average, SAT scores and high school class rank. That standard is more rigid than the admissions policies of Duke, Vanderbilt and Stanford.
Harvard's basketball coach, Tommy Amaker, has been reported to be chafing against those standards. The New York Times has reported that Amaker's staff is aggressively recruiting some of the best high-school players in the nation, despite some questionable academic records. Harvard teams usually have had an average AI of 202, but Amaker has reportedly asked for a loosening of the school's standards.
For a recruiter as aggressive as Amaker—a former head coach at Seton Hall and Michigan, who played and coached under Duke's Mike Krzyzewski—finding the rare student-athlete might be possible. But the harder he pushes, the more he challenges the culture and standards of the whole Ivy League.
The biggest barrier for an Ivy League team rising above its peers is the league itself. No games involving Ivy teams will ever attract much national attention. "At the end of the day, TV drives who gets the exposure," Telep of says. "Until you get name players, you're not going to get the TV exposure you need."
Telep, one of the leading experts on high-school basketball talent, praised Harvard's recruitment but said it represents the bare minimum for established programs. "As good as Harvard's class is, that's not a class that's getting you to the top of the ACC [Atlantic Coast Conference]. It would be in the bottom three for an established league. If you're in the ACC, you better have that caliber class every year or you're in trouble."
But maybe an Ivy basketball program only needs to make it to the NCAA tournament regularly and then have a team that can pull off occasional upsets and make it to the Final Four. Bill Bradley's Princeton team made it that far in 1965 and Penn made it that far in 1979. In 1996, Princeton beat UCLA in the first round before losing to Mississippi State. What distinguishes those Ivy success stories is teamwork, discipline and brainy play.
Why would Harvard and other Ivies want to extend their dominance into sports? Why isn't it enough to have the best law and medical schools, cutting-edge research on issues from genomics to brain studies and the deepest academic traditions in America?
Partly, it's a matter of branding. Seeing an Ivy League team pull upsets in the NCAA tournament would expose its university to a different audience. "People in the Midwest look at Harvard and see it as a snooty place," says Ohio University's Vedder. "Seeing Harvard in March Madness would send a different message. It does for Duke." Giving the Ivies a top sports brand could also yield new donations and attract an ever better crop of students.
The impact of hot sports teams on elite universities is usually minimal. Northwestern's football team enhanced the school's cachet for a few years in the 1990s. Notre Dame's football team gives an above-average school a national image. And Duke probably benefits from its basketball team's perennial success. But most schools do not move up a notch in any significant rankings because of sports success.
Partly, it's the thrill of the chase. "It just seems they have to be at the top of every heap," Michael McPherson, the president of the Spencer Foundation, says of Harvard. "If anyone didn't care about sports, you would think it would be the Ivies. But it's something else to be best at."
Roger Noll, a sports economist at Stanford, is skeptical of the idea that Ivies might become a presence in March Madness. "Too few top prospects qualify academically," he says, "and even those that do typically are not academically serious."
But Noll suggests that the Ivies' new tuition policies could transform the power structure of other sports. Noll notes the distinction between "head count" and "equivalency" sports. In head-count sports like football and basketball, athletes usually get full scholarships. In equivalency sports like baseball, soccer, tennis and track and field, schools divvy up a limited number of scholarships among many students—so many students get partial grants. Under the Ivies' new tuition plans, every student would qualify for at least a partial scholarship, making them instantly competitive with schools that give athletic scholarships.
If there's one sport in which the Ivies should be able to compete, it's probably basketball. As Vedder says, "You just have to find the Bill Bradleys."
Euchner, who teaches writing at Yale, is the editor of the Web site startsimple.info .