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    The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values
    The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values
    The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values
    Ebook744 pages14 hours

    The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values

    By James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen

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    The President of Williams College faces a firestorm for not allowing the women's lacrosse team to postpone exams to attend the playoffs. The University of Michigan loses $2.8 million on athletics despite averaging 110,000 fans at each home football game. Schools across the country struggle with the tradeoffs involved with recruiting athletes and updating facilities for dozens of varsity sports. Does increasing intensification of college sports support or detract from higher education's core mission?


    James Shulman and William Bowen introduce facts into a terrain overrun by emotions and enduring myths. Using the same database that informed The Shape of the River, the authors analyze data on 90,000 students who attended thirty selective colleges and universities in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s. Drawing also on historical research and new information on giving and spending, the authors demonstrate how athletics influence the class composition and campus ethos of selective schools, as well as the messages that these institutions send to prospective students, their parents, and society at large.


    Shulman and Bowen show that athletic programs raise even more difficult questions of educational policy for small private colleges and highly selective universities than they do for big-time scholarship-granting schools. They discover that today's athletes, more so than their predecessors, enter college less academically well-prepared and with different goals and values than their classmates--differences that lead to different lives. They reveal that gender equity efforts have wrought large, sometimes unanticipated changes. And they show that the alumni appetite for winning teams is not--as schools often assume--insatiable. If a culprit emerges, it is the unquestioned spread of a changed athletic culture through the emulation of highly publicized teams by low-profile sports, of men's programs by women's, and of athletic powerhouses by small colleges.


    Shulman and Bowen celebrate the benefits of collegiate sports, while identifying the subtle ways in which athletic intensification can pull even prestigious institutions from their missions. By examining how athletes and other graduates view The Game of Life--and how colleges shape society's view of what its rules should be--Bowen and Shulman go far beyond sports. They tell us about higher education today: the ways in which colleges set policies, reinforce or neglect their core mission, and send signals about what matters.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPrinceton University Press
    Release dateAug 15, 2011
    ISBN9781400840694
    The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values

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      Book preview

      The Game of Life - James L. Shulman

      THE GAME OF LIFE

      THE GAME OF LIFE

      COLLEGE SPORTS

      AND EDUCATIONAL VALUES

      WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHORS

      James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen

      IN COLLABORATION WITH

      Lauren A. Meserve and Roger C. Schonfeld

      Copyright © 2001 Princeton University Press

      Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

      Princeton, New Jersey 08540

      In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place,

      Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY

      All Rights Reserved

      Fourth printing, and first paperback printing, with a new preface, 2002

      Paperback ISBN 0-691-09619-8

      The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows

      Shulman, James Lawrence, 1965–

      The game of life : college sports and educational values /

      James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen.

      p.   cm.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 0-691-07075-X (alk. paper)

      1. College sports—United States. 2. Education, Higher—Aims and

      objectives—United States. I. Bowen, William G. II. Title.

      GV351 .S48   2001

      British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

      This book has been composed in Adobe New Baskerville by

      Princeton Editorial Associates, Inc., Scottsdale, Arizona,

      and Roosevelt, New Jersey

      Printed on acid-free paper. ∞

      www.pupress.princeton.edu

      Printed in the United States of America

      5  7  9  10  8  6  4

      Contents

      List of Figures

      List of Tables

      Preface to the Paperback Edition

      Prelude: Four Snapshots

      Preface

      Appendix A: Scorecards

      Appendix B: Supplementary Data

      Notes

      References

      Index

      List of Figures

      Chapter 1

      Figure 1.1. Sports Televised (in New York City) during the Harvard-Yale Football Game, 1955, 1979, and 1993

      Figure 1.2. Cumulative Increases in Performance Times in Track and Field and Swimming, 1896–1996

      Figure 1.3a. Multi-Sport Athletes as a Percent of All Male Athletes 26

      Figure 1.3b. Multi-Sport Athletes as a Percent of All Female Athletes

      Chapter 2

      Figure 2.1. Athletes as a Percent of All Male Students (by Cohort and Division)

      Figure 2.2. Percent of Students Reporting that Being Recruited Was a Very Important Reason for Choosing This Specific College (by Athlete Status and Cohort, at Ivy League Universities and Coed Liberal Arts Colleges, Male Only)

      Figure 2.3. Adjusted Admissions Advantage at a Representative Non-Scholarship School, Controlling for Differences in SAT Scores (1976, 1989, and 1999, Male Only)

      Figure 2.4. Average SAT Scores by Athlete Status and Division (1989 Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 2.5. High Profile Athlete SAT Divergence from Students at Large (by Cohort and Division, Male Only)

      Figure 2.6a. 1989 Ivy League Athlete SAT Divergence from Students at Large (by Sport, Male Only)

      Figure 2.6b. 1989 Division III Athlete SAT Divergence from Students at Large (by Sport, Male Only)

      Figure 2.6c. 1989 Division IA Private Athlete SAT Divergence from Students at Large (by Sport, Male Only)

      Figure 2.6d. 1989 Division IA Public Athlete SAT Divergence from Students at Large (by Sport, Male Only)

      Figure 2.7. Percent of Students with a Father Who Has a Bachelor’s Degree or Higher (by Athlete Status and Division, 1989 Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 2.8. African Americans as a Percent of Male Students (by Athlete Status and Division, 1989 Cohort)

