Why doesn't the Ivy League just move to D3?

Athletic Recruits
1

with the NCAA settlement looking more likely, it seems like the Ivy League will not be able to compete for top athletic recruits in sports that will have (more) fully funded scholarship teams

this would probably most likely apply to equivalency sports with small roster sizes - like Men’s Tennis, Golf, Men’s Volleyball, maybe Cross Country

add to this the growing importance of NIL, and if it seems like college athletics at the highest level (currently D1) ultimately becomes pay-to-play, it seems like the high academic schools that don’t give athletic scholarships and don’t have school-sponsored NIL collectives should switch leagues

or maybe there becomes separate P4-D1 and non-P4-D1 (sub) leagues

I realize this doesn’t only apply to Ivy and that there are other D1 conferences with similar setups/arrangements, but seems like something’s gotta give

2

Two things - first, just because a school is allowed to fund extra scholarships it doesn’t mean they are going to. Plenty of D1 teams don’t get scholarships as it is. The truth is ivies already don’t compete for kids who are after money. If the issue is affordability, for someone with financial need FA at ivies is very generous. A better deal with no strings attached.

Secondly, rosters, if not full teams, will be cut. The SEC just settled on 22 for men’s swimming. Texas has over 40 on their roster right now. Recruits across P4 are getting their offers rescinded. The ones who pass muster academically will turn to Ivies. IMO ivies will get stronger and D3 will be right behind. But overall we will have fewer teams and athletes and it will hurt all these sports.

9 Likes
3

There are so many moving parts I am reluctant to predict exactly how the current structure of college athletics is going to evolve in coming years.

But I tend to agree with Tony it is not necessarily obvious that D1 colleges with generous need aid and a lot of academic appeal are actually going to be less competitive, versus more competitive, particularly once you are looking at the sorts of players not likely to be getting big NIL money.

In fact, if you basically buy the picture that at a lot of the big sports colleges, they were capturing money for the college that should have gone to certain prominent individual players instead, and then (among other things) spreading it around to other less prominent players, unwinding some of that system is obviously not so good for the less prominent players at big sports colleges.

4

OSU, the richest athletic department in the country, was quick to announce that Men’s Gymnastics would have no scholarships going forward.

Note there is a theme here. It’s always MEN’s sports. With 105 football scholarships and title lX still in play, there will be even fewer opportunities for male athletes.

5 Likes
5

Not an expert on sports by any means… but I have observed MANY more college kids being unable to play their sport due to injury. Maybe I live in an area with a plethora of sports medicine docs/PT’s so there is a lot of over-diagnosis going on? Or maybe it’s due to little kids specializing very early in a particular sport (how many 8 year old tennis prodigies can there be? Does every 9 year old need to be on a travel soccer team instead of playing softball/basketball/whatever pick up game is going on in the local park?)

But I am observing a lot of college athletes ending up with serious rotator cuff/knee/elbow type injuries that used to be very rare unless you were a professional playing in the major leagues. And now it’s otherwise healthy 19 year olds recovering from surgeries that used to be performed on 35 year olds. Or on 70 year old weekend warrior types…

So agree that someone with financial need may be MUCH better off at a need-only school which doesn’t take into consideration their value for their sport when calculating their aid…

1 Like
6

Ivy league schools don’t really compete for top athletic recruits in most sports.
They sometimes do compete at the top level in certain sports (e.g., M/W Ice Hockey). I expect plenty of athletes who qualify for need based aid will still target the Ivies. On the flip side, the Ivies have always lost out on some strong athletes who don’t qualify for need based aid…why be full pay when you could got to X school for a full ride in football?

I do think we will see change in the Ivy League…not sure if it will be NIL collectives or what. Switching to D3 could be an option for the Ivy League, but I doubt they are seriously considering that.

Ivy League schools are going to have to payout their share of the multibillion dollar settlement to their current and former athletes. If athletes become employees, all bets are off as to the Ivy reaction to that…one option would be to go to an all club sport model…that could happen before they go D3. But I’m just spitballing.

