I LIVE in a region where a lacrosse stick is more likely than perfect SAT scores to get your child into a top college or university.
Every parent in Maryland, and particularly Anne Arundel County, knows this, so when my daughter finally got around to picking up a stick - at the advanced age of 12 - my husband and I began to spin daydreams of Princeton and Duke.
And, because my daughter cannot escape the messages in this hotbed of lacrosse, she asked fearfully if she would have to give up basketball, soccer, the mall, the telephone, cartoons on Saturday morning and Teen People magazine to excel in this crowded sport.
We assured her that we were not sending her to live at a Soviet lacrosse camp, and she was free to pursue the sport of her choice, and she was not required to be good enough at any of them to earn a spot at a prestigious university.
That's what we said to her.
To each other, we said: "Damn!"
James Shulman, co-author of "The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values," says I am not a bad parent because my first instinct was to place a lacrosse stick in my child's crib, and then use it to drive her into an Ivy League school.
"You are listening to the signals. And there is nothing wrong with that. It is the signals that have to change," says Shulman.
"If the rewards system remains what it is," he adds, "it makes more sense for her to get better in a sport than to spend an extra two hours on chemistry or `Paradise Lost.' "
Shulman and his co-author, William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton, are principals at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. They used 50 years of data to sort out the misinformation and myth of college sports.
It is a dense and troubling book. Among the many facts they report: Despite enormous stadiums and television fees and souvenir deals, even top college programs regularly lose money.
Alumni giving is not linked to winning in the long term.
College athletes are not more likely to be leaders in their adult communities.
And collegiate women's programs, made possible under Title IX just 30 years ago, have not forged a new model but are finding themselves just as corrupt and compromised as the men's programs.
"Women are actually `catching down' with men," Shulman says.
Bowen and Shulman focused on smaller, prestigious colleges, like Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Oberlin, Yale, where the corrosive mix of academics and athletics might be more clearly seen. They found that to assure success even in the most minor sports, these schools set aside specific numbers of places for recruited athletes and then reach further down the academic strata to fill them.
They found that at Williams College in Massachusetts, as many as 70 students might be admitted because of their athletic skills in a class of 550. That's a higher percentage of the student population than at Michigan, a Division I powerhouse.
An athlete is more likely to be admitted over a nonathlete with the same SAT scores than an African-American or the child of an alumnus, the authors found.
There are no athletic scholarships at these elite, Division III schools, but the authors found that athletes are likely to receive much more generous financial aid under the heading of "need" or "merit."
"The athletes they are letting in are very smart people," Shulman said of these highly selective liberal arts schools. "They are capable of graduating."
But the authors found that while athletes have twice the chance of gaining admittance as kids with the same academic credentials, they perform less well than their transcripts and SAT scores would predict.
"Those kids in other demanding extracurriculars, like orchestra, drama or the newspaper, actually perform better than would have been predicted by their scores," says Shulman. "So we know it isn't the time demands."
And, on a more esoteric level, the athletes have very different goals and values and very different views of what college is about than the rest of the student population.
"They view themselves as athletes, not students. They understand that they got in because of how well they play their sport, and they believe that is their role."
These findings did not surprise me. I covered sports for many years; I have been witness to the recruitment of friends' children for their athletic skills, and I have been honest here about my pipe dreams for my children.
But the social justice argument Shulman makes pricks my conscience.
"Every opportunity given is an opportunity denied," Shulman says.
If one kid gets into Middlebury College in Vermont because he can play hockey, he takes the place of another child who, according to Shulman and Bowens, has better academic credentials.
And, because that hockey player has been recruited by Middlebury, another hockey-playing student, who doesn't have the same athletic talent, does not get to play. The Division III walk-on athlete is disappearing.
