Until recently, very few respectable rowing programs offered athletic scholarships. The number is growing rapidly, most notably in women’s rowing. Women’s programs have received this largesse as a result of the current legal (mis?)interpretation of Title IX (see my January letter on this topic), and a desire to balance traditionally scholarship-heavy men’s sports like football. The NCAA, which governs women’s rowing, is considering upping the number of scholarships each rowing program is allowed to thirty. Since many of the traditional powers in the sport come from colleges which refuse to offer athletic scholarships (notably Ivy League institutions), the complaint has arisen that these colleges will no longer be able to compete for talented athletes, who will instead take up offers at colleges willing to offer them a free ride.
Yet people go to college for educations - if they want to make money playing sports, they might as well go pro (something not likely to happen in rowing - so what’s the point in making rowing the determining factor in choosing a college?). If people can't afford college, there is always financial aid.
Athletic scholarships are a really bad idea for many reasons. Any college worthy of calling itself by that name is in the business of providing academic excellence. Athletics are merely an extra-curricular opportunity which help broaden the students’ undergraduate experience. To put athletic criteria above academic criteria is misguided. If a student is qualified to gain admission on academic grounds, he can still receive financial aid just like anyone else who needs it. Athletic scholarships divert money from more needy causes.
Colleges exist to give people educations. Athletics are, in my opinion, an important part of a college education - participation in sports complements what goes on in the classroom, if done properly. Indeed, if done properly, participation on an intercollegiate sports team can be the most meaningful learning experience in a college education. Sports are not the reason to go to college, however.
Athletic scholarships divert money from two areas specifically: one, from financial aid programs geared for people who really want to go to college for college's sake, and two, from funding other sports programs. For example, a Div 1-A college can have (and almost certainly uses) up to 85 (American) football scholarships, when a pro team has only 56 players. Forget cutting all 85 scholarships - if the number of scholarships were reduced to only the size of a pro team, roughly $750,000 would be freed up. That could support several smaller sports teams, which would mean opportunities for many more students to compete.
A sensible collegiate athletics department that understands its purpose will try to have as many opportunities as possible for students to compete, as a complement to their college educations. My alma mater, which offers NO athletic scholarships, has the largest athletics program in the country: 41 varsity-status sports (with many national and league championships to our credit), many partially funded sports, tons of intramural sports (even expensive ones like American football and rowing). Nearly a quarter of our student population competed intercollegiately in any given year, and virtually everyone did some sort of organized sport. We had the largest athletics department in the United States in terms of number of sports and percentages of participation by the student body, despite our "academic" reputation, because the college felt strongly that athletics were an important part of a college education. That college, of course, was Harvard, which has a fine rowing tradition.
Even if I could be convinced to support purely athletic (not financial aid) scholarships for some sports, I do not think that rowing is a particularly conducive sport for such scholarships. Briefly, this is for two reasons: first, that rowing is not a sport for prima-donnas where some people are 'better' than others because they get money to row and others on the same team don't, and two, because most collegiate rowers start in college.
If I were a coach, and some of my rowers had scholarships and others didn't, those rowers would feel some sort of entitlement to seats in the first varsity - because I would be paying them and not others. Sometimes - often - it doesn't work out that way that the best rowers coming into college end up on the varsity, and it would be silly to award scholarships with that in mind. Conceivably, I could have a whole first boat of non-scholarship rowers, and a whole fourth boat of scholarship rowers. And what sort of message would be sent to the non-scholarships rowers: you're not as good? What would I be basing the scholarship on?
As to the second point, if I had scholarships, I would be stupid to give them to people who had never rowed before. But most collegiate rowers start in college, so my pool would be reduced to only those fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to row in high school. That sends a message to athletes who did not have the opportunity that they are simply not wanted, or at least that it is hard to break in. It also means that, even if they do break in and become the best rowers on the team (as often happens), they would not be the ones on scholarships simply because they did not have the opportunity to row earlier. That's silly. Furthermore, many of the high school rowers I have known - even the extremely good ones - did not have what it took to make it through four years of collegiate rowing, or if they did failed to pan out to expectations. Seems a bit odd to me to waste scholarship money on them.
Remember, again, that my definition of "athletic scholarship" excludes financial aid. I am all in favor of financial aid. But that has nothing to do with athletics.
Finally, if I have $30,000, I think that a new boat would do my program as a whole much more good than an athletic scholarship.
