At 10:20 AM 11/14/2005 -0500, Mark Lewin wrote:
>Although Cornell is a private university and is forbidden to give athletic
>scholarships as part of their membership agreement with the Ivy league, part
>of Cornell (the school of Agriculture, I believe) was part of the SUNY
>(State University of New York). Harkness somehow played the loophole that
>since SUNY was "separate" from the private Cornell, those students enrolled
>at SUNY were eligible for hockey scholarships. 

This is not accurate.  There was and is no such loophole that would allow
the state side of Cornell to offer scholarships for hockey, or any other
sport, while the rest of the university (under Ivy regulations) could not.
There may have been, and may still be, financial aid available to those in
Cornell's state schools that was not available to those on the private side
(I don't know if this was/is the case), but such money would be made
available to all students in need, not reserved for athletes.

>Ned scoured the plains of
>Canada from Ontario west to recruit for his spectacularly successful Cornell
>team.

This is true and was the source of most of the animosity directed toward
Harkness -- that he recruited Canadians, at a time when few schools were
doing so, and that with those players he was able to turn a team that
wasn't much above club level into a national power.  When asked why he
would leave RPI for Cornell, which had resurrected its hockey program only
six years before he got there, Harkness is said to have replied, "Because
Ithaca is exactly 90 miles closer to the Canadian border than Troy."

As for Harkness' stint at Union, the beginning of the end was when he broke
an NESCAC rule (note: not an NCAA one, the NESCAC is quite a bit more
restrictive) regarding visiting a recruit, and then proceeded to lie about
it when he was confronted.  I believe Harkness was suspended by the
university president but almost immediately reinstated by the board of
trustees.  Somewhere in there, four of Harkness' recruits were rejected by
Union's admissions department; all four wound up at Ivy League universities
instead.  Anyway, Harkness did coach the first half of that season
(1977-78, IIRC), but when four more of his players were declared
academically ineligible, he resigned, and most of his team quit as well.
Union left or was kicked out of the NESCAC shortly afterward.

This whole mess helps explain why, when Union did eventually move its
hockey team to Div. I status in 1991, they did so with a lot of
restrictions -- no athletic scholarships, only playing 25 regular-season
games for several years, and so forth.
--
Bill Fenwick                                                 DJF   5/27/94
Cornell '86 and '95                                          JCF   12/2/97
LET'S GO RED!!

"Wagner's music is better than it sounds."
-- Edgar Wilson Nye, quoted by Mark Twain