      Figure 2.9. Percent of Freshmen Reporting It Is a Very Important or Essential Goal to Be Very Well Off Financially (by Athlete Status and Division, 1989 Cohort, Male Only)

      Chapter 3

      Figure 3.1. Six-Year Graduation Rate (by Athlete/Extracurricular Status and Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 3.2. Mean GPA Percentile (by Athlete Status and Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 3.3. Percent of Students with GPA in Bottom One-Third of Class (by Athlete Status and Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 3.4. Underperformance of Athletes, Controlling for Differences in SAT Scores, Major, and Socioeconomic Status (by Athlete Status and Division, 1989 Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 3.5. Mean GPA Percentile (by Athletic/Extracurricular Status and Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 3.6. Percent of Male Students with Faculty Mentors at Ivy League Universities (by Athlete Status and Cohort)

      Figure 3.7a. Percent of Male Students Majoring in the Social Sciences at Ivy League Universities (by Athlete Status and Cohort)

      Figure 3.7b. Percent of Male Students Majoring in the Social Sciences at Coed Liberal Arts Colleges (by Athlete Status and Cohort)

      Chapter 4

      Figure 4.1. Graduates Earning Advanced Degrees (by Athlete Status and Division, 1976 Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 4.2. Aspiration and Attainment of Medical and Law Degrees at Ivy League Universities and Coed Liberal Arts Colleges (by Athlete Status, 1976 Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 4.3. Occupations in 1995 (by Athlete Status, 1976 Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 4.4. Mean Own Earned 1995 Income (by Athlete Status and Cohort, Full-Time Male Workers)

      Figure 4.5a. Percent of Full-Time Male Workers Employed in the For-Profit Sector in 1995 (by Athlete Status, 1951 and 1976 Cohorts)

      Figure 4.5b. Mean Own Earned 1995 Income (by Sector, 1951 and 1976 Cohorts, Full-Time Male Workers)

      Figure 4.6. Earnings Advantages of Athletes (by Sector, 1976 Cohort, Full-Time Male Workers) 100

      Figure 4.7. Mean Own Earned 1995 Income (by College and High School Athlete Status and Division, 1976 Cohort, Full-Time Male Workers)

      Figure 4.8. Pre-College Self-Ratings and Life Goals (by High School and College Athlete Status, 1976 Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 4.9. Mean Own Earned 1995 Income of Athletes (by Years Played and Sport Profile, 1976 Cohort, Full-Time Male Workers)

      Figure 4.10. Earnings Advantages of Athletes (by Years Played and Sport Profile, 1976 Cohort, Full-Time Male Workers)

      Chapter 5

      Figure 5.1. Percent of Women Who Played High School and College Sports (1976 and 1989 Cohorts)

      Chapter 6

      Figure 6.1. Percent of Athletes Reporting That Being Recruited Was a Very Important Reason for Choosing This Specific College (by Cohort, Gender, and Division)

      Figure 6.2. Adjusted Admissions Advantage at a Representative Non-Scholarship School, Controlling for Differences in SAT Scores (1976, 1989, and 1999, Female Only)

      Figure 6.3. Adjusted Admissions Advantages at a Representative Non-Scholarship School, Controlling for Differences in SAT Scores (by Gender, 1989 and 1999)

      Figure 6.4. Athlete SAT Divergence from Students at Large (by Cohort and Division, Female Only)

      Figure 6.5. Intellectual Self-Confidence and SAT Scores (by Athlete Status and Gender, 1989 Cohort)

      Figure 6.6. African Americans as a Percent of All Female Students (by Athlete Status and Division, 1989 Cohort)

      Figure 6.7. Percent of Freshmen Reporting It Is a Very Important or Essential Goal to Be Very Well Off Financially (by Athlete Status and Division, 1989 Cohort)

      Chapter 7

      Figure 7.1. Six-Year Graduation Rate (by Athlete/Extracurricular Status and Cohort, Female Only)

      Figure 7.2. Mean GPA Percentile (by Athlete Status, Cohort, and Gender)

      Figure 7.3. Percent of Students with GPA in Bottom One-Third of Class (by Athlete Status and Division, 1989 Cohort, Female Only)

      Figure 7.4. Underperformance of Athletes, Controlling for Differences in SAT, Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Major (by Division, 1989 Cohort, Female Only)

      Figure 7.5. Underperformance of Athletes, Controlling for Additional Pre-Collegiate Academic Variables in Addition to Differences in SAT, Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Major (by Division, 1989 Cohort, Female Only)

      Figure 7.6. Percent of Female Students Majoring in the Humanities (by Athlete Status and Division, 1989 Cohort)

      Figure 7.7. Percent of Female Students Majoring in the Natural Sciences (by Athlete Status and Self-Ranking of Intellectual Self-Confidence, 1989 Cohort)

      Chapter 8

      Figure 8.1. Graduates Earning Advanced Degrees (by Athlete Status, 1976 Cohort, Female Only)

      Figure 8.2. Graduates Earning Advanced Degrees (by Athlete Status and Division, 1976 Cohort, Female Only)

      Figure 8.3. Graduates Earning Advanced Degrees (by Athlete Status, 1989 Cohort, Female Only)

