GUEST COLUMN: No guarantee for athletic success

Scott Miller Scott MillerAwarding athletic scholarships or, as Daily Pennsylvanian Campus News Editor Dina Bass suggests, lowering academic standards ("You don't need a genius to shoot threes," 34th Street, 2/26/98), does not guarantee the University a winning team, a good team or a student body that cares about Penn basketball. In their arguments, Bass and Bilsky point to the Stanfords, the Dukes and the Georgetowns of the athletic world. If Penn were to adopt a similar system, however, there would be no assurance of success. Consider: the University will not venture forth on its own. Penn would never even consider breaking ranks from the Ivy League for athletic reasons. Thus, any move toward offering scholarships or lowering academic standards would have to be a league-wide decision. Since the Ivies adopted the Academic Index, a method of ensuring athletes are academically fit for their respective schools, only Columbia University has been granted a waiver to lower its standards. At the end of 1986, Columbia had not won a single football game in four years. The league agreed to let the New York school revise its standards, and, lo and behold, the team eventually won a couple of contests. But only a couple. For the next seven years, the Lions couldn't put together more than two Ivy League wins in a season. Since Penn isn't even close to being in Columbia's dire situation, any change would require a decision by the Ancient Eight as a whole. The advantage is watered down, however, if eight more top-notch schools offer scholarships. The novelty of being a Stanford or a Duke or, as this would be the case, a Dartmouth or a Cornell, would wear off. Furthermore, the strong academics plus scholarships formula does not equal automatic wins. Look at the Western Athletic Conference's Rice University near Houton, Texas. Rice -- ranked 17 in U.S. News and World Report's annual ratings -- is yet again not expected to contend for the WAC title in basketball or football. Its teams are not ranked, nor does it have a significant reputation in athletics. Emory University in Atlanta, Ga., boasts a No. 9 ranking in U.S. News, but has absolutely no athletic team worth noting. The list goes on and on, including schools like Maryland's Division III Johns Hopkins University. Of the top 25 schools with athletics and scholarships, only Stanford excels in the two nationally popular sports, basketball and football. So what's to guarantee Penn or or any other school a Stanford-esque outcome? Nothing. To give Bilsky some credit, at least he believes in a trial period to see if scholarships work out. Bass, however, thinks the issue is as cut-and-dry as lowering academic standards. Her argument is unclear, but if her ultimate goal is to get more of the basketball-loving students at Penn to come to basketball games at the Palestra and care about the cagers, then she's looking for marquee players, not neccessarily good basketball. Envision scholarships or lower academic standards allowing some better athletes to compete on Penn's hardcourt or gridiron. There would then be seven other teams with equal or better recruiting advantages in the mix. No matter how you try to piece the puzzle together, the result will be eight teams in the same league with equivalent recruiting standards. The competition will always be there, and there is no guarantee that the quality of the game will rise. Just because one school has erfected the art of academics and athletics, and a few other schools have done it in one popular sport, does not mean it comes with the territory. Hence, there is also no guarantee that Penn's level of success will rise.