palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32976
Reg: 11-21-04
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12-30-20 06:11 AM - Post#318326
In response to PennFan10
We Ivies live with a fiction---that our "student-athletes" are treated no differently from the rest of the student body. Thus we have an "AI" (of course, not part of the original Ivy agreement, but imposed to create 'fairness') to provide an objective admissions floor, but non-athletes have no such floor. We prohibit athletic scholarships but have such generous financial aid (some much better than others--so much for 'fairness') that recruitment can be tailored to provide de facto scholarships for the best players. We provide the athletes with individualized academic help and a built in network of job opportunities that the non-athlete simply does not have handed to him/her.
So the explanation that we cannot have a basketball season because we must treat student athletes like all other students doesn't wash. But for me, the key is that in a bubble, we could have treated them as we do all others, who similarly must take their classes virtually. We could have sent all the men's and women's basketball and hockey teams to Cornell, housed them in dorms (no students were there) and over a 6 week period, played a full round robin while they were taking classes (although most of the time would have been intersession). And the argument that sending them to a distant location during intersession would be treating them differently from all other students is weak, since athletes in winter sports regularly compete during intersession while others are on vacation.
The explanations all fall short. We could have shown all the other conferences how to compete safely.
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