It's about that time of year when the eight public faces of the Ivy League universities - no, not their basketball or football coaches, but their presidents - get together for their annual sit-down. That means that for everyone outside those doors, it's about time to start the annual guessing game. What did they talk about? Who said what? What changes are in the works? Who's behind them? But it seems like the dizzying speculation, high-stakes as it is, will inevitably end with a climactic pronouncement of I-Don't-Know's-On-Third.
This time, though, the stakes are even higher than usual, which is why I hope the details of this meeting will be more substantive and publicized than they have been in the past. The conference's Executive Director, Jeff Orleans, confirmed to me a while back that the question of financial aid's impact on athletic recruiting would be on the agenda this summer. (He said he would have to decline further comment on the issue until that discussion played out.)
If you need a primer, it's basically on the agenda because Harvard is so darn big and rich that it might well outstrip all the other Ivies' financial-aid offerings and thereby outstrip them in luring talented athletes, too. It's not hard to see why that's a possibility when there are no league-wide rules governing how much money athletes get. No scholarships and no collusion mean no standardization either.
If there's going to be any reform on this issue - and if anything does happen or has happened, its likely an incremental step - the presidents are the ones who ultimately sign off.
Penn athletic director Steve Bilsky told me that the last time the conference's athletic directors got together, the schools that had not yet announced reforms along the lines of what Harvard, Yale and Penn had done were visibly very nervous.
Any package of reforms presented at this year's meetings would have been vetted and agreed upon by all the athletic directors; they would not waste the presidents' time on this problem if they did not have some potential solutions in mind.
Thus, if Bilsky and Orleans are to be believed, there may be some major changes may be brewing whenever the presidents get together.
The stars do appear to be lined up. Bilsky and Andy Noel of Cornell have been outspoken in their criticisms of the conference's current path. On the other side, though, are athletic officials who take a wait-and-watch approach to these developments, which could temper any policies they end up submitting to the presidents.
Orleans is retiring at the end of the academic year, and I assume he would love to end his stewardship of the league on a harmonious note, which would be a stark contrast to all the grumbling and tooth-gnashing among Ivy League sports folk since Harvard turned the financial landscape of the league on its head a few months ago.
Don't be surprised to see supposedly dead issues like merit-based aid come up, either, especially as the top tier of Ivies get enough money to award merit aid without taking away from their need-based commitments.
In previous years, merit aid vs. need-based aid was thought of as a zero-sum game. Nobody wanted to touch it. Now that might have changed, especially since it could have an equalizing affect on recruiting without the need to utter the dreaded S-word - scholarships.
Whether changes like that - or on other concerns, like tweaking the Academic Index - come about or not, the presidents should conduct an honest discourse. And the Ivy League office should go out of its way to publicize changes to the way the league does business.
Hopefully we won't be asking and answering questions like this:
Whose idea was that? Why did it pass?
We don't know.
(Third base.)
Andrew Scurria is a senior International Relations major and is former Senior Sports Editor of The Daily Pennsylvanian. His e-mail address is scurria@dailypennsylvanian.com