All D1 sports are going to be equivalency sports now (starting in 2025-26). Many schools, even P4/5 schools are not going to fully fund all sports, and will likely pare down rosters and/or cut some varsity sports as noted by tonygrace above.

We are already basically there for some sports (football, M basketball) and I do think we might see the 65 or so P4/5 teams combine further…if not entirely, for football at least.

7

I am afraid it is more the opposite.

I feel like a lot of kids in very competitive youth athletics in the past, and some areas still today, would sustain serious injuries, including concussions but also all sorts of other joint injuries and such. And then they would just not be properly treated.

And sometimes it meant a downgrade or end to their competitiveness in their sport, and in fact sometimes it led to lifelong issues. Like, “My shoulder has never been the same since X,” sort of stuff. Or worse, like CTE.

But no one seemed to care much about that risk, or the kids who faded or dropped out.
The focus was just on the kids that successfully ran the gauntlet and made it to playing in college, or (rarely) the pros.

8

Good counterpoint to my theory. There seems to be a bunch of “not so ethical” coaches and overly-invested parents who are enabling the “get back in the game” mentality I see in youth sports.

1 Like
9

I was referring to “Olympic Sports” (varsity teams ex-football and basketball) with small rosters at P4 schools and gave some examples; Ivy’s are definitely competing for those recruits. Ivy Men’s Tennis, Women’s Golf, Cross Country all already get top recruits every year competing with P4.

You are correct that those athletes haven’t historically needed to consider the financial aspect, because they are equivalency sports and in most cases would only get a small partial scholarship. But if most of the P4 schools start fully funding those rosters with full scholarships (which I can’t think of a single P4 school that wouldn’t for those sports) PLUS there are NIL considerations, you are now talking about a $100k+ a year differential to Ivy, an amount even wealthy families will have to really think hard about

10

Gymnastics is a big roster and a sport that typically is not well-supported by alumni (including former varsity athletes)

11

Are you talking about the equivalency sports here? Because I’d be surprised if the P4 schools start offering full scholarships for sports like swimming, cross country, tennis, gymnastics, golf, etc. Anecdotally, I know of a P4 that has already taken away the partial scholarships of one of these sports. I think these sports are more likely to be cut entirely rather than fully funded.

4 Likes
12

That is a lovely pipe dream. On the women’s side, sure. They need to balance out football scholarships.

I honestly don’t think the Ivy League cares enough about winning NCAA to change course. Still, particularly in these Olympic sports there are will always be enough kids that will pick an Ivy over a state flagship. A lot of them don’t need the scholarship and the ones who do usually get more than enough out of financial aid.

Even at P4s there are VERY few athletes that will make a living out of their sport. Plenty realize that they are working towards a traditional career after and are not so shortsighted to put 4 years in college over the rest of their lives. At the end of they day, there are many more excellent athletes than spots.

2 Likes
13

Fully funding a program is not the same as offering full scholarships to athletes (it could be but is not necessarily so.) I don’t think many P4 programs are going to offer many full scholarships outside revenue sports.

I agree with other posters that many D1 schools, including P4/5 are going to be cutting sports and/or scholarships in non-rev sports.

2 Likes
14

Have you spoken to P4 Tennis and Golf coaches? It’s not a pipe dream

precisely - because Ivy don’t care about winning NCAA Championships is exactly why they would consider moving to D3

“a lot of them don’t need the scholarship?” do a future value calc of $100k x 4 invested for 40 years and see what you come up with - effectively a fully-funded retirement

Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Duke, Stanford, Notre Dame, Rice - not to mention “state flagships” Cal, Michigan, UVA - many are similar to (and in some cases superior than) many Ivy schools academically and it’s really unclear whether being an “Ivy Athlete” will have the same cache 5-10yrs from now if they end up in D3

these are exactly some of the things 2026 and younger (probably too late for 2025, sorry 2024) athletes who are trying to decide between Ivy and high academic P4 are discussing right now

15

Why though? What is the benefit? It won’t change the financial model, it won’t get them better athletes. In fact, moving might make competition MORE competitive. While there is a kid out there that clearly prefers Princeton to Bama, they might be less discerning if they are choosing between Princeton and MiT or Harvard and UChicago.

