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Varsityedge.com December 2003 News - Newsletter Homepage
ODDS N ENDS
A parent’s worst nightmare. In October a Plymouth State student was killed in a car crash. The accident involved a group of Sorority sisters and pledges of a non-sanctioned Sorority. There are rumors that some of the girls were blindfolded as part of a hazing event when the driver of the car lost control. There were 10 girls in a vehicle designed for 5 people. There seems to be one or two stories like this every year. There is a good chance that if your son or daughter goes to college and plays athletics or is in a fraternity or sorority, that they will be hazed at some point. My only advice is to tell them to not do anything that they think will put their life in jeopardy. Obviously riding in a car doesn’t seem that dangerous, but 9 people was too many! Which leads us to another hazing incident….
Last year in an attempt to be safe, a non-sanctioned fraternity had pledges chug large amounts of water instead of alcohol. One pledge died of hyponatremia. This is when the blood becomes low in sodium due to too much water in your body and is more common in athletes who train and compete in long distance sports like cycling or marathon. When they say Gatorade is good for you, they are not kidding. Gatorade wasn’t some tasty drink designed by some guy in his kitchen, it was created in a laboratory at contains sodium and potassium, which help fight low sodium levels as a result of sweating. But even sports drinks often do not contain enough sodium for an endurance race and you may need to take salt tablets. While water is important, too much water is not good. A first time marathoner in the Boston marathon last year also died of hyponatremia. The symptoms include bloating, upset stomach, nausea, headaches, cramps, disorientation, slurred speech and confusion. Untreated, hyponatremia and dehydration can lead to collapse, convulsions, and death. If you participate in endurance sports and have some concerns, consult a nutrition specialist.
The Atlantic Sun Conference will add East Tennessee State University to the league beginning in 2005-06. East Tennessee State currently is a member of the Southern Conference.
Rumor has it that some D1 baseball schools who ask recruits to go to junior college for a year or two, pay for their schooling while they work on their game at the JUCO level before they are ready to come play with the big boys!
A recruiting service told me that one of their reps was meeting with a college coach and during the meeting the coach got a package in the mail, shook it, realized their was an unsolicited video from a recruit the coach had not heard about and threw it in the trash. The moral of the story is try not to send unsolicited videos to coaches you haven’t previously spoken to. The other moral of the story is that it’s against NCAA rules for representatives of recruiting services to meet or speak to college coaches regarding student-athletes they are working with. It’s my hope that whoever sent the video goes to a competing school and scores 30 points against them and then turns to the coach and says, “Hey, did you ever watch that recruiting video I sent you?”
My Alma Mata, Fairfield University, is scheduled to play Michigan and Duke in basketball this year and take a trip to Hawaii for a 3 game tournament. The moral of the story – While Fairfield isn’t going to challenge anyone for the National Championship, and you might not be a top division 1 player, you can go to some smaller division one schools, get a scholarship, play some pretty darn good teams, and take some nice trips. Fairfield will probably lose to Duke by 40, but just playing a team like that (at Duke no less!) is enough of a thrill for some. If you can’t play for the best you can sometimes play against the best. Our baseball team took a spring trip to Duke my freshman year and at the end of BP, the Duke coach plays home run derby with like the 7 or 8 biggest kids on the team and they were all giant. The Duke field has a row of “really tall” pine trees around the fence in the outfield and some of the kids were hitting the top of the trees. Their center fielder was also the safety on the football team and he was so fast that when he got onto first base, our coach turned to our catcher and said “Don’t even throw down”. 7 years later that story is still funny! The good news is that Duke only beat us 2-1.
According to the NCAA website, there is only one Division II school that offers men’s gymnastics. The question I have is who the heck do they compete against?
Last year, 9 Georgia Football players tried to sell their championship rings on Ebay. As the school enters the post-season again this year, they have already informed the current members of the team who tried to sell their rings last year, that there will be no free rings this year and if they would like one, the players in question will have to pay for the rings with with their own money.
The NCAA will begin testing for the drug known as THG. THG made the news recently as a steroid that could not be detected in modern day drug testing for athletes and several high profile athletes are being subpoenaed to testify against the alleged maker of the drug.
