It is inaccurate to say there are “some college baseball teams” ( there are actually loads), but MLB does not rely on colleges to develop players to nearly the extent that other sports do. They may rely on the colleges to some extent to *find *players, but college baseball players generally go into the minor leagues, not straight to the majors .
Funny you should mention Harvard since they’ve had their own basketball recruiting scandal in the last couple years. Of course a player who is slightly academically ineligible at Harvard would be academically eligible at almost any other college in the country, the Ivies just have some complicated rules about athletes having to be statistically similar to the rest of the student body.
And, in truth, many baseball teams would prefer to have the kids in their developmental systems out of high school instead of watching them go through college. Not out of any lack of respect for academics, but rather because some colleges have a reputation for working young players - particularly pitchers - too hard too young and damage their long-term potential. Whereas if a pro team is developing a young player they can monitor and set pitch and inning limits to protect the team’s investment in the player. College teams think short term too often.
20 years ago Ben McDonald of LSU was a case of that. He was a GREAT college pitcher and looked to be something special. But in his last college season - especially during his stint in that year’s college world series - he was worked ungodly hard (3 games in a week when 1 or fewer would be the norm) by his coach because they’d made the playoffs and they knew he was leaving. McDonald came out of the series effectively broken as a pitcher and never really got to live up to his potential. It was a shame.
That’s not really the best way to put it. There are few universities that have hard academic requirements for incoming students, and theoretically athletic scholarships are in part meant to give opportunities to those who do not have stellar high school academic records.
The issue of doing things to “get” the best players is not the only problem, and it might not even be among the worst of the problems surrounding big-time college athletics. It is, however, the only problem that the N.C.A.A. gives any attention to.
So far as I am concerned, the question of recruiting violations is trivial compared to what happens after that.
A relevant factor here that makes North American baseball significantly different from European soccer, for example, is that minor league baseball teams are largely under the control of major league teams.
So if you go below the Premier League in English soccer, you still have independent clubs that compete freely in the market. However, most minor league baseball teams are not competitive in the same way. Their purpose is not really to win, but to develop players for their parent clubs.
Some of the posts above mention “revenue generating” sports, which are, for the most part, football and basketball. At some schools, these sports generate enough revenue to pay for the entire athletics program, or even return a profit to the administration. At other schools, these sports actually lose money.
But to a large extent, the schools don’t participate in big-time college football or basketball to make money. It’s really about raising the profile of the school. Some prospective students want to go to a school with a winning football/basketball/hockey team. I know that many people on this board will think that’s a dumb reason to attend a school, but you have to remember that in the US, there are literally thousands of colleges, and even a couple dozen that any given student might consider.
So the school can be more selective in its admissions. I know this has been true of the University of Connecticut and its success in basketball is one reason that the state legislature has committed billions to improvements. Here’s a ten-year old article that talks about UConn and how its stature has improved. Another article, this time about Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, which actively recruited foreign students for its squash team. This was a sport that had been dominated by the Ivy League. But Trinity focused on its men’s squash team and had a winning streak for more than a decade (until it lost in 2012 to Yale).
I’ll see your Dexter Manley and raise you a Kevin Ross, who was admitted to Creighton (a well-regarded private university) in the 80s even though he couldn’t read his own name.
Thanks for the answers everyone!
That’s probably a more accurate way to describe it than I did. My experience is also a bit out of date, and when doing recruiting / alumni interviews I’ve never dealt with anyone who wasn’t applying based purely on academic merit.
Jon Stewart went to the College of William and Mary on a soccer scholarship. He got injured and studied chemistry and psychology instead. So there’s no fundamental reason why athletic scholarship would be a bad idea in principle.
But, there are some key factors here --In 1984, no one thought if soccer as a money sport in America, William and Mary is not a sports powerhouse, and Stewart had the interest to apply himself to academic studies.
The difference is that very few college players jump directly to the major leagues. Baseball still has to work to develop the players, and signing a baseball contract is no guarantee you’ll play in the majors (as it is for football and basketball). Colleges don’t develop players for baseball; baseball scouts watch their players as one of several sources for filling their farm system.
In addition, many of the college players taken in the draft had once been drafted from high school, but elected to go to college. That primarily a decision on the part of the player to get a degree, knowing that his chances of making any real money in baseball are remote.
To elaborate on this, I have a friend who is a university administrator. Their university is quite large and would like to field a football team. However, they know that to do that, they would also have to develop and invest equally in women’s sports teams. They already have a well developed women’s sports business, and it is hard to see where they could expand in that direction. Whereas there would certainly be no shortage of guys interested in working in and playing football, where is the comparable supply of women athletes clamoring for their big time sport?
Not to mention that the 90 male athletic spots for one football team would have to be equally off-set by 90 female athletic spots - and if a school is already sporting a relatively full complement of women’s sports teams, where do even begin?
I’ve heard of schools disbanding popular, competitive men’s teams (e.g. wrestling, etc) because they needed to reduce the number of spots on the men’s side to meet the Title IX requirements.
That is one of the controversies stated about Title IX.
I thought that one of the “rules” concerning Title IX was, if the school can show that all women who want to participate in interscholastic sports are accommodated, then the numbers don’t have to be equal.
(And it’s not that they have to be “equal”, but the percentage of athletes that are women has to be within 5% of the percentage of students that are women - at least that’s the version I heard.)
It doesn’t have to be equal numbers- but it does have to be equal access. If all the women who want to participate are accomodated, that’s fine even if there are few women’s teams. If the student population is 60/40 male/female and the athletic opportunities and scholarships are 60/40 male female, that’s also fine.
They don’t ever have to do that. They could increase the women’s spots . For whatever the reason , schools/colleges choose to disband men’s teams rather than expand women’s ( and it seems that football and basketball don’t lose a single spot). But it is a choice.
(If they already accomodate all of the interested women and the scholarships are proportionate, the school is already in compliance so that’s not the issue)
At the lower levels of soccer you have a mixture of independents and juniors for larger teams though, it’s not exclusively independents. Also, many teams which are theoretically independent are… well, pro teams nearby get dibs on their good players, simply because they’re more likely to hear about those good players than the more distant teams.
There are some universities where not letting academics slide for athletes is part of their image, and W&M is one such. My roommate was on a track scholarship and went on to be a Fullbright Scholar and a professor of French, so clearly her sports participation didn’t indicate a lack of qualifications! I attended 93-97 and never met a student athlete there who wasn’t academically qualified.
There’s also the thing where it’s not the school but the individual teacher who lets athletes slide. I was talking to a friend who was a TA at U of Michigan, and she said Marty Turco (later to play in the NHL, then a college hockey star) came to her office and asked for a better grade. She turned him down with no repercussions to herself or the department. But maybe another person would have acted differently and given the guy a break… not based on policy but on some kind of personal feeling about the team.
NCAA equestrian is growing by leaps and bounds for this reason. It’s 98% women, costs a lot to operate, and attracts a highly enthusiastic type of rich donor. The association comes right out and says it.