And it would not produce the Olympic athletes they ARE proud to support. Not just American athletes but a very large number of international athletes (many of them American citizens). D3 would bring practice restrictions that they are not interested in.

6 Likes
16

You must know different affluent folks than I do.

I am not seeing a lot of “let’s invest our savings and have a fully funded retirement” for families who COULD afford full freight but are choosing other options. I’m seeing a lot of increased consumption and the bragging rights-- “XYZ college is paying Joey to play-- which is great because we wanted to put an addition on the ski condo and now we can” and “Did I mention that we are being sponsored for the Happy Valley golf club? Oh I did? Our interview won’t be until we get back from the Galapagos… sure it’s expensive, but what with Joey’s athletic scholarship and all it seemed silly not to go while we’re healthy enough to enjoy it…”

What a world we’d live in if everyone was busy investing their savings. Not gonna happen if the national trends on consumption, debt, retirement savings, etc. continue.

1 Like
17

Sadly, many are looking at cuts or having offers rescinded. And unfortunately for them, it’s too late to go for an Ivy instead.

IME Ivy Athletes aren’t too concerned with “cache” I know plenty of them and no one goes around telling people “I was a rower at Harvard” in their grown up lives.

I think we will have to agree to disagree and see how things shake out but Duke, Stanford and what not… it’s not the same experience. My kids had no interest in a coach telling them what they could major on, when and how many classes they could take, they were not interested in living with just athletes, eating with just athletes. They are not unicorns. There are enough kids like that who feel the same way.

2 Likes
18

Sadly I know too many like this :sunglasses:. Me, at way too many gatherings which includes lots of people 30+ years out of college:


Back to the thread, I agree only time will tell. We don’t even know what the final settlement is yet, and IMO the athletes as employees thing is an even greater issue for the Ivies, really uniquely.

19

This is one of the things I will be curious to see evolve. Like, not to oversimplify, but so far the big NIL recipients seem to be football, basketball, Olympians, and Livvy Dunne. I’m sure other athletes will sometimes get big deals. But will it be commonplace for a lot of athletes in many NCAA sports to get meaningful NIL deals just because they are the sort of athlete you need to compete in D1, and but who do not otherwise stand out?

I note the Washington Post did a dive into this:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/interactive/2024/nil-money-deals-college-sports-athlete-pay/

Their charts seemed to be suggesting only a few athletes are getting big deals so far. As they said in the text:

The vast majority of NIL deals, though, involve significantly smaller payments, the records show.

Of the more than 22,000 transactions in The Post’s dataset, nearly 13,000 were worth less than $100.

Apparently a lot of those are cuts of merchandise deals, which can be very small. It appears to make the big money you need to develop your own individual “brand”.

Speaking of which, I may also be missing something, but is there a particular reason why Ivy athletes who were in fact Olympians and such could not compete for whatever big NIL deals might be available to such individuals? I am not sure, but might it actually help?

So, like, to the extent NIL deals are in fact available for Squash players (coming to the Olympics in 2028!), why wouldn’t Harvard Squash players be competitive for those?

1 Like
20

You’re not missing anything.

Just as examples, since Olympic sports and specifically XC were mentioned upthread: the defending men’s XC NCAA champ is at Harvard with an NIL deal with NB. He was 9th in the Olympic 5K. Last year’s repeat women’s 1500m NCAA champ was also at Harvard and had an NIL deal with ON. She represented New Zealand at the Olympics.

We’ll see how this all shakes out but Ivies are doing fine in sports like XC in the current environment. I don’t see much evidence or thinking that they’ll face recruiting challenges any greater than they face now (and those challenges are related more to academic preparedness/interest shrinking the eligible pool of recruits than they are to finances ime).

1 Like