The first Major League steroid test is back. More than 1,400 players were tested and 7% of the tests came back positive. Quick math tells me that’s 98 players or about 3 players per team. The tests are basically a dog and pony show for the media and fans as you have to test positive 5 times before you face a year of suspension. Any player who tests positive 5 times might want to be examined to actually make sure they have a human brain installed in their skull. It was also no surprise to see legendary fitness buff Bill Romanowski suspended from the NFL for testing positive for steroids. The guy is 40 years old and is in better shape and stronger than the majority of the players in the NFL. He attributes his success to taking over 150 dietary supplements and pills a day and “stretching”, but I guess we know better now. And in case you missed it, authorities raided the home of Barry Bonds personal trainer and to their surprise, found steroids in the house. But Bonds has denied the use of steroids for a number of years, (much like Romanowski always did!)
Latest recruiting services pitch I heard. “There are 254,000 seniors who play high school football. There are only 5,042 athletic scholarships awarded at the D1 level. Your odds are 1-50 that you get a scholarship.” First off, not every person who plays football in high school is interested in playing in college. Secondly there are about 2,486 scholarships each year because each D1 football team is required to offer 85 athletic scholarships and there are 117 football teams at the 1A level and you can divide 85 by 4 because each coach has about 21.25 scholarships per year. Thirdly not every football player is going to play D1, wants to play D1, or can play D1. Lets say 50% of all high school (senior) football players wanted to play in college which I think is a very generous estimate, the total number drops to 127,000. Now there are 121 1AA teams, 151 - D2 teams and 229 - D3 teams. Lets now say that out of those 127,000 kids who want to play D1 football only 20% have the skill and desire to play D1. Now the number is 25,400 players. A far cry from the 1-50 odds of getting a D1 scholarship and more like 1 in 10. It has nothing to do with numbers of high school players and all to do with how many players want to continue at D1 and can continue at D1. If you don’t have the skill to play at that level, you have no odds, but if you do have the skill and desire to play D1 football, the odds of you receiving an athletic scholarship are actually better. In reality as you are not competing against 254,000 other kids.
If anyone goes on a recruiting visit to Marshall University, can you let me know how the new 1,800 pound stuffed Buffalo in the lobby of the Shewey facilities building at Marshall stadium looks!
Good News! The Division 1 rules manual used by college coaches has grown 22 pages to roughly 485 pages. 22 more pages of rules coaches and parents can break.
In case you were wondering, the NFL said it was legal to tackle or bring down Miami running back Ricky Williams by his dread-locks! This has nothing to do with college athletics, I just thought it was interesting.
Senator Edward Kennedy is contemplating a bill that would penalize schools with earl-decision programs. Early decision was originally designed to help students who knew where they wanted to go to school and to help schools reduce the admissions crunch during the regular admissions process. Unfortunately it has become a tool to increase one’s chances of gaining acceptance to a school, and decrease one’s chances if they do not apply “early”. It was not known if Mr. Kennedy offered to lend his time in opening 20,000 applications all at once.
The BIG East, here we go again… Last month I spoke too soon about the Big East not being a basketball powerhouse anymore. In two years, the Big East will be an entirely new conference with Louisville, Cincinnati, South Florida, DePaul, and Marquette all joining (DePaul & Marquette have no football teams). The success of the Big East will have an impact on athletic teams, recruiting habits, travel, and athletic scholarship availability. Louisville as you know, is coached by the infamous Rick Pitino; it’s just too bad they won’t be playing BC in Boston if you know what I mean. Marquette made it to the final four last year, but they lost their best player to the NBA draft. Cincinnati and DePaul usually have very competitive basketball teams, which should make for an interesting league in a few years. As for football, the Big East will still stink!
Rice, Southern Methodist and Tulsa of the Western Athletic Conference and Marshall and Central Florida of the Mid-American Conference will join Conference USA beginning in 2005.
FINANCIAL AID NEWS
According to the College Board, for the current academic year, tuition at public colleges averaged $4,694, up almost $600 from the year before.
The rate of tuition increase at four-year private colleges was 6 percent, with the average tuition now at $19,710 nationally. The New England region averaged $25,093, the most expensive region in the country. I can’t wait to have children! With more encouraging news, the Boston Globe ran a story on the same day about how many college graduates are leaving the Greater Boston area because they cannot justify the living expense. So not only can we not afford to go to school here, but we can’t afford to live here after we go to the school we couldn’t afford.
