INSIDE SPORTS: SATs, lies and sour grapes

When emotions and facts getWhen emotions and facts getconfused, reputations of schoolsWhen emotions and facts getconfused, reputations of schoolsand student-athletes may suffer Adam Epstein is admittedly bitter. After all, bleeding Columbia blue isn't easy. So Epstein, former sports editor of The Columbia Daily Spectator, sat at his computer and did what no Lions football or men's basketball team has been able to do since his freshman year in 1991-92: beat up on the Quakers. It is not entirely unexpected. After all, when the University of Pennsylvania wins in men's basketball or football, admissions standards must be dropping as fast as the wind chill on Superblock come winter. And when the University wins 34 straight Ivy basketball games, and 16 straight in football, watch out. Penn's new motto: "Give us your tired, your poor, your tempest-tossed, wretched refuse -- and we'll give them a jersey!" according to Epstein, who co-authored the column in the Jan. 25 edition of the Spectator. Epstein and a similar column in The Cornell Daily Sun make allegation after allegation about the University's admissions standards for athletes. The problem? It simply is not true, according to University Athletic Director Steve Bilsky. "Now, all of a sudden that Penn is dominating in football and basketball, which are the dominate and visible sports in the league, it's not unusual that people, many of which are uninformed, many of which are envious, are taking potshots," Bilsky said. "It's the way sports work. It creates a fair amount of adrenaline and emotion." Besides, noted Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans, the league does compete nationally in other sports. Princeton won the men's and women's lacrosse national titles, Columbia fencers are national champions and Harvard men's ice hockey is among the best in the nation. He said nationally competitive basketball teams, as long as they are achieved within the Ivy rules, should be the goal. "I think there's been a perception that Ivy teams can't compete nationally in basketball because the bottom of our league in both men's and women's ball has not been very good recently, and so people have tended to wonder if the top is an aberration," Orleans said. "I think there is no reason why we can't compete as a league much better than we have competed. I know people have been trying to do that. I know the level of our women's game has come up remarkably in the last three or four years. And I think if we had better average quality of ball in the league, people would see the best teams as less anomalous. "When one team seems to be winning a lot," he added, "people tend to ask, 'Well why is that happening?' And I think the real question is for teams that are not winning, 'Why aren't we better?' " Orleans said the negative opinion of Penn is not being generated by other Ivy administrations, and there have been no complaints by the presidents, athletic directors or deans of admissions at their meetings since Penn's streaks began. He did agree there may be an anti-Penn sentiment by students at the other Ivies. Part of the image problem is Penn's fault. The University is hypersensitive to criticism, a product of an academic inferiority complex relative to the other Ivy League schools that Bilsky has pledged to address. Bilsky's salary himself has come under criticism too. His seven-year, $1.7 million contract is substantially more than the league average one source estimated at $110,000. Penn alumni have also given football coach Al Bagnoli a $500,000 annuity payable upon maturity. Those high-priced salaries have spurred a commitment to win in a time when Ivy schools, including Penn, are addressing gender-equity concerns and athletic department cutbacks. But both Bilsky and University Admissions Dean Lee Stetson vehemently assert Penn's winning is based on commitment to those sports, not by admitting athletes unqualified for the Ivy League. "What I think has happened is that it's our era right now," Stetson said. "We just have to be proud enough and secure enough to be comfortable with where we are. From this office, I'm perfectly comfortable because there hasn't been any student-athlete that's been admitted in the tenure that I've been a part of that I've been signing off on that I have ever felt would not do the work here academically and would not thrive here." The Ivy League employs an academic index (AI) with a maximum score of 240, and in most cases a floor of 161. The score is composed of three equally weighted categories: SAT score, achievement tests and class rank taking into account the competitiveness of the school.

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