Swarthmore Kicks Football Out of the College
By WELCH SUGGS
Peter Alvanos sat at his desk and held his head in his hands
early last week, staring out his door with bleary eyes that
didn't focus on anything.
Scrawled on the whiteboard behind him was a football play in
X's and O's, as well as a name and telephone number under the
word "PROSPECT."
Neither one was of much use to him anymore.
Last Monday, December 4, Mr. Alvanos, Swarthmore College's
football coach, was still trying to process the news that the
college's Board of Managers had disbanded his program two days
earlier. He had spent the past three years turning it around,
bringing in good players with stellar academic records, and
now he was in shock at the thought that his team was gone,
along with the wrestling squad. The women's badminton team
also was demoted from varsity to club status.
"You're crushed," Mr. Alvanos said. "You're crushed as a
coach, an educator, a father figure to these kids, a
psychologist. ..."
If the rest of the people on this idyllic campus near
Philadelphia weren't crushed, they weren't exactly jubilant.
Most students and alumni evinced surprise and dismay that the
board, having received a recommendation to eliminate the teams
the previous Friday, acted as swiftly, decisively, and
controversially as it did the next day.
Swarthmore, founded by the Society of Friends in 1864, still
abides by the Quaker tradition of acting by consensus. Last
weekend, for the first time anyone can remember, the board
decided to abandon that method and, instead, voted on the
issue. Football, wrestling, and badminton lost, 21 to 8. And
one of the eight -- a former president of the National
Football League -- is threatening to resign if the decision is
not reconsidered.
Along with a week's worth of student protests and bitter words
from football players and other athletes, the decision has
attracted national attention. Swarthmore made headlines last
year when the Garnet Tide snapped a 28-game losing streak by
beating Oberlin College, 42-6, a sign that the college was
making a stronger commitment to fielding a competitive team.
But such a commitment, administrators say, was just an
experiment. The cost isn't a problem: Like most liberal-arts
colleges, Swarthmore doesn't award scholarships. Instead,
what's at stake is Swarthmore's most precious commodity, its
admissions slots. An incoming class of 375 can only hold so
many athletes before they start to overwhelm the campus,
according to the president, Alfred H. Bloom.
"We have to have enough students on each team with specific
talents for that sport," said Mr. Bloom. "But there are not
that many to go around, because we're looking for something so
specific."
Swarthmore is one of the most exclusive colleges in the
country, admitting only 21 percent of its applicants.
Enrolling the smartest offensive tackle in the country might
well mean rejecting the smartest flutist.
"When you look at the development of a full class, how many
spaces should you reserve for bringing in students with
talents in given sports, as opposed to other students?" asks
Mr. Bloom.
The irony of the situation is that Mr. Alvanos was just
starting to get Swarthmore football going in the right
direction. In 1998, after years of mediocrity on the field,
the college hired him away from the University of Chicago,
where he was defensive coordinator. At the time, Neil Austrian
, a member of the board, assured him that Swarthmore was
committed to maintaining a healthy football program.
Mr. Bloom and J. Lawrence Shane, the chairman of the board,
remember it differently. They say their support for football
-- including the recruitment of athletes who might not be
admitted otherwise -- was an experiment for the 1,400-student
college. Last December, the board convened an Athletics Review
Committee to assess the college's commitment to all of its
sports, and the percentage of admissions slots it wanted to
devote to athletes.
In order to have a successful football team, Swarthmore must
find running backs, quarterbacks, linebackers, and linemen who
together have about as much talent as those of the other
institutions in the Centennial Conference, like Western
Maryland College (which beat the Garnet Tide 41-21 this fall)
and Muhlenberg College (31-14 victors over the Swatties).
But the pool of running backs and other players with test
scores and grades comparable to those of other applicants is
minuscule. As a result, elite colleges like Swarthmore,
Amherst, and Williams reach a little deeper into the applicant
pool to get talented athletes.
It's an ethical dilemma for the colleges, which don't have to
reach as deeply for talented musicians, dancers, or students
with other interests, said James L. Shulman, director of the
"College and Beyond" program at the Andrew W. Mellon
Foundation, in New York.
"It's difficult to reconcile athletic excellence, and the
specialized roles for different kinds of athletes with the
degree of academic excellence that's going on at highly
selective institutions," he said.
