<p>UChicago will be hosting the POWERADE Jam Fest of the McDonald’s All-American Games this year (not all of the events, just the first in the three-day program). Correct me if I am wrong, but this seems to be the first time that UChicago decides to host a nationally televised sport event in decades. This makes me wonder whether our current indifference toward sports will change.</p>
<p>What role should sports play at the University? What should the academics/sports ratio be here? I would say that ratio is 90/10 or 95/5 as of now. Should it stay that way, or should we model ourselves after say, the Ivies (where the ratio is probably like 80/20), the Big Ten (60/40 or 50/50ish), Stanford or Duke (70/30)?</p>
<p>Most importantly, to what extent should we be promoting the concept of scholar-athlete?</p>
<p>I always thought picking one sport and then absolutely killing at it, as Duke does with basketball, was an excellent strategy for small, academically selective universities to follow. From what I have seen, truly nationally competitive athletics are necessarily at odds with solid academics - while someone that plays D-III sports might conceivably be academically strong enough for admission, D-I level players pull down the academic level of the university. This isn’t a problem in conferences like the Big 10 where freshman class sizes regularly hit 10,000 students or more, but at small schools like U Chicago, filling the rosters for a full set of D-1 sports wastes an unacceptable number of admissions slots. Focusing on a sport like basketball allows the school to have a marquee program while still only wasting ~5 beds per class on what are (for the most part) academically unproductive admits.</p>
<p>^^It’s not like we’re turning down that many star athletes, it’s more that star athletes aren’t attracted to UChicago (I would guess, at least)… it takes time to build a program that’s good enough to attract better players. It’s a slow process. We would also need better facilities. You’re not going to convince a Seth Curry to play for a school with a gym that holds (maybe) 600 kids or so.</p>
<p>It’s cool that this competition is coming to UChicago. The school has some great facilities (and new ones - like the Logan Arts Center - are coming), so it’ll be great for the school to host more public functions like this in the future.</p>
<p>DivineComedy, I’m not really sure what you mean by the “academic/sports ratio.” I also think it’s a little silly to clump all the ivies together in terms of their attitude toward sports. Some schools, like Princeton and Dartmouth, are extremely sporty, and something like 20-25% of the student body at each school is a Division I athlete, which is pretty nuts. Other schools, like Columbia, have much less of a sports vibe, especially with its athletic facilities being located far from campus. </p>
<p>Personally, I don’t think this McDonald’s competition means much in terms of changing attitudes toward UChicago sports. At the same time, instead of going D1 like some of its peer schools, the first step would be for RESULTS to matter at UChicago. There are many, many coaches at U of C who can stay for years and years, even though the teams are often terrible. Sports at top schools matter in the sense that they develop soft factors in athletes that employers/grad schools like. Look at top b schools or med schools - the classes tend to be very sporty.</p>
<p>With this in mind, it’s important for UChicago to to develop a winning culture within its sports programs. Instead of sports being completely ancillary and being fueled primarily by the eggheads who just happen to be decent at soccer or basketball (as is the case, say, at Caltech and MIT), UChicago may want to create more of the sports culture found at a Williams or Amherst - schools where athletes are expected to win and succeed, and coaches are held accountable for their results. </p>
<p>Especially at the D3 level, there’s nothing stopping UChicago from developing a culture of excellence. As UChicago moves forward, a key motivating factor for the school should be excellence across fields - and winning on the field at the D3 level can certainly coexist with elite, rigorous academics.</p>
<p>I think that much of the attitude towards sports at UChicago comes from the athletes themselves, who value their education as much as their prowess on the playing field. They have to - there are no academic ‘breaks’ for them, and I feel like maintaining the balance between school and sports is as much a marker of their UChicago-ness as it is a burden, sometimes. This is from the University of Chicago Athletics Department letter to Varsity Athletes:</p>
<p>“I would like to welcome you to a program that is founded on a clear commitment to excellence both in the classroom and on the playing fields. The University continues to believe - sincerely - in that truly unique balance of mind and body in which good athletes and good teams win not only games and championships, but academic distinctions as well. This is not to say that we devalue athletic accomplishment—only that we achieve it with well-rounded, fully-developed students who take a real interest in the College’s intellectual life and the world around them.”</p>
<p>The letter sounds good, save for one important fact: UChicago does not have a commitment to excellence on the D3 playing fields. The letter should more realistically read “a commitment to excellence in the classroom and a commitment to being mediocre or half-decent on the playing fields.”</p>
<p>If you look at past Sears Cup rankings (which ranks the finest athletic programs in the nation), UChicago has generally finished in the 50s or 60s (mediocre) and achieved a 27th place finish maybe once or twice in the past 10 years. </p>
<p>This hardly connotes excellence on the playing fields. A few programs at UChicago have real quality (the women’s soccer and basketball teams are quite good, and the wrestling program and tennis program are usually solid), but most teams are pretty middling.</p>