Is there any institution of higher learning that isn’t gaming the system to gain athletic advantage? I’ve come to believe the answer is no.
Harvard? Last year, before announcing that the university had uncovered widespread cheating, a Harvard administrator sent an e-mail to the university’s resident deans, saying that potentially culpable athletes might withdraw from school temporarily. That way, the cheating scandal wouldn’t cost them eligibility.
On the other side of the country, the University of California, Davis, had long kept athletics in perspective — until 2007, when it inexplicably joined the big boys in Division I. Vowing not to cut any “minor” sports, it did just that as athletic expenses soared. Promising not to lower standards, it abandoned that vow, too. After the U.C. Davis faculty athletic representative refused to support the application of “a talented basketball player with a questionable academic background,” she was removed from that position, according to a report by the Investigative Reporting Program at the University of California, Berkeley. The basketball player was admitted.
Which brings us to today’s subject: the military academies. Incredibly, even the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy and West Point, charged with training the next generation of military leaders, systematically abandon their standards and admissions processes when a good athlete is within reach. Their highly questionable enrollment practices make one wonder whether the academies care as much about their mission these days as they do about winning football games.