Why do colleges give aid (money) to students who are well off financially?
Imagine when Bill Gates’ daughter goes to college, there is a good chance that the school she attends wouldn’t even charge his family. While Bill probably wouldn’t let this happen, schools reward money to students who have unique traits and talents and to students whom the school feels will increase their prestige and exposure.
Ok, what are unique traits and talents?
Unique traits and talents are things you have or do better than other people. Perhaps you are really smart or a talented musician, talented athlete, famous actor, son or daughter of a prince or any other weird trait you might have. Schools can reward money to any student they would like at their schools and will do so without any thought of the financial situation of that students family. Merit aid saw a big increase in the early 90’s as the population of students attending colleges shrunk. Schools found themselves competing for the same students and lesser-known schools threw money at stellar students in the hopes of boosting the academic profile of the school. If a school can attract a lot of high scoring SAT students, suddenly that school becomes more competitive. If a school becomes more competitive, there is suddenly a perceived notion that a school is now better. If there is a notion that a school is better than another school, suddenly applications increase, notoriety increases, and ultimately money increases. Last year 25% of aid given out by schools had nothing to do with financial need, it was simply schools throwing money at students that they wanted to attend their school. If and when Bill Gates’ daughter enrolls in college, whatever college she attends will gain more notoriety and more exposure. The school knows that this publicity will probably be worth more than whatever Bill would pay in tuition.
ESSAY QUESTION OF THE MONTH
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. believed that it was critical for one person to have discovered something in life for which it was worth dying. If you could choose one political, environmental, spiritual, or social issue to fight for, what would it be and why?
ACADEMIC NEWS
This year more than 1.4 million students took the SAT test, the most in 15 years. Translation. The next several years will see a significant increase is high school students attending college and applications will rise making it more difficult to be accepted at a particular University. Here are some examples of ridiculous application statistics.
46 students from my high school in 2003 applied to Tufts University in Medford Massachusetts. Tufts gets about 13,000 applications a year and accepts roughly 3,500 students give or take. Knowing where other students at your high school are applying is really important. I don’t care if these 46 students scored 1600 on their SAT’s and had 4.0 GPA’s in honors classes and didn’t need one cent of financial aid, there is absolutely no way one school that small can let in 46 people from the same town and high school.
21,000 students applied to Boston College in 2002. The school admitted roughly 7,000 students or 32% and 2,200 students enrolled. Of the 2,200 available spots in the freshman class, 1,500 were taken by early applicants (much too many!). This left 18,000 applicants fighting over the 700 remaining spots. If you factor in the athletes that probably got preferential treatment from admissions, realistically you are looking at maybe 550 remaining spots. Not very good odds for the regular decision pool! This is a classic example of getting rejected from a school based on sheer numbers despite having the grades and test scores to get in.
Harvard received 3,000 applications for the class of 2007 from students who scored a perfect 800 on the SAT math. It’s not known how these students faired in the acceptance game, but I imagine some of them didn’t make it.
NEWS ON INDIVIDUAL COLLEGES
Penn State University offers Kinesiology 004, Principals of fly tying and fly-fishing for trout, which takes advantages of the many rivers located near the campus. I don’t think my guidance counselor mentioned that in high school.
Florida State has a program in underwater archaeology which take advantage of the sailing ships that weren’t as strong as rock and coral in the shallow Florida waters.
Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute – or RPI (NY) - has their own critical reactor for students studying nuclear physics – and a Division 1 hockey team!
Beginning this fall, the University of California system will begin spot-checking applications to verify claims about applicants personal achievements, activities and experiences. Students will be asked to provide evidence to support the claims made on their applications and in their personal statements, such as special circumstances. The new measure is intended to ensure that admissions decisions are based on accurate information and to discourage students from exaggerating their accomplishments.
Rockhurst University dedicated its new on-campus facility in September. It is the main focus of the $11 million Loyola Park, which also will have six tennis courts and a field for intramural sports.
Brandeis University (Waltham, MA) will host the 2004 Fencing Championship. If anyone was wondering!
Virginia Tech has placed monitoring devices in football helmets to measure the impact players experience in games and practices. The goal of the program is to better predict when a player might have sustained a concussion. Wonder if they monitor how bad the team felt after BC came into their house and cleaned their clocks?
