Re: College football choice

[Dan Lewis]

A lot of this has to do with stereotypes and perspective. On both sides.

First, the idea of a "dumb jock" is, I'd bet, by and large accurate. There are a few reasons for this, not the least of which that those who spend a good deal of time on the gridiron have less to spend in the library. Similarly, these kids who play football _and_ get scholarships are likely football-first kids, and are more concerned with winning and/or going to the NFL than with academics. Also, they like the spotlight, and probably want to be at a school with a good reputation, a friendly location, and probably with a good coach. I outlined this in a similar article (involving salary caps, and why they'll not work) over on FoxSports.com. http://foxsports.lycos.com/content/view?contentId=622264, for anyone who'd like to take a look.

That said, perhaps student-athletes, by and large, are in fact going to schools above their academic level. And perhaps -far- above that level. One could reasonably assume that a footballer does indeed take into consideration where their undergrad dipolma will be from. The question remains, however, why smaller liberal arts colleges don't have better football teams. But it seems that this is due to the school, not the recruit.

Take, for example, the story of John DiBiaggio. DiBiaggio was president of Michigan State, a big-time football school, from 1985-1992. He and the football coach never got along, partially because DiBiaggio's view of a university was academics first, athletics second (or, an afterthought). The idea, I assume, is that a school with a strong football reputation gets with it a lax take on scholarship, allowing students with exemplary physical abilities to slide by in "Rocks for Jocks"-type classes. This stigmatism is why DiBiaggio left MSU for Tufts, a Division III school whose campus government gets more attention than its football games.

In short: The footballers are more concerned with football than with the diploma. If the latter interferes with the former, the latter loses out. The liberal arts colleges are more concerned with academia than athletics. If the latter interferes with the former, the latter loses out.

Other reasons:

1) First, I don't agree that "most" look at the NCAA as a farm league for the NFL. There are about 100 NFL QBs, including practice-squad guys like Joe Germaine and Randy Keisler. The vast majority (probably 80) are holdovers from years past. That means there are twenty jobs max, and there are way many college QBs. Even second and third string college QBs are scholarshiped.

A lot of the guys who go to lesser -football- schools go there because it's one of the only schools to recruit them. The best football kid from my high school ended up at Bowling Green, because it was one of only two offers. Could Tufts have made him the offer? By rule, no -- Div III schools don't give out athletic scholarships. But if that rule were changed, they still wouldn't. He'd drag down the overall SAT/class rank of the class, and hey, if Tufts students really wanted to go to a big football college, most of us could have gone to UVa or Michigan.

2) The Ivy League matchups became less and less important on a national scale because (a) Ivies don't give out athletic scholarships and (b) they weren't really that big to begin with. Harvard/Yale, for example, is always a big deal at the two schools, but never had any real effect on the national radar. Well, it did, but that was because it was the -only- rivalry. As the sport grew, so the relative importance of Harvard/Yale shrank.

3) A lot of high school footballers honestly aspire to be starters in college. Like, that's their dream. It's part of the reason why Big 12 schools have so many in-state kids, and why Tom Osborne was able to parlay a 25 year stint as head coach of Nebraska into a Congressional seat. (I still think it's a big step down. And I bet a lot of Cornhuskers would agree with me.)

Dan Lewis