Sunday, August 02, 2015

First Person

Sharper eyes than mine have uncovered a newish site called Ivy on Vine, "Inside Access to Ivy League Student-Athletes." Think Derek Jeter's The Players' Tribune."

From the site's intro (LINK):
Ivy On Vine was created to give you an inside look into Ivy League athletics. All of our posts come from current and former Ivy student-athletes that want to share their experiences with those that are interested. Our goal is to show all sides of these well rounded students so that you can understand what it means to perform at the highest level in the classroom and in-between the lines.
Here you will read about more than grade point average and points per game. You will follow student-athlete’s experiences, stories, advice, and wisdom. So, whether you are a Harvard basketball player that wants to know what it’s like to be a student-athlete at Yale, a worrisome parent that wants to know more about the schools that are recruiting your child, or just a fan of Ivy League athletics… this is the place for you!
The first Dartmouth football player to post a story on Ivy on Vine is senior quarterback/wide receiver Ernest Evans. Find his first-person story HERE.
The Raleigh News & Observer writes about incoming Yale wide receiver Bo Hines, who led North Carolina State last fall with 45 catches for 616 yards – including eight grabs for 103 yards and a touchdown against Florida State when the Seminoles were top-ranked. The story's lede gets to the heart of his reason for transferring to Yale:
When Bo Hines says he has big political dreams, he's not kidding.
"Governor of North Carolina and the ultimate goal would be president," Hines said.
That's why, after a successful freshman football season at N.C. State, the Charlotte, N.C., native decided to transfer to Yale, where five U.S. presidents have passed through undergrad or law school.
Probably didn't hurt Yale's cause that quarterback Morgan Roberts is another Charlotte product who transferred in from Clemson and has had a pretty good run in New Haven so far ;-)
Nike Lalos is a 6-foot-5, 230-pound rising high school senior from St. Vincent-St. Mary in Ohio who can play tight end, defensive end or linebacker. Cleveland.com reports he has "offers" from Akron, Ball State, Brown, Buffalo, Colgate, Columbia, Dartmouth, Davidson and Kent State. It then gives his capsule impression of 11 schools he visited including Pitt, West Virginia, Northwestern, Harvard, Princeton and yes, Dartmouth. (LINK)

Of Dartmouth the paper notes he . . .
Thought the campus was beautiful and likes the prospect of an Ivy League education. Feels it offers a nice family feeling being a little bit smaller than some schools and away from the city. 
Over recent years Dartmouth and the Ivy League have been fashioning a scheduling relationship with the Pioneer Football League, which bills itself as "the nation’s only non-scholarship, football-only NCAA Football Championship Subdivision conference." (LINK)

I can hear Ivy Leaguers already saying, "Wait a minute. What about us?"

Read the PFL description carefully. It says it is the lone "football-only" conference not providing athletic scholarships. The Ivy League is not a football-only conference and the PFL schools do indeed offer athletic scholarships, but in men's and women's basketball and other sports that play in other conferences. It's semantics, folks. ;-)

All of which brings us around to a Florida Times-Union story that goes into great detail about why Jacksonville University found itself in trouble with the Pioneer Football League over so-called "leadership" scholarships. From the story:
On average, football players received nearly four times the amount of financial assistance annually ($18,000) as a regular student ($5,000). Even more skewed were the frequency of those — 70 percent of the available scholarships were going to those athletes, some of whom the coaching staff didn’t even recruit.
The school’s own internal investigation found that a total of 95.8 percent of JU football players in 2013 were on leadership scholarships (23 of 24 starters), while just 6 percent of the student body was receiving the same package.
The PFL's University of San Diego had its own issues with the scholarship rules in 2013. (LINK)