      Figure 8.4. Percent of Female Graduates Working Full-Time with and without Children (by Athlete Status, 1976 Cohort)

      Figure 8.5. Percent of Female Graduates Working Full-Time (by Athlete Status and Pre-College Political Orientation, 1976 Cohort)

      Figure 8.6. Competition before and after College (by Athlete Status and Cohort, Female Only)

      Figure 8.7. Occupations in 1995 (by Athlete Status, 1976 Cohort, Female Only)

      Figure 8.8. Occupational Differences: 1995 Occupations as Percent of Athletes minus Percent of Students at Large (by Gender, 1976 Cohort)

      Figure 8.9. Percent of Full-Time Female Workers Employed in the For-Profit Sector in 1995 (by Athlete Status, 1976 and 1989 Cohorts)

      Figure 8.10. Mean Own Earned 1995 Income (by Athlete Status and Sector, 1976 Cohort, Full-Time Female Workers)

      Figure 8.11. Percent of Students Reporting as Freshman That an Essential Goal Is to Be Very Well Off Financially (by Athlete Status, Cohort, and Gender, Ivy League Universities and Coed Liberal Arts Colleges)

      Figure 8.12. Earnings Advantages of Athletes by Years Played (1976 Cohort, Full-Time Female Workers)

      Chapter 9

      Figure 9.1. Percent of Freshman Rating Themselves in the Top 10 Percent of Peers on Leadership Ability (by Athlete Status and Gender, 1976 and 1989 Cohorts)

      Figure 9.2. Post-College Rating: Leadership Has Been Important in Life since College (by Athlete Status, Cohort, and Gender)

      Figure 9.3. Mean 1995 Earned Income of For-Profit CEOs (by Athlete Status, 1951 and 1976 Cohorts, Full-Time Male Workers)

      Figure 9.4. Leadership in Alumni/ae Activities, Students at Large and CEOs (by Athlete Status, Cohort, and Gender)

      Figure 9.5. Institutional Priorities of Athlete Alumni Leaders, Student-at-Large Alumni Leaders, and All Other Alumni (as Desired Emphasis minus Perceived Current Emphasis, 1976 Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 9.6. Institutional Priorities: Intercollegiate Athletics by Alumni Leader Classification (as Desired Emphasis minus Perceived Current Emphasis, 1976 Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 9.7. Institutional Priorities (as Desired Emphasis minus Perceived Current Emphasis)

      Figure 9.8. Intercollegiate Athletics as an Institutional Priority (as Desired Emphasis minus Perceived Current Emphasis, by Division, 1976 Cohort, Male and Female Combined)

      Figure 9.9. Intercollegiate Athletics as an Institutional Priority (as Desired Emphasis minus Perceived Current Emphasis, by Athlete Status, 1976 Cohort, Male and Female Combined)

      Chapter 10

      Figure 10.1. General Giving Rates (by Athlete Status and Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 10.2. Increased Likelihood of Giving for Participants in Athletics and Other Extracurricular Activities (by Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 10.3. Concentration of Total Gifts Given by the Top 5 Percent, Next 15 Percent, and Bottom 80 Percent of Male Graduates

      Figure 10.4. General Giving Rates by Alumni Profile (1951 Cohort, Male Only)

      Figure 10.5. Views of Athletics and of Broad Liberal Arts Education among the Top 5 Percent of Donors (by Cohort, Division, and Gender)

      Figure 10.6. Institutional Priorities of the Top 5 Percent of Donors (1976 Cohort, Male Only)

      Chapter 11

      Figure 11.1. Total Expenditures for Intercollegiate Athletics by Division

      Figure 11.2. Direct Expenditures on Football by Division

      Figure 11.3. Direct Expenditures on Average Lower Profile Team by Division

      Figure 11.4. Net Athletics Operating Expenditure per Athlete versus Student Services Expenditure per Student

      Figure 11.5. Relative Sources of Revenues, NCAA Division IA (by Year)

      List of Tables

      Chapter 2

      Table 2.1. Intercollegiate Athletes by Sport, 1997–98 (Selected Schools, Male Only)

      Chapter 3

      Table 3.1. Underperformance of Athletes, Controlling for Differences in SAT Scores, Major, and Socioeconomic Status (by Athlete Status, Cohort, and Division, Male Only)

      Table 3.2. Underperformance of Athletes, Controlling for Pre-Collegiate Underperformance in Addition to Differences in SAT Scores, Major, and Socioeconomic Status (by Athletic Status, Cohort, and Division, Male Only)

      Chapter 6

      Table 6.1. Number of 1997–98 Intercollegiate Athletes by Sport (Selected Schools, Female Only)

      Chapter 9

      Table 9.1. Earnings Advantages in 1995 of Athletes by Occupation (by Cohort and Gender, Full-Time For-Profit Workers)

      Table 9.2. Leadership of Civic Activities (by Athlete Status, Cohort, and Gender)

      Appendix B

      Table B.2.1. Mean SAT Scores by Cohort, Division, and Team (Male Only)

      Table B.4.1. Mean 1995 Earnings by Years Played and Sport Profile (by Division, 1976 Cohort, Full-Time Male Workers)

      Table B.6.1. Mean SAT Scores by Cohort, Division, and Team (Female Only)

