December 24, 2005

Dean Parker on athletics, slots, and transparency

The Sports section of Sunday’s New York Times includes a lengthy story on athletic recruiting in Division III, extensively quoting Dean of Admissions Tom Parker. The article compares the practice of filling athletic “slots” (called “athletic factors,” in the NESCAC) and sticking to a limited number of such slots, with colleges which do not admit a fixed number of athletes. Parker points to both the NESCAC’s agreed-upon formula for a numbering slots as well as the lower limit observed by the Little Three, and notes,

“The real danger was in not acknowledging that we give preferential treatment to athletes,” Parker said. “It engendered a corrosive cynicism. When it was on the table exactly what we do, it wasn’t as bad as some faculty thought.”

Parker also describes how the slots are filled, and notes that before this system was in place, “as recently as the late 1990’s, Amherst was admitting 96 athletes.”

The article also notes that football presents the biggest problem to admissions at nearly every Division III program, though it doesn’t mention the drastic step taken by Swarthmore when they dropped football several years ago.

“You just need so many football players to have a competitive team,” said Les Poolman, athletic director at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., [which faces Swarthmore in the competitive Centennial Conference.] “And some of them you want to be 260 pounds with good grades and high test scores. It’s often a lot easier to get distance runners.”

Parker Morse '96 | December 24, 2005 07:54 PM | Athletics | Campus