The Ivy League has some of the top recruiting classes for men’s and women’s lacrosse for the class that just committed this fall (2026 high school seniors).
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Football is already kind of that way with:
- D1 FBS “power” conferences
- D1 FBS other conferences
- D1 FCS
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As a Physician that treats athletes, I definitely do not find any validity to this comment. Unfortunately the sports injuries are starting younger and younger. You would not believe the amount of pushback I get when I recommend a young athlete needs to take time off to rest / recover/ rehab…. I could go on but it is not the point of this thread
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Let’s be honest most of the elite lacrosse players families can afford full pay at Ivy’s
Or get financial aid. But OP seems to think that Ivy’s will have no appeal now. @Baltmom23 was just pointing out that is not the case.
I think others may get the small deals most envisioned for the athletes to get through college - local deals of free pizza for the swim team, the right to have jobs from boosters (even the no show jobs that football players used to be able to get and yet haven’t been able to take for decades), a golfer being supported by his childhood club or being able to teach lessons wearing his college logo. The restrictions were pretty harsh for college athletes to work in their sport, from signing an autograph or selling and old jersey. Not everyone is making $3M, even on the football team.
Most college athletes aren’t making that much on NIL. Most are still living on the tuition and R&B scholarships, plus the stipend the P5 schools (and others) were giving out. Many of the stipends were more than any scholarship they were receiving, but that $5k helped the third string QB and the entire track team.
I think most schools will still limit the number of scholarships per team. Some men’s lax teams have 50 players, and only 20 see the field in a game. NCAA allowed 12 scholarships, and all 50 weren’t getting a piece of the scholarships. Women’s teams are smaller, and the NCAA only allows 24 to dress for a tournament game so I don’t see the teams suddenly growing to 40+ players. It’s not only the scholarships the coach needs to worry about but uniforms, meals, transportation, more coaches, more paperwork. At Hopkins, if they have 48 men’s scholarships, they’d have to have 48 women’s scholarship, and the team just won’t be that big.
There will always be players who don’t want to be the 5th sting QB at Bama or Texas and would prefer playing at Harvard. They want to PLAY, so if they can make the finances work, may want to be an Ivy athlete. I doubt that same QB would want to play D3.
I think the Ivies will stay D1. Same with service academies (that do pay their players, but not millions).
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No. The scholarships can be in other sports. Which is why it will impact men’s sports even more.
I’ve read rumors of roster cap being set in the low to mid 30s.
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Not at Hopkins. Only D1 sport is Lax. At Colorado College, the hockey scholarships (male) have to be matched by the women’s soccer scholarships. A few other schools have limited D1 sports and mostly play D3.
But even at the schools that have all D1 sports, the men’s teams are often much bigger than the women’s, so teams won’t be able to just declare ‘40 scholarships’ for a sport without either adding sports for women or increasing some team sizes. Golf teams aren’t going to grow to 18 players just so they can give out more wrestling scholarships to men. Ivy schools have 30+ varsity teams but many large D1 schools only have 20 (and I think they have to a minimum of 14)
Oh right! Forgot about that.
This is supposedly why the SEC has decided to impose such harsh roster limits on men’s swimming (22, some teams have 40+). The hope is that other conferences won’t follow suit since the have more sports and, in theory, more title IX wiggle room.
I think some people in this forum are vastly underestimating how much average athletes in non-revenue sports are making at P4 programs. They may be confusing the amounts with the lowly averages at “the rest of Division I programs”. I have heard examples of low to mid-5 figures annually for athletes in non-revenue sports at the top P4 schools (e.g. perennial top schools in Learfield Directors Cup standings), many of which are very strong academically.
Someone above referenced low-level NIL deals - it actually sounds like that is not the norm for athletes at P4 schools and is probably closer to the ceiling for even top Ivy players.
How so? The average men’s basketball starter NIL opportunities are not available to the vast majority of non-revenue P4/5 players. If you go to the NIL dashboard link, you will see the $20K NIL average (actually $21,467) for 2023/24 year…but even more telling is that the median NIL earnings is $543 across ALL NCAA athletes (DI/II/III) with an NIL deal.
Of course there are some non-revenue sport athletes who are earning big money, Livvy Dunne is a perfect example…and think how her numbers inflate the mean numbers.