      Table B.7.1. Ordinary Least Squares Regression Models Predicting Rank in Class at Ivy League Universities (1989 Cohort, Female Only)

      Table B.9.1. CEO Leadership of Civic Activities (by Athlete Status, Cohort, and Gender) 361

      Table B.9.2. Institutional Priorities of Athlete Alumni/ae Leaders, Student-at-Large Alumni/ae Leaders, and All Other Alumni/ae (as Desired Emphasis minus Perceived Current Emphasis, by Cohort and Gender)

      Table B.9.3. Institutional Priorities (as Desired Emphasis minus Perceived Current Emphasis, by Division, Male and Female Combined)

      Table B.11.1. Athletic Expenditures by Institution

      Table B.11.2. Sources of Revenues by Institution (Selected Schools)

      Table B.11.3. Sources of Revenue, NCAA Divisions IA and IAA

      Preface to the Paperback Edition

      ONE OF THE MOST surprising repercussions of our having torn away the veil of myth that shrouds sports at selective colleges and universities appeared in the first New York Times article that reported on the book’s findings. While the main story noted the book’s findings concerning the admissions gaps and growing academic underperformance among athletes at the Division III schools, the story shared a page in the Times with a box entitled Tips for Recruited Athletes, which included such pointers as Prepare an athletic resume; take the initiative in making contact with college coaches; be patient. Subsequently an article in the Austin (Tex.) Statesman reported that the headmaster of the St. Stephen’s School, Fred Weissbach, had been showing articles on the book to some faculty and staff with satisfaction. Weissbach, who once faced strong skepticism about the value of creating sports academies at St. Stephen’s, said, ‘I’m absolutely convinced they’ve been the salvation of our boarding program.’ Intended as a bell to awaken policy makers to the ways that intensification had subtly but substantially affected their institutions, the book was being trumpeted as a how to guide to getting into academically selective schools, providing comfort and encouragement to those who were hitting the weights.

      Better confirmation of the validity of our findings—that athletic talent, specialization, and seriousness play an ever greater role in college admissions for both men and women—could not be hoped for. At the same time, we have heard in other quarters a more thoughtful questioning of whether we, as a society, want colleges to expend such resources on athletic programs that seem less and less amateur. From conversations with college and university presidents and administrators, as well as trustees, alumni/ae, and students, we know that just this sort of questioning continues, with the recognition that there are few easy solutions.

      In writing this book, we recognized the challenges inherent in bringing a cold analytical eye to the passionate realm of sports. Myths only very reluctantly yield ground in the face of multiple regression analysis. We sought to navigate the narrow path between disillusioning and disillusionment. Whether we have succeeded will become clear only as those who set policies decide where to go next: either they will feel that the information that we have compiled is compelling in making the case that the role of athletics has subtly shifted course, or they will see the book as a mildly depressing account of a force of nature too big to address and hence best ignored. Removing illusions can be productive, or it can just take the joy out of things.

      Looking back over the seven years of working on the book and the year since it has been published, we can identify a number of points that merit clarification.

      THE NEED TO AVOID SIMPLE US-THEM DEMONIZATION

      A number of college presidents who find the patterns in the research both compelling and deeply disturbing have expressed to us a profound concern that the data will demonize the students on campus who play intercollegiate sports, leading others to doubt them and encouraging them to doubt themselves. Can this be avoided? Yes, it can and should be avoided.

      We have written about policies—not about people. The students who excel at sports have done absolutely nothing wrong; in fact, they have been paying close heed to the signals that colleges and universities have been sending with their admissions policies. These students have paid more attention to schools’ practices than to their lofty rhetoric. Moreover, by any national standard, they have worked hard and done well both in college and after college. Our having called into question how much emphasis should be placed on athletics in deciding whom to admit, and our having asked if these students take full advantage of the academic resources available to them, should not be taken as a critique of those athletes as people. Anyone who does so as a result of our work is acting out of prejudice and engaging in stereotyping, pure and simple. Aggregate statistics contain outliers on both sides of the averages; there have been and always will be individuals whose priorities and accomplishments bear no resemblance to our general findings. But, we continue to believe, overall patterns should matter when considering policies and programs.

      Admissions is a difficult and sensitive topic. Incredibly talented individuals get accepted; sometimes even more incredibly talented individuals get rejected. Many of the students who were not accepted at Penn, Oberlin, or the University of North Carolina would have thrived there, learned a great deal, and had an experience that they would have treasured for the rest of their lives. Deciding who should get such opportunities is not an exact science. When athletic talent plays a role in the process, bets are placed on certain categories of people, for reasons that have been thought through or reasons that have not been thought through. Our question was never, Are these talented people? but rather, On what basis is a ‘bet’ being placed on them collectively? We concluded that some of the rationales that were perceived as givens in placing these admissions bets deserve re-examination—for instance, that winning athletic teams earn money for the school or that athletic talent serves as a proxy for leadership.

      It may be difficult for people to depersonalize policy findings that sound as if they are directed toward them personally or at people they know, but it remains our firm belief that documented truth-telling is essential if institutions are to understand the real trade-offs that they face in setting policy. Prospective students are not the only ones who are reading the signs that emanate from colleges and universities. Coaches also follow signals, and while many of them may be offended by findings in this book, they too are simply carrying out the roles assigned to them. They are guilty only of responding to the opportunity structures defined by the ecosystem of higher education, and they do not deserve to be labeled bad guys if they are doing their best to perform in line with what schools expect of them. If colleges want their coaches to spend less time recruiting or training their teams in a relentless search for the competitive edge, then they must re-examine the criteria they use in recruiting and rewarding them.