It is interesting to note that the majority of the top collegiate crew programs in the US do not offer scholarships. 1997 marked the first year I am aware of an athletic-scholarship-granting institution winning more than one Div I title in the same year: the University of Washington won men’s and women’s heavyweight championships that year. UW women repeated in 1998. Prior to that, Wisconsin won a men’s heavyweight title in the mid-1980s, and the Wisco heavy women won in a different year. Boston University’s heavy women won a pair in the early 1990s, although I do not think BU offered rowing scholarships at the time. No lightweight scholarship-giving program has ever won the big event, and heavyweight victors have been few and far between. The successful rowing programs have understood what makes rowing programs successful is more than what makes programs in other sports successful.
What is changing, however, is the sheer number of scholarships being offered for women rowers. The number is currently twenty, likely to rise to thirty soon (except, of course, for those Universities such as the Ivy League ones which refuse to offer any athletics scholarships out of principle). It is already becoming clear that students’ decisions on where to attend college are getting warped, and that many young women are choosing to attend inferior colleges solely because they will receive their educations for free (and with tuitions at Ivy League universities now running at $30,000 a year, we are talking about a huge sum for four years of college, which financial aid will only cover to the extent that the student is needy). Ivy League women’s coaches are beginning to wonder if they will be able to field competitive crews down the road.
At the moment, only two colleges with newly-varsitied rowing programs have made an impact alongside the traditional powers: the women at the University of Virginia and the University of Massachusetts. I would argue, however, that the rise of UMass has come from playing with eligibility rules (again, the NCAA has really screwed up women’s rowing on this front as well) and attracting transfer students from other universities to whom it has offered its scholarships. Furthermore, UVA’s success has more to do with fantastic leadership from Head Coach Kevin Sauer, amazing novice coaching from Joel Furtek (who moved last year to become Head Coach at the University of North Carolina, a program now destined to rise under Joel’s expert leadership), and a huge influx of money from the University (money goes a long way in this sport to areas other than scholarships).
My advice to college-bound rowers: study hard, row hard. Do your best and enjoy what you do. There are many good colleges out there. And there are many exciting oportunities to row at small growing prorgrams throughout the US. Pick a college that can provide an over-all good experience for you, and include rowing as one of the many considerations in that choice.
As for accepting students, I would hope that a college would accept those students qualified to attend. That means it should take the best students. As a coach, I certainly consider students based not just on classroom performance but also on other activities (sports, music, whatever - but particularly sports) as evidence of well-roundedness. Athletic prowess should certainly count towards admissions decisions. But it is only part of a person. A student should not go to an inappropriate college solely to play a sport. A student should play a sport as part of a college education at the right college.
People should pick their colleges based on what is overall best for them. Once there, they should row (or do whatever it is they do). There should be enough financial aid available to support them if they can't afford it otherwise - and that aid should be based on need, not on whether or not they play a sport.
I can certainly believe it is true, if unfortunate, that people are picking their college solely or even mostly on the basis of rowing and not on academics. Considering it is not really possible to make a career out of just rowing (Redgrave has never had another job, but how many oarsmen can boast that, at least for that many years?), a top-notch education must be first priority. Of course, most top rowing programs are at reputable colleges, so in some cases rowing can be the determining factor given two equally good colleges. But, that said, these academically reputable places have no business handing out scholarships that are athletically-based: if a student who is qualified can't afford it, there is always financial aid. I've heard that's how Brown men’s crew turned itself into a contender, and as long as those guys were academically qualified I see no problem in that.
Financial aid does not benefit athletes specifically, it benefits students who happen to be athletes. A good number of rowers at Ivy League institutions receive financial aid. The point is that the rowing coach does not determine who gets the scholarships - the office of financial aid determines that. These are in no way athletic scholarships.
So, can William and Mary win a Div I national championship on our resources? No way in hell. Can we produce crews which can be competitive with some bigger programs? Sure, why not? Will I lose recruits to those bigger programs? Yes, I know I will - not because of the scholarships but because it's so much easier to do the sport when they have all the resources we don't have - my students have a lot to overcome. But can I attract rowers? Yes, I do. I already get lots of recruiting visits and people who are very much interested in coming here, even after they've seen what we're up against. They like the attitude of our athletes and the excitement that is derived from feeling like they will be part of a program that is up-and-coming, and that every year has the potential to accomplish something new. It is quite exciting to be a part of this program right now. Most importantly, they want to come here because they like the College in its many aspects - the fine education, the history, the student body, and - yes indeed - the rowing. Of course, not all of the students who have told me that we are their first choice actually come here - but only because they don't get accepted. That is a shame but that is how it should be.