If I were a non-revenue sport athlete I would look to attend one of the schools that has relatively generous shares of NIL collective dollars going to non-revenue athletes, like Ole Miss.
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your reply refers to stats for an overly inclusive group of schools vs what I have consistently been referencing - others seem to be doing the same, hence my comment
most Ivy recruits in niche sports are comparing and considering offers from high-academic P4 schools and not the bottom 200+ in Division I
(btw, those stats are only the officially reported deals - there are certainly many more that are not being reported)
That’s where we differ. I’d look for the best school (from a holistic, personal standpoint).
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There are way more good athletes than spots in this handful of Ivy+ P4 schools, and like I mentioned upthread, even some amongst the very top might be interested in a more well rounded student-athlete experience. The amount of travel alone will be a detraction to some.
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I agree the best fit considering all factors is important for each individual…I’m just coming at it from the perspective of having worked with many low income athletes over the years, where the concept of fit outside of finances is a luxury.
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This post discusses why the Ivy League might consider moving to D3. One of the reasons I say they should consider is that (from original post) they “will not be able to compete for top athletic recruits in sports that will have (more) fully funded scholarship teams”.
So the athletes being referenced are the ones who are elite talents who have the option to play for high academic P4 schools, where presumably they will be getting a lot more $ going forward than what they might have been able to receive historically.
Your statement about “well rounded” experience is valid. I don’t think the elite athletes who are trying to decide between UVA and Princeton or Duke and Yale fall in that category.
These are a small number of athletes. The true elite already gets scholarships the and not at Ivies. And the reality is that a chunk of them doesn’t meet the academic requirements for an Ivy, specially as tests come back into play. Let’s use your example of tennis and golf. How many recruits per class in these 5 or so Ivy equivalent schools?
I will say again that more competitive athletes will get squeezed out than have an abundance of P4 opportunities. Particularly on the men’s side.
You still haven’t said why it would be to the Ivy League’s advantage to move to D3. As I mentioned earlier I only see disadvantages to their programs. You seem to feel otherwise. Can you explain how it would be better for them?
How exactly will this change if they move to D3? Should every mid major school move to D3? They can’t compete either.
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There aren’t even 200 Division 1 schools that offer some of the niche sports like squash (14) or rowing (39). I’d imagine there are many more accomplished athletes than there are spots for them to compete at the D1 level - especially if they are intent on an elite education. So it is hard to imagine how the Ivies are going to “miss out” on all the talent.
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I think I am confused about what we are talking about.
To my knowledge, Yale has not previously been very successful when competing for top basketball recruits with Duke. Indeed, if Yale and other Ivies HAD been doing that, my guess is those recruits would in fact be in line for big NIL deals.
But there is a lot more to D1 sports than college basketball at the level Duke plays. So why would Yale drop out of D1 entirely just because it can’t compete with Duke for top basketball players? Particularly since that is already true, and yet has not triggered Yale dropping out of D1 entirely.
Meanwhile, from what I understand, to the extent there is any difference at all between Ivies and other D1s in terms of NIL policies, I believe it is that so far, at least many of the Ivies have not allowed team collective deals. But from what I have been reading, these are not the big money deals on a per athlete basis, at least not most of them.
And despite some of the commentary in that article, the actual reported facts seemed to be consistent with that observations. A few (not many) individual star basketball players appear to be transferring from Ivies to other teams. And then they are getting big individual deals. But unless I missed it, there was not a report of big money coming to any individual who transferred from any Ivy to any D1. It was just these few specific cases.
And as far as I know, that issues of few stars transferring to more prominent teams is hardly limited to the Ivies in D1. Basketball stars from all sorts of conferences transfer up to more prominent teams when they can. Maybe eventually this will trigger some sort of broader restructuring of college sports, or maybe not.
But I am not really seeing what is so specific to the Ivies that they specifically would have to drop from D1 to D3 due to a few basketball stars leaving them for more prominent teams as transfers.
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Exactly. The Ivy League hasn’t competed for top basketball or football talent in decades but that hasn’t kept them from continuing to compete at the D1 level. I don’t see why things will change now. They may lose a few more recruits around the margins and may lose their best players after one year (and, to be frank, most of these players weren’t recruited by the top athletic programs coming out of HS which is why they ended up in the Ivies in the first place).
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