      WHAT DEFINES AN ADMISSIONS ADVANTAGE?

      One aspect of our analysis that has raised questions and caused some degree of confusion is the measurement of the advantage that recruited athletes have in the admissions process. While we said explicitly in the text on page 40 and in note 9 on page 382 that our analysis focused on those athletes on a coach’s list, we probably should have more frequently and more strongly emphasized the difference between this carefully culled subgroup of recruited athletes and other students who had athletic talent, who played, or who were recruited to some lesser degree. The dramatic admissions advantage documented in the book is enjoyed only by those prospective students with athletic talent who end up on the lists that the coaches send to the admissions offices. The admissions advantage for recruited athletes is an estimate of the increased odds of admission (given the applicant’s SAT score, race, and legacy status) of those applicants who were on the coaches’ lists.

      This measure tells us nothing about the probabilities of admission faced by an athletically talented and athletically interested student who, for whatever reason, did not make a coach’s list. And, as we have learned in subsequent research (which we hope to publish in a sequel to this book), these other athletes may, if anything, be at some disadvantage in the admissions process. The key point is that among those applicants with the same SAT scores, the ones who made it onto the coaches’ lists have a much higher chance of being admitted. While coaches are surely conscious of the academic requirements of their schools when they compile these lists, the fact is that the only measurable difference between these applicants and many others (with and without athletic talent) is that coaches decided to place a heavy bet on them because of their expected contribution to the school’s athletic program. The admissions advantage measures the importance of being on a coach’s list—nothing more and nothing less.

      CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY—AND THE

      YET-TO-BE-WRITTEN FUTURE

      Readers approaching a book that brings to light the extent to which the academic profiles of athletes compare unfavorably to those of their peers will also find incontrovertible evidence that the athletes in our study from the cohorts that entered college in 1951 and 1976 went on to earn more money than their peers. By this measure, which we regard as consequential, they were very successful in later life. This fact is very clear.

      What is less clear is how much (if any) of this success is attributable to their having played sports in college and also whether we should expect to find these same results for athletes who attended these academically selective colleges in more recent decades. We found that the men who played sports wanted different things from their college experiences, chose majors and careers different from those of their peers with these goals in mind, and ended up doing well financially. This is to many people the bottom line. Yet we also find that the level of play (Division I versus Division III), the winning percentage of the team, and the number of years that someone played (with one notable exception) had no discernible effect on this result. It would appear that, in the lexicon of social science, selection (the attributes athletes brought with them to college) was more important than treatment (sports played, years played, level of play, and so on).

      Our more recent research (with the 1995 entering cohorts at some of the same colleges and universities) leads us to emphasize, even more than we did in the book, that today may not be the same as yesterday. The athletes from earlier eras whose futures we were able to track also had different pasts. The increasingly sizable academic performance gaps that we find now were not present to anything like the same degree in the earlier cohorts. In other words, those who believe that the accomplishments of athletes in earlier classes are likely to be replicated by more recent athletes need to consider whether other differences between those athletes and the athletes of today could lead to quite different outcomes later in life.

      REFUSING TO LIGHT THE FUSE

      The Game of Life has also drawn fire from another flank. A criticism often voiced by angry alumni/ae and frustrated members of the campus community was best expressed in a review of the book by Murray Sperber, the admirable scold who has revealed much that is sordid about college sports (see The Sports Authorities, in University Business, April 2001, pp. 66–67). He liked the book but hated our tepid suggestions for reform. After painstakingly constructing a beautiful bomb, they, in the final analysis, refuse to light the fuse. Time will tell whether he, and others who feel that the system is so badly broken that there is no way to fix it, are prescient. While we certainly believe that the path to a better balance is neither easy nor clearly demarcated, we do believe that thoughtful, constructive change can occur. The problems will not be wished away, and while the athletics first party is not as large or as powerful as legend would have us believe, those who think that sports deserve an important place in campus life should be enlisted in the search for the right balance. We count ourselves among their number. We do not think that the choice is limited to all or nothing, but should the gaps in admissions and academic performance continue to widen, it may well be that things will get worse before they get better. Our concern is that getting better, at that point, may not have the chance that it does today of keeping all (or at least many) members of the team cheering in unison.

      WHERE TO FROM HERE?

      The risk in trying to reform athletic policies is high, and the rewards are hard to capture and celebrate. But even trickier is figuring out how to proceed in the difficult competitive environment in which sports programs are embedded. Policing the system is very difficult, as has been documented by the game theorist Tom Schelling. In a classic Schelling example, a town government decrees water restrictions in a time of drought. But, he goes on to note, to someone in that town, roses are the most important thing in life, and one way or another he will find a way to water them. For another person, life is unlivable without a sparklingly clean car. And in this way, the power of micro motives pokes holes in a healthy pattern of macro behavior. Once the holes are poked (and someone hears the sprinklers running next door), collective virtue dissipates.