He and his boss at Mellon, William G. Bowen, are the authors
of The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values,
due out early next year from Princeton University Press. They
contend that athletes at elite colleges and universities do
not perform as well as their peers academically, and that the
athletes tend to be somewhat isolated from the rest of campus
life because of the intense pressures of practice and
competition, even at a college like Swarthmore. They question
whether most athletes are able to take full advantage of the
educational opportunities available at such institutions.
"The people who play football at Swarthmore are terrific
academically, but the fact that their athletic prowess has
played an appreciable role in the admissions process means
they're probably not the same people who would have been
chosen otherwise," Mr. Shulman said. "The question is whether
having a winning lacrosse team or football team is worth
guiding how you use scarce resources."
The majority of Swarthmore's Athletics Review Committee came
to the conclusion that only 10 to 15 percent of each class of
Swarthmore students should be "recruited" athletes -- those
for whom their sport is their primary extracurricular
activity.
Thomas J. Krattenmaker, a college spokesman, said the
committee believed that 32 percent of each incoming class
would have to be athletes in order for the programs to be
competitive. At the moment, only 17 percent of Swarthmore
students are recruited athletes. With 55 players on the
roster, football was an obvious candidate for the chopping
block, in order to get the number of athletes down.
Although the committee met for a year, and included members of
the football team, Mr. Alvanos said the decision came as a
shock.
"To go 4-5, our best record since 1995, you just feel all the
hard work was starting to mean something," he said. "In my own
little world, the success we'd had finding quality
student-athletes, getting the community behind us, I guess I
took it for granted."
According to all parties, Mr. Alvanos had done everything by
the book. The committee found that athletes had slightly lower
grade-point averages than non-athletes, but that the football
players were, on average, exceptionally qualified. Mr. Alvanos
knows their average SAT score by heart: 1397.5, which isn't
all that far below the median 1460 score for students accepted
at Swarthmore last year.
"This was absolutely not motivated by any sense that athletes
bring anything but very positive enhancements," said Mr.
Bloom. "All of our athletes bring a wonderful range of other
things to Swarthmore."
Other observers aren't so sure. Students say there are two
kinds of athletes at the college. One group, mostly football
players, is cliquish; many of its members belong to the lone
fraternity on the campus, Delta Upsilon. The rest are more
fully engaged in the Swarthmore's social life and activities.
Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology, said that many
athletes -- football players and others -- he has had in class
lack a certain zeal for intellectual pursuits. "There's less
evidence of a spark, of real interest in what they're
studying. At other institutions, that wouldn't even be
noticeable."
Eugene M. Lang, a member of the Board of Managers and a
philanthropist who has helped to send many underprivileged
young people to college, is blunter. "Having a football team
is like trying to live peacefully with an 800-pound gorilla,"
said Mr. Lang, who graduated from Swarthmore in 1938. "You
can't have a football squad of 70 in a coed student body of
1,400."
The Athletics Review Committee made its recommendations to the
board on Friday, December 1, over the protestations of Mr.
Austrian, the board member and former president of the N.F.L.
Mr. Bloom, Swarthmore's president, insists that the committee
considered all sports, but Mr. Austrian, a member of the
group, said its deliberations were about football from the
start.
Swarthmore's other 21 teams "weren't on the table in any way,
shape, or form," said Mr. Austrian, a member of the Class of
1961. Despite his feelings and those of others on the
committee, the group made a single recommendation -- to drop
football and wrestling and to demote badminton.
The controversy has centered primarily on football, because
the wrestling program has been in decline for years. The coach
resigned before the start of the season, and only three
wrestlers were available for the first match of the year. The
team had not decided whether to finish out the season.
Badminton players do not get any help in the admissions
process and will continue competing against local clubs and
colleges.
The next day, December 2, the board met and, according to
members on both sides of the issue, agreed to make a decision
immediately rather than deliberate until February, as had been
planned. Coaches would have a hard time recruiting athletes
during the winter months, knowing that their teams might not
be around the next season, Mr. Bloom explained.
The board also quickly ascertained that its members could not
reach a consensus on the issue -- a situation perhaps
unprecedented in the college's history. In the past, members
of the board who dissented from the majority opinion would
simply "stand aside" to allow the group to reach a unanimous
opinion. Not even on an issue as contentious as whether the
college should sell off its investments in apartheid-era South
Africa, in the mid-1980's, did the board have to resort to a
vote, Mr. Lang said.
However, Mr. Austrian and other members of the board insisted
on having their opposition to dropping the sports put on the
record. So the group took a vote, producing the 21-to-8
result.
