While the National Collegiate Athletic Association restricts varsity athletes’ in-season time commitments to 20 hours each week, Dartmouth students who participate in varsity athletics may paint a slightly different picture. It’s not strange to hear about our athletes running 70 miles a week, doing two-a-days, working out before class and practicing the NCAA maximum of six days a week (with conditioning on the seventh day encouraged). Add travel and locker room time, and the choice to play a sport is like a job, often requiring more than 35 hours. By comparison, I spent 12 hours each week in class last term.
Dartmouth places too great an emphasis on athletic success to the detriment of our community. This lays an absurd burden on those who choose to participate in athletics. I can identify four reasons we care so much about athletic success, all of which, to me, seem nonsensical. The exception to this rule is basketball, which, unlike other sports, may warrant excessive attention.
First, we believe that we need we to be competitive in the Ivy League, which, contrary to popular belief, is a Division I athletic conference, not an exclusive community of pedantic know-it-alls. Failure to perform in the Ivy League leads to all sorts of problems — if we played Division III, would we even be an Ivy League school? A strong athletics program offers networking and benefits that can generate a fundraising bonanza. Apparently moving a ball down a field more successfully than Harvard leads to “many sighs and many cheers,” not to mention many alumni donations. I bet that we pick up significantly more love and attention when we win and directly after Homecoming.
Second, conventional wisdom states that to achieve the above financial benefits, our teams must be successful in the short term. Any coach can tell you that building a team is nearly impossible when you don’t win. This cycle is allegedly important to break. The alternative is Columbia’s present situation — an historic lack of athletic prowess has nearly destroyed that school’s good reputation (oh wait, it received 11,000 more applications than us last year). Forget for a second any problems you have with the fairness of athlete recruiting or the waste of resources it entails, because we have games to win.
Some believe we have a tradition of excellence to uphold. I’m sure the small community of students on varsity teams and their alumni care about this, but the rest of the student body emphatically does not. I challenge you to find 10 students not affiliated with a particular sport who know any team’s record. Our football victories mean as much to me as our parliamentary debate team’s success. Most students like to go to games to cheer for our school and our friends. It’s fun. Whether we win or lose is, in the long run, inconsequential.
Finally, there is a case to be made for how success in athletics leads to greater national recognition. I’m sure this is true to a certain extent, but in all honesty, only two collegiate sports command national attention: football and basketball. Unfortunately, since we are in neither the Football Bowl Series nor the Football Championship Series, post-season glory doesn’t await Dartmouth on the gridiron.
A case could be made for basketball, however. In 2013, each night of March Madness averaged 8 million viewers. Duke University, Dartmouth’s academic peer, generates millions annually in sports-related revenue, much of which comes from its basketball program. Cornell saw an increase in applications after its March Madness run, and, in an extreme example of exposure, Butler University saw a 41 percent increase in applications in 2011 after making the NCAA championship. If Dartmouth wants to be regarded in the world of sports, basketball is a logical choice from a moneymaking standpoint.
Dartmouth claims to be an academic institution whose goal is to educate its student body. Yet we increasingly waste time and money by placing too high a priority on athletics for a small material benefit. Camaraderie, teamwork, encouraging excellence and other oft-evoked benefits of sports are all very nice. I just think we need to tone it down and adopt an approach more like Division III schools — except for basketball. A Sweet Sixteen run would make everyone happy, including admissions officers.
