Rethinking Those Online Recruiting Lists

One of the most prominent and freely available online recruiting services features the names of 25 high school seniors who are identified as possible Dartmouth recruiting targets. Another prominent service that you can pull up on your trusty laptop associates 21 names with Dartmouth.

While there is some crossover among the names, just one of the names published by those two services actually showed up on Dartmouth's early decision list.

Now, I'm sure there are some high school seniors whose names appear on the two lists who are still considering Dartmouth. Worth noting, however, is that there are a dozen or so others who have now formally committed to Dartmouth who were never even mentioned.

The Walter Camp Football Foundation 2009 Football Championship Subdivision All-America team has been named and there isn't a single player Dartmouth faced this fall who is on the team.

Perhaps I'm just forgetting, but I can't recall an Ivy League school firing a coach in a high-profile sport at midseason in the past 20 years. But that's exactly what Penn did yesterday when it let men's basketball coach Glen Miller go midway through his fourth year.

The once-proud Quakers were 0-7 this winter and 23-43 over the past three seasons. Athletic Director Steve Bilsky tried to emphasize that Penn's record was only a part of the reason why he made the move now. From the Daily Pennsylvanian transcript of Bilsky's press conference remarks:

This is not really about wins and losses. This is really about – I think of Penn basketball as more than just a sport that plays games to win and lose. I really believe that in our case it's a community-building activity. There's so many people who care about the sport, it generates enthusiasm on campus, good feelings. In a way, it's an ambassadorship of the school to the world, both alumni and not. It was really that lack of what Penn represents in addition to the wins and losses that disappointed me, that led me to the conclusion to do this.

I used the word "wow," in responding to the first email I got yesterday with the news of Miller's firing. Interestingly, I got a handful of emails from others who used the exact same word. It was not about the fact that Miller was let go, but the timing of his dismissal which seems so, well, un-Ivy like. From the Philadelphia Daily News:

Bilsky understands that the wider world will see this move and wonder how an Ivy League school is letting a coach go in midseason.

"I was concerned (about that)," Bilsky said. "I think there was a consensus of the higher-ups here at the university that I had to do what I had to do . . . The question was raised: Is this the right thing for an Ivy League institution to do?"

Good question.