Cornell Paper Wraps Up Look At Ivy Aid

There's an interesting assortment of links this morning but the place to start is with the final piece of the Cornell Sun's fine series on financial aid reforms and the dangers to Ivy League athletics. As usual, Penn athletic director Steve Bilsky doesn't hold back his opinion. From the story:

Although unsure of Cornell’s recruiting problems, Bilsky is certain of the risk posed by Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

“If this would have been any other league, it would have caused an unraveling of the members,” said Bilsky. “(It’s) the biggest rift that has ever existed in this league."

The writer of the Sun pieces has a column explaining how he came to look into the issue. It includes this:

...(A)t one point in the story, a coach implies that other Ivies are trying to catch up to HYP’s packages, ignoring the “need based” system and brazenly bidding for athletes. Although The Sun could not confirm it, I believe it could be

The Sun wraps up the series with an editorial that concludes this way:

The Ancient Eight has long been held together by the ties of tradition, but those ties are growing weaker by the day. As the eight programs of the Ivy League drift apart, it is the responsibility of the League as an institution to preserve the foundation on which that League was built. If the members of the Ivy League cannot work together to maintain competitive balance on the field of play, it may be time for the powers that be to reconsider what brought them together in the first place.

Former Dartmouth tight end Casey Cramer is heading back to school to take part once again in the NFL's Business Management and Entrepreneurial Program according to this report.

Click here for a terrific story about Russell Wilson, a quarterback/second baseman at N.C. State and son of former Dartmouth wide receiver Harrison Wilson '77. The younger Wilson is a tireless worker who is going through spring practice with the Wolfpack football team, making as many baseball practices as possible and sneaking in sleep where he can. His dad caught 65 passes for 860 yards at Dartmouth and as a senior won my favorite football honor, the Manners Makyth Man award.

Speaking of neat stories, stopping by the Roar Lions Roar blog I found a link to this Los Angeles Daily News story about a housekeeper who is sending twins to Princeton and Columbia, the latter a standout tight end. The woman whose house the mother of the boys cleans, told the paper:

"She's an incredible woman. I mean, her sons are going to Princeton and Columbia. It was all I could do to get my kid to CSUN."

And finally, from two inspiring stories to the bizarre. From an AP story:

Two weeks after he announced his decision to play football at Alabama on national television, star wide receiver Julio Jones found himself in a new position -- that of a key prosecution witness in a capital murder trial.

Wearing a gray hoodie emblazoned with an Oklahoma Sooners' logo, Jones testified Tuesday that he witnessed the gunshot murder of a longtime acquaintance who was identified as a drug dealer.

Not to make light of a terrible situation, but don't you think they grimaced at the way he was dressed when they read this in Norman and breathed a sigh of relief in Tuscaloosa?

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Enough for now. I've got a deadline for a freeelance story and need to jump on it. Tonight I'll be staffing the Penn-Dartmouth men's basketball game for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the AP, so it's a busy day.