      Responses to a collective problem—the water shortage or a sports system that taxes everyone’s academic standards and budgets—dependent on instituting or tweaking the rules, can fail either dramatically (i.e., lead to rule-breaking) or can lead to creative rules management. We document in the book the way that the Ivy League’s academic index succeeded in closing a widening SAT gap only to create a widening degree of underperformance among those now intensively recruited, committed, and coached athletes who entered with better test scores. We doubt very much that rules alone will solve the problems of intercollegiate athletics. In other words, to insist that everything will work out fine if we agree to play by the rules is to pretend that there is a clear and policeable solution to a set of complex ethical and value-laden issues.

      An example from a related realm is the way that schools work at gaming the U.S. News and World Report rankings of schools. While presidents universally dismiss the rankings as shallow and thoroughly flawed, many are (with the other hand) manipulating their schools’ data in such a way that they can climb a notch. Little benefit can be gained from sitting on the sidelines even if you don’t like the game, and the clarity of notching up has appeal in a competitive and oversimplified world. In the same way, some educators have warned against a potential problem with the national movement for accountability based on test scores in elementary and secondary schools. Principals may figure out how to game the tests (and collect their bonuses), though the penalty may come in terms of real learning.

      SIGNALS

      Some people believe that The Game of Life’s focus on academically selective schools rather than only the athletic powerhouses makes its findings less relevant. But we have come to appreciate more and more the way that the signals sent by these schools really matter. A thirteen-year-old inner-city boy who called in to a radio show on the book in Baltimore said, I’m studying physics. Are you saying that I should be working on my jump shot? We hate to think that any college president in the country would answer yes to that question, but the actions of their admissions offices—which reveal their preferences—are highly ambivalent on the substance of the question. Let us not forget that young men and women enjoy running around and sweating and leaping for a ball, and that these pursuits are a wonderful part of life. But the signals that academic institutions send to those who are young and setting their priorities in life do not necessarily have to be aligned with what the students want to hear. The signals should, perhaps, be on the side more of eat your vegetables than of have some more cake. People respond to incentives, and by sending the signal that seriousness about sports matters a great deal to admissions offices, the most academically selective colleges and universities in the country are actively playing a role in shaping the sports craziness among the young that many people (even many sports fans!) feel has gone too far.

      Schools may be in danger of giving in on one of the tough-to-sell parts of a liberal arts education—the appreciation of complexity. A trustee, commenting on the book, argued that we had missed the point. Let’s be honest, he said. Winning is what this is all about. These kids get to learn about winning, and once they get out of school, that’s what the whole thing is about, isn’t it?

      In one sense, this view reflects what those of us who love sports love about them—their clarity and simplicity. Fair is fair and foul is foul. The game ends and there is a winner. Sports provide us with escape—heroes and villains, winners and losers, and a clarity that we rarely get when sitting around thinking about whether it’s the right moment to change jobs. But a single-minded focus on winning proffers a view of the game of life that may be at odds with what a liberal arts education reminds us is a game of many layers and dimensions.

      Sports are not being thought of as play. They are being taken seriously as training for a game of life that has all the clarity of a board game. But complexity is an integral part of a liberal arts education. Providing definite answers is not what the liberal arts do very well, or indeed what they aim for. What is Hamlet 30,000 a year. Still, the liberal arts are about teaching complexity rather than reductionism, telling us not simply to accept at face value the Whig view of history, the half-proven hypothesis, or the teachings of our parents. Acquiring a good lens in any liberal arts field involves learning how to interpret, to make provisional judgments, to build a worldview, to act when the rules are not clear. A school’s athletic program—or a set of students at a given school—may slip into thinking that winning is everything and nothing else matters as long as you are playing by the rules. If such single-mindedness becomes a very powerful signal that colleges and universities are sending to their students, alumni/ae, and future applicants, then the message of a liberal arts education—appreciation of complexity, rigorous questioning of what seems obvious, and the impulse to learn how to play an active and thoughtful role in a complicated world—may be seen as either empty rhetoric or muddled ramblings.

      In the hope of converting this research into something of practical purpose, we have not retired our computers and our pens. Along with a new colleague, Sarah Levin, and an experienced and widely respected former college president, Colin Campbell, we are working hard on more recent data from liberal arts colleges and Ivy League universities. Supplementing new data with interviews with coaches, faculty members, admissions deans, other administrators, and trustees, we hope that further research will provide more answers on the question of where we go from here. We hope that those who read The Game of Life will continue to make their own views known—to their alma mater, their high schools, and their children’s coaches, and to us. Complicated topics are worth thinking through, debating, and—we very much hope—doing something about.

      Prelude: Four Snapshots

      A MONEY MACHINE? THE 1999 ATHLETICS BUDGET

      AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

      3.8 million. In fiscal year 1999, the authors of a University committee report wrote, the music has stopped.

      3.6 million. Other universities experienced similar sharp declines, as they learned that being part of the world of fashion meant depending on a revenue stream that was driven by the whimsical clothing tastes of teenagers and young adults. People are wearing Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirts, Goss noted, rather than collegiate logos. The vagaries of fashion had taken their toll. But avoiding other market temptations, President Lee Bollinger pointed out, had also exacted a financial penalty; unlike other Big Ten schools, Michigan had steadfastly resisted installing the high-priced luxury skyboxes that bring in additional revenues, and it had also prohibited all advertising in the football stadium.