Angelo State University will add baseball to its men's athletics program during the 2004-05 academic year. The Rams will play at Foster Field, home of the San Angelo Colts professional baseball team.
Guilford College will add four varsity sports in 2004-05, The new sports are men's and women's cross country, women's swimming and diving, and men's tennis. Men’s tennis makes a comeback after being cut in 2002. Guilford College will now have 16 varsity programs.
In the November newsletter I wrote that the Skidmore hockey program was being eliminated in 2004. Well a group of parents, alumni, and friends raised 2.5 million dollars and saved the program. Its not what you know, its who you know, and who you know with lots of money!
RULE CHANGES
The 3-point line in men’s college basketball will be moved back 9 inches in the 2004-2005 season. Thank god!
COLLEGE RECRUITING INFO
This month we will discuss the following...
· Tangible sports and their effect on recruiting
· State School Recruiting
· Scholarship Renewal
· Working Out as a Transfer
· Another Recruiting Services Encounter.
Here is a pretty important link:
http://www1.ncaa.org/membership/membership_svcs/recruiting_calendars/index.html
It outlines the contact periods, evaluation periods and quiet periods for each sport at the NCAA D1 and D2 level.
TANGIBLE SPORTS
Let’s talk about tangible sports. Tangible sports are sports where your success is measured by time or score, and I’m not talking batting average here or how many yards you run for in a game. I’m talking track and field, swimming, golf, bowling (don’t laugh) and crew and any sport that measures success with a clock or some tangible score. Sports like this offer you a distinct advantage in the recruiting process because you can measure yourself against not only other high school athletes, but also college athletes. If you play one of these sports and you haven’t been online at college websites looking at the times and scores of the current players on the team, you are doing yourself a disservice. When a coach is recruiting student-athletes based on times and scores, here is what they are thinking about…
1. What type of coaching has this athlete had? If you have good times and horrible coaching, your scores may be even better when you actually get some good coaching.
2. What type of technique does this athlete have? If you have terrible technique, but are still throwing up good numbers, your skill may increase with the right coaching.
3. Physical tools. If you are putting up good scores with average height, weight, or speed, a better conditioning program may make you even better.
This can also work against you. If you have great coaching, great technique, and are physically strong and fast and you don’t have great numbers or haven’t improved, this can show coaches that you may have reached your potential already.
Don’t pick schools you think you can play at, pick schools you know you can play at by analyzing the scores and times needed to compete there on a regular basis. Once you know this, articulate to the coach how you have researched their program and are confident you can perform at that level. If the coach says I don’t think so, it means there is something else they don’t like about you and it’s best to move on.
STATE SCHOOL RECRUITING
Last month we talked about the Ohio Northern football team a D3 team that has 100 players on its roster and 96 are from Ohio. Here is another example. The South Florida Baseball team has 31 players on its roster and 30 players from Florida. What does this mean? Three things. (1) Florida has a lot of talented high school baseball players. (2) Since South Florida is a state school, they can stretch their scholarship dollars further with in-state players because tuition costs less, and some if not most in-state players can attend and pay their own way because the in-state tuition is pretty cheap compared to other schools. And (3), if you want to play for South Florida and are from say, Pennsylvania, you have two distinct issues - you have to find a way to get yourself in front of the coach because he certainly wont be flying to Pennsylvania to see you play, and you will probably have to pay your own way because there is little chance that the coach can and will allocate a significant amount of scholarship money for an out-of-state player when they could probably get two in-state players at the same price as you. The moral of the story – While you may be talented enough to play for a state school not near your home, there are many obstacles that can prevent you from being recruited by a coach. Evaluate rosters in depth and factor where players are generally recruited from into your decision-making.
