Gripe with Whitten over college women

Rob, I have four words for you and your swimmin' son, "Division II or III." In the early 80's I walked on to a Div III program after only 3 years of competitive swimming in high school. Judging by what I'm seeing right now, I could do the same today if I was 18 and had the same times. These non-scholarship teams are the real gems of college athletics, throw-backs to when "student-athlete" actually fit the dictionary definition. I had a chance to participate in what was the most serious, intense swimming program of my life, AND still have it fit into getting a good education. As a group, the people on the college swim team did BETTER academically than the general student population. In my class there were 4 of us who swam all 4 years on the team; each and every one of us graduated with some form of academic distinction (*** laude or better). Talk to most scholarship athletes in a Div I program, and they will tell you about a committment to athletics that felt more like a job than an enjoyable activity, and the competition for their time that made getting an education a challenge. The other little secret to small school athletics is that in some ways they are SAFER from budget cuts than Div I scholarship programs. Think about it. At my school, we had a football team, but it was not the AD's cash cow, and it had no greater claim to the college's mission than any of the other sports. Ergo, no "arms race" for lavish funding of "revenue sports," and no constant threat of cuts to feed that monster. We could never imagine competing with, oh say, Univ of Illinois or UCLA, but hey, in a couple of weeks I actually get to participate in a varsity vs. alumni swim meet. How do you find these programs? Simple, keep looking until you do. I have avoided mentioning my school (BTW, Lake Forest College, just north of Chicago with excellent transportation links to the city, excellent academics, www.lfc.edu, the coach Alec Webster would be delighted to chat with any swimmers wanting to look at the program) because it is not at all unique. There are plenty of schools out there, just add to your criteria for a school "must have Div I/II/III swim program." I did. I could have gone to several schools that were solid academically, small liberal arts colleges but no swim team, or I could have gone to an academically shakey school with a swim team. I simply insisted on looking until I found one that had all those things, and we could make work with our family finances. BTW, if you like the idea of a Service Academy education that is paid for, consider the Coast Guard Academy and the Merchant Marine Academy, which last time I checked, still had Div III swimming. So, my advice is don't give up, but consider programs other than the Univ of Auburn or Michigan. Training with future Olympians is nice, but not the only kind of college swimming out there. Matt

Just to add to Matt's post -- Division III includes some very large, well-known schools, such as NYU (45,000 students), University of Chicago, Emory and most campuses of the State University of New York. So looking for a Division III school, with all the advantages Matt describes, doesn't necessarily mean being limited to small colleges.

OK Cynthia, I read the article you were referring to. Sorry I didn't know it was there before. I've been playing catch-up since I got back from convention, and haven't checked in at SwimInfo.com for awhile. The article doesn't actually say it was written by Phil Whitten, by the way. It doesn't have a byline that I could see. It looks to me like it may have been lifted straight from one of the wire services. And as Rob pointed out, the article doesn't take a position one way or another. It just reports the facts of the case. I think you may have missed the point of the article, which was simply that decisions about the impact of budgets and Title IX are being based on bad numbers. That's it. No one disputes the fact that women got a raw deal in the past, in terms of opportunity to compete at the collegiate level. But that doesn't mean it's right to cut men's programs today in order to comply with Title IX. Title IX was supposed to ADD women's programs, not cut men's programs. I am not familiar with statistics for all college teams, but I am familiar with the Southeastern Conference, and there are actually more women's programs in the SEC than there are men's. Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, South Carolina, and Tennessee have both men's and women's programs, but Arkansas has only a women's program. (Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and Vanderbilt have neither men's or women's programs.) I believe from what I've read from Phil in SWIM Magazine that he is interested in preserving collegiate swimming, period. Men's and women's programs. He wants to counter the budgetary and Title IX excuses that college athletic directors are using to cut programs. You need accurate counts of the number of programs in order to make effective arguments, and the suit cited in the Sept. 16 article says that the count is NOT accurate. That's the only thing I get out of that article.

I was jumping to conclusins. And I know that the tide has turn the other way. Some of it has to do with title IX and some of it has to do with our sport becoming more female in the younger age group swimming.

Matt S, in Calfiornia we had the community colleges and the Cal-state schools while are considered C and B academy are less into the big three sports because most of the students work full time and more students over 30 attend them. They have opportunites in many sports. And if a person can swallow their pride about going to a less elite school academy, then they can do both sports and school. Actually in my opinion some of the best teachers I had were at JC and the cal-state teachers do all the teaching. There are no teaching assistants at them. Victor Davis Hanson who writes on miltary matters and Greek history use to teach at Cal-State Frenso. He is now the author of Mexifornia, a book about how the changining Mexican immirgation into California around Frenso has effective the community.