      500,000 to launch a state-of-the-art Web site—at the same time that the men’s basketball team had lost key players who had opted to join the NBA rather than finish their college careers—the budget gap widened. Recognizing the incongruity between steadily rising costs and wildly fluctuating sources of revenue, an internal review committee took issue with the broadly held perception that we are insulated from the national trends, that the Athletic Department is a ‘money machine,’ and that any financial challenges simply reflect unfortunate specific decisions.

      2.8 million deficit, could any school reasonably expect college sports to produce the pot of gold of sports lore?¹

      PURE AND SIMPLE: WOMEN’S LACROSSE AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE

      What will the lasting memories, especially for the seniors on this exceptional team, be of Williams? Many of these women have actually shed blood for the Purple and White. What will the motivation be for the underclass members next season?

      —A parent of a Williams College

      women’s lacrosse player in an

      e-mail to President Harry Payne

      On May 18, 1996, while members of the Amherst College women’s lacrosse team were in Alabama playing in the NCAA Division III championship tournament, the players from the Williams team were in Williamstown taking their spring term final exams. Williams had defeated Amherst handily in the final game of the year and—despite a 12–0 undefeated season—had turned down an invitation to compete for the national championship. Following the rules of the New England Small Colleges Athletic Conference (NESCAC), the Williams administration had noted that the tournament was scheduled to take place at the same time as final exams and had chosen not to apply to NESCAC for a waiver to allow the team to participate. So while the women at Amherst—where the exam period did not conflict with the tournament—went on to lose to Trenton State College in the first round, the members of the Williams team, ranked number 2 nationally, went back to being full-time students. They had had a perfect season in a league that Sports Illustrated had celebrated as pure and simple. Yet in the end simplicity proved elusive: Every team dreams of being No. 1 in the country, the local paper reported, for the Williams women’s lacrosse team, it’s been a nightmare.

      Twenty-five years earlier, seeking refuge from the increasing intensity of intercollegiate athletics, the presidents of a number of small, highly selective colleges in New England—including Middlebury, Bowdoin, Amherst, and Hamilton—had created a league of schools that took the provision of sports for their students seriously, but not too seriously. And lest anyone confuse moderation with neglect, Williams by 1996 sponsored 31 varsity sports and 16 junior varsity teams (at a time when junior varsities across the country seemed headed toward extinction owing to budgetary pressures). So, how did a perfect lacrosse season end up as a nightmare?

      In 1993, the presidents of the NESCAC schools loosened a long-standing restriction on postseason team play. Individual athletes—a tennis player or a swimmer—had been allowed to compete in postseason championships since the founding of the league. Teams, on the other hand, had been barred from participation out of concern that individual players might feel pressured by teammates or coaches to compete even though extending the season might interfere with their own academic priorities. The presidents of NESCAC changed this policy by endorsing a three-year experiment that delegated the initial decision concerning teams to the individual schools, although it still required a school to apply for a waiver if a tournament interfered with the school’s exam schedule.

      As the fall of 1995 came to a close, Williams recognized that the spring exam schedule would make it impossible for four teams (men’s and women’s lacrosse, women’s softball, and men’s baseball) to participate in postseason play, if they were to be invited. President Harry Payne and the faculty committee on educational priorities discussed whether the institution should apply to the league for a waiver and decided that it should not. I think that there is real merit, Payne would later write, to the idea that seasons come to an end at the examination time, and I think that asking the faculty to negotiate examination formats and schedules with the several dozen athletes would endanger the extraordinary tolerance which faculty have already shown in our unusually expansive athletics environment. The spring seasons were launched, and, as everyone hoped, the teams were extremely successful. The success of the women’s lacrosse team, however, reopened the question of participation in the national championship tournament.

      The administration was bombarded with e-mail, letters, and anger. My passion for this cause, one of the lacrosse players wrote to Payne, and my love of the sport of lacrosse, my teammates, and my coaches far outweighs my desire to demonstrate an attitude of courtesy and respect which is not in my heart. . . . You have made a poor decision. You have crushed a dream. You have denied myself, my teammates, and my coaches the opportunity of a lifetime. At a meeting in the president’s office, when President Payne suggested that this was one of those times that everyone, having heard the other side’s reasoning, would simply have to agree to disagree, one of the players responded: President Payne, I’ve heard your reasons, and your reasons are shit!

      When NESCAC was formed in the early 1970s, the Williams president at the time, John Sawyer, recognized the strain of allowing schools to decide for themselves the question of postseason competition. He wrote to the president of Bowdoin to express his relief that the presidents were in agreement about postseason team play: While there is minor grumbling from time to time, we have weathered the major storm on this question and I, for one, am not eager to invite it annually.