"I think the board will always want to follow Quaker influence
as much as it can," said Mr. Shane, the chairman. "I think a
combination of circumstances this time, and the feeling that
the best thing for Swarthmore was to make a decision, made
this special and rare."
Mr. Austrian said that unless the board reconsiders its
decision, he will step down after 22 years as a member. "I've
been totally compromised," he said, explaining that as a
member of the board, he assured Coach Alvanos and many
prospective students and their parents that Swarthmore was
committed to football for the long term. The swift decision to
excise the program is a fatal blow to his credibility, he
said.
News of the board's decision spread quickly, provoking furious
reactions among students and alumni. At what was supposed to
be a private meeting with members of the football team on
Sunday, Mr. Bloom, Mr. Shane, and Jennie Keith, the college's
provost, were shouted down by an angry crowd of students and
parents.
More protests were registered at a "fireside chat" with the
president on Monday, and students staged a sit-in on the first floor of Parrish Hall, the main administration building, the
following day. Even non-athletes came well-equipped with
markers and poster board to make signs supporting their
classmates.
"I'm a non-athlete, but as a friend of athletes I feel it's
important we all support them," said Amy Robinson, a
first-year student. "These people are our friends."
Athletes and former athletes alike say they felt that the
decision showed that the college wasn't committed to
supporting its athletics department.
"Nobody's happy about the way it was handled," said Jeremy
Shweder, a member of the Class of 1994 who competed on
Swarthmore's one national-class sports program, the tennis
team. "They are claiming that this is a way they can recruit
better, but it's basically a step saying, 'We don't care about
athletics very much, and we don't want to support it.'"
Mr. Bloom disagreed vehemently. The decision "says we will
make a larger commitment to bringing in athletes than any
other group," he argued. "We hope that we will have absolutely
as many kids who come here with a particular interest in
athletics, and a talent or history of achievement in
athletics, as we did before."
The president said the college's goal was for each of its
teams, over time, to record a .500 won-lost record and
occasionally to compete for conference and national titles.
Most of the country's top liberal-arts colleges -- Williams,
Amherst, and Bowdoin, to name a few -- as well as Ivy League
institutions, maintain very broad sports programs, and most of
them compete on a high level nationally. But they all struggle
with the problem of how many athletes to admit, and how much
they're willing to lower their standards to get talented
players in the door.
Officials of other selective colleges say Swarthmore's
decision caught them by surprise. "In certain ways, I don't
know what to make of it all," said Thomas H. Parker, dean of
admissions at Amherst. "If Swarthmore can't do it, who the
heck can?"
Mr. Parker and Peter N. Gooding, Amherst's athletics director,
say they are engaged in constant monitoring to make sure that
the admission of athletes doesn't compromise the college's
standards. They have had problems in the past (The Chronicle,
November 19, 1999).
But Amherst has a much stronger athletics program than
Swarthmore, and Mr. Parker said he doesn't understand why
Swarthmore officials think they would need so many more
athletes to be competitive. "That figure, of [around] 30
percent, is preposterous for 24 sports," he said. "We bring in
75 kids a year, 17 percent of the class, of athletes, and we
have 27 sports. How are we doing that? We're bringing in
athletes who are terrific students."
Mr. Gooding said he thinks that Swarthmore is capable of
fielding a competitive football program, although he notes
that there are not many football-playing colleges nearby that
attract the same academic caliber of students -- part of the
reason for Swarthmore's football woes.
Despite the hard feelings, professors and even some alumni
disappointed with Swarthmore's decision acknowledge that
dropping the team probably will not change the college much in
the long run.
"I don't think the school needs football, but it doesn't not
need football," said Mr. Shweder, the 1994 graduate. "The
spotlight on the football program has skewed what Swarthmore
is really about, but I think Al Bloom has skewed it a little,
too. Football is never a huge part of anyone's experience,
except the players."
The players are, of course, upset and angry, and many are
considering transferring. "We've already heard from two," said
Amherst's Mr. Parker.
In his office, Mr. Alvanos fished out a recruiting leaflet
that he had been sending out to prospective players. Its
title: "One Heartbeat -- The Resurrection of Swarthmore
College Football." At the bottom of the page is the phrase,
"The rebuilding is over."
Mr. Alvanos shook his head at the irony. He, too, has some
tough decisions to make.
"What happens next? I don't know," he said, his voice a rasp.
"I haven't even sat down to talk to my wife about it."
Copyright 2000 by The Chronicle of Higher Education