Re: Why Does Harvard Have A Women's Rugby Team? -- <h1>IVY LEAGUE SPORTS BOARD</h1>

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Subject: Re: Why Does Harvard Have A Women's Rugby Team?

Author:
sparman

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Date Posted: 10:09:42 01/22/25 Wed
In reply to: An Observer 's message, "Why Does Harvard Have A Women's Rugby Team?" on 01:14:44 01/22/25 Wed

I think it is more financial - some of these sports are intended to assure a greater portion of student body that pays full freight to relieve the burden on endowments. (Except possibly in Dartmouth's case, where the desire to claim a "championship" may be overpowering, but that's another matter. And of course Harvard (and likely others) has/have 41 sports by classifying 4 different crew teams as separate sports.) As others have said, some so-called minor sports feature a higher proportion of non-white participants than the general population. Check out any tennis or golf roster, among others.

I agree with your take on NIL generally, but the fact is that if a college wants intercollegiate sports (other than ultimate frisbee), it has little alternative to creating admission slots. As far as I know, even D3 and virtually all other schools not caught up in the NIL - or athletic scholarship - frenzy - have admission slots. Without them, eventually you will have uncompetitive teams. Since one essential mission of a university is to assure alumni funding to support the school, and from what I have read athletes lead the way in this area (apart from the occasional Bezos and such unicorns), schools don't have much choice in the long run if they want to maintain as strong an alumni network as possible (which I gather is already weakening in the ivies due significantly to lack of student sports interest).

Bottom line - while lacking M3's clarity, I also don't care about Gladwell's apparent argument as described in your post.

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[> [> Subject: Ouch!
Author: Go Green [ Edit \| View ]	Date Posted: 10:38:25 01/22/25 Wed Well done! That dig hurt! :) [ Post a Reply to This Message ]