SCHOLARSHIP RENEWAL
There is a rumor going around that a D1 baseball school is asking (or telling) 5 players that they will not have their scholarship renewed because the new head coach wants to use their money to recruit 5 JUCO players who he thinks can have more impact on the baseball program. In case you didn’t know, scholarships are not guaranteed for 4 years but renewed each year. You don’t hear about many student-athletes not having their scholarship renewed for two reasons. (1) It doesn’t happen that often, and (2) It sends a bad message to current and future recruits - and parents and students will be more hesitant to accept a scholarship at a school knowing they will take it away if you aren’t a superstar. In order to avoid this, try to find out the past team history on this by asking the coach and or current players on the team. Next ask the coach how long he plans to stay coaching at the school as you might not want a new coach coming in and “cleaning house”. Personally, I think it’s a bad move and can hurt future recruiting classes because some families rely on an athletic scholarship to pay for college and need some sort of guarantee that the coach they sign on with has the best interests of the player in mind.
Your scholarship can be canceled under the following conditions
1 - You become ineligible for intercollegiate competition
2 - You fraudulently misrepresent info on an application, letter of intent or financial aid agreement.
3 - Engage in conduct warranting substantial disciplinary penalty.
4 - Voluntarily withdraw from your sport on your own.
A not-so similar thing happened a few years ago at Boston College. The BC men’s basketball coach extended several verbal offers to local high school basketball players who were pretty talented. When a coach extends a verbal offer, they have usually submitted a players grades to admissions and gotten the OK to extend a verbal offer. Several of the players accepted the offers “verbally”, which is not legally binding, but usually accepted as a gentleman’s handshake before a national letter of intent is signed. When the players applied to BC, admissions had a change of heart and rejected two applications. Needless to say this didn’t look very good for the program, and those players enrolled in other schools. While it’s difficult to measure what type of affect it had on future recruiting classes, it’s hard to imagine that future recruits felt good about the coach extending verbal offers knowing that if they accept the offer and then apply to the school that their application could also be rejected.
TRANSFER WORKOUTS
Every time I start clicking away on ncaa.org, I find something more bizzare. It is permissible for a four-year college transfer prospective student-athlete to participate in weightlifting activities on an institution's campus, provided:
(a) - Such activity is not prearranged;
(b) - The strength and conditioning coach is performing normal duties and responsibilities in the supervision of the weight room and does not conduct the workout;
(c) - The four-year college transfer prospect has signed a written offer of financial aid and/or admission.
Hey Bobby, I didn’t know you were coming by the school today, while you are here in your Khaki’s and Cartigan sweater, why don’t you hop on the bench over here and push out a few sets of 245 for us, when you are done we just happen to have the squat machine loaded with 15 plates and if you are interested, feel free to give that a try.
In Closing
The recruiting services gig seems to be getting worse. While perusing the web for various recruiting services, I came across one site with quotes and testimonials from college coaches. In case you didn’t know, it is against NCAA rules for a college coach to endorse a recruiting service by using his or her name. The quote read as followed…
"The number of athletes we are currently recruiting has doubled since first finding your site. Your site has also enabled us to find more of the fastest & smartest swimmers in the nation."
[School name] swim coach
Now, I won’t reveal the name of the school that was quoted, but lets just say they are a very, very talented collegiate swim program. Curious, I emailed the coach and asked him about the quote. Here was his response.
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Thank you for drawing my attention to this quote. It is misleading on a number of fronts: first of all, we do not extensively use online services. Secondly, the quote in question was likely provided to this particular online service by an interim coach who replaced me during the 2001-2002 swimming season; I was on a leave. The young man who replaced me may very well have used this service in ‘02 and provided them with the anonymous quote. Thirdly, I doubt very seriously if our recruit contacts doubled in that particular year, although he may have received a few good contacts; I don’t know. I would agree with your encouragement to parents NOT to spend thousands of dollars on recruit services. We will ask this service to take the quote off their masthead. Thank you for getting in touch with us.
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I am not sure how or why you would want to double the amount of student-athletes you can recruit as there are only so many offers you can make and so many student-athletes you can reasonable recruit at one time. Based on the success of this program and the fact that their roster (just the men’s roster) is comprised of swimmers from 6 countries and 15 states, I don’t think this school has a problem finding the recruits they need. Many times, online recruiting services are started by former college athletes who turn to friends they went to school with who are now coaches for quotes and support. I am guessing that this was the case here. This was a nationally renowned program who most likely didn’t need to all of a sudden change their recruiting practices for one year even though the regular coach stepped down for a brief period. The big problem is that a parent or student goes onto to that recruiting site, sees a quote from a well-known college program and instantly thinks that the coaches are using it and finding athletes via the service.
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