@scipio – As we’ve discussed previously, a womens rowing team at a D1 football school (i.e. USC) was the perfect target for the sport admission scam.
Since programs at those schools exist primarily to enable title ix legal compliance by offsetting all of the male heads on the football roster. There’s just not that many female high head count sports that are available to schools in that legal compliance posture. A few schools tried to make “competitive cheer” an NCAA sanctioned sport, but that effort was struck down by the federal courts. Some schools have turned to other odd female sport squads like bowling, rifle and beach volleyball.
So female rowing is the sport that makes the numbers work. Hence the big squads popping up at rowing hotbeds like Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, Ohio State and Kansas State.
Great cover for the scam since the number of roster spots far outweighs the supply of experienced female rowers coming out of high school. Typically the rosters feature tons of novices and walk-ons and also high turnover (when many of those novices drop out).
Again, I wasn’t saying he shouldn’t have been re-tested after ten years. I’m saying ten years ago he got testing, took the test right away, and the right response at that point wasn’t to send him out for more testing to duplicate the testing he’d gotten a few months previously.
Of of our companies former C-Execs was dyslexic. But was not really diagnosed until college. As he put it, he was always able to skate thru school, and lucked into UT-Austin as a juco transfer when it was a whole lot easier to get in. But at the big Uni, he was failing miserably. Fortunately, they had an excellent disabilities office who ran him thru all the tests…
Long story, but he’s now a CEO of a tech company. Smart guy, did well, once he got help to learn how to learn.
Just an anecdote to support the fact that LD’s come in all shapes and sizes.
This brings to mind a question that is unrelated to the scandal.
Title IX also applies to high school, correct?
Why can’t colleges expand the number of athletes in sports that many high school girls DO play? Can there be more than one volleyball, lax, basketball, softball, track, cross country, soccer? Smaller # of sports but larger rosters or multiple teams? A,B,C squads or something like Frosh/JV/Varsity in high school?
@OHMomof2 I think the problem is there are just not as many athletes as you would think across the existing sports to expand the rosters. I know there was talk around the women’s basketball tournament this year about how there are really only about 4 schools that dominate every year and they should reduce the scholarships in order to better “spread the wealth” and create parity. Sounded good in theory until you look and very few basketball programs that made the tournament this year even use their full allotment of roster spots. I think this holds true in a lot of sports. The female athletes are there but either not of high enough caliber for a P5 school or not interested in the commitment it takes to be on a P5 roster.
I even see it at our large area high schools. Yes there are a ton of sports/teams for girls at these large high schools but very few “athletes” that truely want to compete. I see the same 5 -10 names listed on the starting lineups, all area teams, etc.across these schools in all sports. XC in fall, basketball winter, soccer in spring is the typical list although there is some deviation with Volleyball or tennis but overall it is the same girls, not the case for boys (for the most part). This really hit home when a friend’s daughter was begged, as a freshman, to play varsity basketball at a large (4,000 student), ethnically diverse school because they had no point guard. This girl was a tremendous athlete, was in the national team pool in soccer, and ended up with a P5 soccer scholarship but she was less than 5 feet tall and hadn’t played basketball at any level in 3 years. What she had was she was a jock and they needed a body, there was just not enough talent or desire in the other 2,000 girls in the school to fill the spot. It has never made sense to me but I see it year after year.
I don’t think the crew teams are tearing things up competitively either, outside of a few big athletic schools most athletes are in it for the fun, no? Ivies don’t do scholarships and have the AI so are already at a disadvantage if we are thinking in terms of the Final 4.
I’m just wondering if crew spots can go to expanded, larger basketball or track or whatever. Sports played by more girls in high school.
There are exactly 4 women’s headcount sports. That’s set by the NCAA, not by the schools. Women’s basketball offsets men’s basketball, so take that out. Volleyball, tennis and gymnastics are the other headcount sports and the schools may have men’s teams with fewer scholarships for those.
Schools decide which sports to offer and which sports to fund. USC is in the PAC 12 so also has to follow those rules. USC has 13 women’s NCAA varsity teams and 10 men’s (it has a men’s rowing team, but it’s not NCAA). It has other non-NCAA teams too, like cheerleading. So USC offsets its 85 football scholarships with 20 women’s crew, 12 women’s lacrosse, and 10 soccer scholarships. It also has more women’s scholarship in tennis and volleyball, even though there are also men’s teams in those sports.
Most colleges do have more women’s teams than men’s teams to balance the huge number of spots football claims. There are very few men’s gymnastic teams any more and several schools have dropped men’s swimming while keeping women’s swimming. The NCAA limits the number of scholarships per sport, so if you have a women’s lax team with 50 players, there are still only 12 scholarships to split. And 30 of those players will NEVER see the field.