      But thirty years later, the storm clouds had reappeared. For the talented women relegated to watching as teams they had defeated were allowed to advance simply because the other institutions in the league had set different priorities or simply had different exam schedules, the spring of 1996 was a time of great disappointment. Parents who had watched their daughters strive for success, and achieve it, saw the ultimate prize denied them: I respectfully request, wrote one, that you change your mind so as to avert the serious negative consequences of your inaction. Please decide to decide. Other parents and lacrosse alumnae wrote to trustees calling for the ouster of President Payne for his unwillingness to apply for the waiver. On campus, petitions were signed urging an exception to the rule, and the students on the team obtained signatures from all of their professors indicating that they would allow the players to make alternative exam arrangements. The softball team had also made the playoffs, and it was unclear until the end of the season whether the men’s lacrosse team would also qualify. Allowing the women to make their own exam arrangements would open the door to allowing all the teams to do so. Flexibility is a virtue, President Payne responded to one parent. But, he added, principled consistency is also a virtue, especially in an environment where 2,000 young adults are watching and testing boundaries all the time, no matter where those boundaries are drawn.

      Despite the threat of lawsuits, the administration held firm, the tempest of the spring passed, and Williams adjourned for the summer. For a few students, the experience tainted their entire college experience, but for most, normalcy was restored. No matter how you decide, wrote one parent, I support your right to decide. . . . Moreover, if you decide to let them play, I promise not to write you my thoughts about grade inflation and [the] soft curriculum, which would be term paper length! Though it subsided quickly, and though many other teams had accepted the administration’s rules without protest, this storm had been real.²

      THE FUTURE IS NOW: NORTHWESTERN REBUILDS

      AROUND THE ROSE BOWL

      At Northwestern, an institution founded on a commitment to the highest order of excellence, superior achievement is expected in every aspect of University life. Athletics is no exception. The coaches demand it. The administration supports it. The student-athletes demonstrate it. . . . The future is now.

      —Brochure for "The Campaign for

      Athletic Excellence"

      5 million fund for the eventual repair of the stadium, Bienen’s predecessor, Arnold Weber, noted that the restrooms were barely suitable for a third world refugee camp. Nevertheless, a good argument could have been made that letting the stadium complete its arc toward becoming a ruin would be only appropriate for the home of the Northwestern football team.

      Since 1971, the Wildcats had had a combined record of 46 wins, 203 losses, and 4 ties. Included in this history was the infamous 34-game losing streak of the early 1980s and a more recent 0–11 season in 1989. Competing with the University of Chicago in the classroom and with Ohio State on the gridiron was an extremely difficult challenge. With an undergraduate population of only 7,400 students, the Wildcats bore the scars of trying to maintain a team able to compete within the Big Ten and still meet Northwestern’s academic standards.

      5,000). Then there are the even larger one-time costs of reserving a seat at the table. By 1989, every school in the Big Ten had an indoor practice facility, many built with bonds issued directly by state legislatures.

      Top-quality facilities were not just important for increasingly intense year-round training, they were also weapons in the war to recruit the next star linebacker: No matter what the adults around him say, Northwestern coach Gary Barnett noted, the athlete can see only four years into the future. With the enthusiasm of a new president and the support of the board of trustees (two of whom pledged multimillion-dollar gifts), the go-ahead was given in the spring of 1995 to launch The Campaign for Athletic Excellence.

      On September 2, 1995, the Northwestern University football team performed the highly unlikely act of defeating Notre Dame. This victory, celebrated as the upset of the century by the Chicago Sun-Times22 million for the new indoor practice facility and for renovating the stadium, which had been quietly launched in May, was formally unveiled. Even with a few miracles to the team’s credit, it took fans a little while to warm up to the idea of their team as world-beaters: the home game after the Notre Dame victory did not sell out.

      500,000 a year. And, with such success on the field, the athletics campaign that had been initiated before the dream season began charged full speed ahead. Recognizing that its teams were now competing for entertainment dollars against big-time professional franchises, and knowing that corporate fans were used to a high level of luxury when watching, say, the Bulls or the Bears, the school added a new Stadium Club with more than 300 indoor theater-type seats, a buffet, and private restrooms.

      Some grumbling was inevitable. Longtime fans who had endured years of gray skies, rain, and humbling defeats were now called upon to pay higher prices for the seats they had loyally staked out for years. About 20 percent of the student seats were moved, since students usually stood for almost the whole game and would obscure the view from some of the other seats—seats that had been empty when the team was losing. But, by and large, people were willing—eager, in fact—to help pay for the rejuvenation.

      In the end, the entire stadium was renovated, and the good times continued, with a Citrus Bowl appearance in 1996. But along with such success came reminders of the downside of playing big-time sports: two athletes who had been involved in gambling in 1994 (before the Rose Bowl season had even taken place) later lied to a grand jury and were eventually indicted on federal gambling charges in 1997. Reality set in on the field as well, as the team finished 3–9 in 1998 and 3–8 in 1999. Coach Barnett left in 1999 for the University of Colorado. The question of what might have been—of how the campaign might have fared had it not been swept along by two incredible seasons—cannot be answered by looking in Evanston, where the administration had long recognized that it would never be possible to make money on athletics with a stadium with a low seating capacity and the high costs of forgone tuition.

      But elsewhere the notion that you have to spend money to make money has a storied history, with new chapters added annually. In an article about Tulane’s football team, a writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune wrote: But at least one can look across the landscape and find hope. Northwestern, a university with academic credentials second to none, is headed for the Rose Bowl as the Big Ten champion. The message—Northwestern did it, so why can’t we?—illustrates both that hope springs eternal and that the wrong lessons can be learned from a real-time case study. In

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