Some sports do restrict the size of the varsity roster (football, baseball, basketball) through NCAA rules.
It is not like high school where they just add a jv squad. Who would they play? Who pays for it? Some schools do have club teams but usually those are self supporting by the players. At USC, the men’s lax team is a club team. No scholarships, no recruiting preference in admissions.
Schools have to give athletic opportunities to women in proportion to the m/f ratio at the school and they do.
I don’t think scholarships are relevant to this particular discussion (about selling recruited spots and how crew is easily abused because few girls row in HS), but I take the other points.
If every school has different sports then “who do they play” is relevant for every school and team. Some colleges have no football, some have no LAX, many have no crew or polo, etc. They find other schools that do have it and play them.
“Who pays for it”, in this case of, say, a JV women’s soccer team, would be the money moved to that from ending (or shrinking?), say, the crew team.
I’m sure every school makes the tradeoffs it needs to, I was just curious why the go-to approach seems to be adding completely different (and somewhat exotic) sports rather than different (lower) levels of more popular ones.
I suppose that could be tied into the old boarding school/high SES connections?
@OHMomof2 I agree with you but I think the problem is the scandals are hitting the schools that not only have to have the huge rosters to offset football but also have to be competitive within P5 conferences. I don’t think there are the numbers of women that have both the desire and skills to keep up on a competitive Big Ten or Pac Ten basketball or track or whatever team. This is evidenced by these conference basketball teams rarely fill their entire roster today and are at the top of the game, if they can’t/won’t fill them today what would 5 more spots do?
I looked at an P5 Rowing team that is well under the radar on being competitive.Iowa. I chose this school as I know a woman that rowed at Iowa and have a little insight into the program. The woman I know had never been in a boat (of any kind) before she joined the team. She was not alone, most of her teammates were just like her. Iowa added rowing as a Title IX offset. Their recruiting consists of a few with rowing backgrounds but the bulk are just former high school athletes that are not good enough to compete in their HS sport at the NCAA level but are not immune to hard work and competition. There are 50 women on the team and 33 are from the midwest where there is very little if any high school and club rowing. Skimming through these midwest team members about half have no bio listed on the school’s site and those that do came from backgrounds in XC/track, soccer, tennis, etc. One came to the school as a gymnast and switched to the rowing team.
This is why rowing is a good program to exploit, there are so many athletes that are first timers there is no way for an admission rep to see if the “tip” from the coach was warranted, there are no stats to check. The perfect cover. Water polo falls in this same bucket, not that they take a bunch that have never done it before but rather it is not a sport that gets much press at the high school level. You could be a phenomenal in the midwest there would be next to nothing about your ability that could be researched, Granted the coach at Iowa probably does not need to use “tips” and has probably never been approached to sell a spot but it is just an example of how it could happen so easily.
^^the the first place, many of those in the 93% are in NCAA capped sports such as football and basketball.
The other restriction is facilities. Sure, even if the NCAA has no cap on the size of women’s swim team, the pool is only so big. There are only so many grass/astroturf fields for say, lacrosse and field hockey and soccer to play on. Perhaps not a problem for midwest states where land is plentiful and cheap, but adding fields in landlocked Pac12 colleges is brutal.
Then, of course, there’s the issue of travel. Do you carry a bunch of extra varsity players but leave half of them home when the team goes on the road? What’s the point?
It’s the Pac 12, and I don’t think you’ll find one Power 5 conference team that isn’t full of talented athletes, and 10 more who wanted to be on the team. A walk-on at CU or Oregon or Stanford track and field? All the recruits might not have scholarships but they are identified before attending the schools. Could they hide one more on the teams? Sure. Could a basketball team hide 3? No, and because it is a headcount team with a scholarship required, they wouldn’t want to.
At most schools, there is no need to hide the admissions through sports. I don’t think anyone questions whether Singer could have gotten these kids into Arizona or Iowa State or Montana with just their grades and a good application. They wanted schools with very limited admissions
The one ‘recruit’ that surprised me in this scandal was the USC football recruit. He certainly wasn’t one of the 85 scholarship players (only 25 can be freshmen recruits) and even getting one of the 35 preferred walk on spots is hard to cover up. Almost all other non-headcount sports it is easy to put one more on the roster without a scholarship. They get in, they drop the sport. That happens with talented, qualified athletes too. I’ve know quite a few D1 athletes who never played a game. Some made it a semester, others quit the team almost immediately. Some stayed at the schools, others didn’t.
Would you like to cut me a $6,000 check to cover the neuropsychologist’s fee, plus additional money for travel and hotel expenses for the 2-day series of tests and 2 days loss of work?
Crew often recruits from swimming. I think it has to do with what was said above - swimmers are used to early morning work outs, hard work and competition.
