Boy, what a garbled answer.  I'll go through this one piece by piece.
 
[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> I am not a jingoist. I actually believe in immigration. I do not believe in
> opening our colleges and taking slots away from American kids to Canadians or
> Europeans or anyone else that is just here to play hockey or swim.
 
As opposed to Americans that are just there to play some sport?
 
> UCLA had
> an Australian softball pitcher that lead them to a national championship- she
> left after one semester- no one knows if she earned one credit! or attended a
> class!
 
And then, of course, there are American players that do much the same
thing.  The name of Stephon Marbury comes to mind.  On the other hand,
there are plenty of foreigners playing sports who are also very
concerned with going to class.  Last night, I watched Minnesota get
destroyed by a pair of very diligent economics majors (Brendan Morrison
and Jason Botterill).  The problem here has nothing to do with
foreigners; it has a lot to do with college athletes of any variety who
don't go to class.
 
> Like it or not- our great colleges out of the same cynicism and short
> sightedness that brings in guest foreign athletes- drop wrestling because it
> is not revenue producing and there is no women's equivalent- at least in
> hockey we have womens hockey. It is not pc for me to observe that an
> equitable athletic program at a D1 school does not mean that there will be as
> many women in sports as men. Football and wrestling shouldn't count because
> like it or not they are male sports.
 
But they do count.  If you are going to establish sports which are only
available to men, why shouldn't there be sports which are only available
to women?  Wrestling isn't getting cut because there isn't women's
wrestling, it's getting cut because there is a revenue shortfall and the
women already have fewer opportunities.  If men's athletics wants to use
an overwhelming amount of its resources on football, complain about it.
 But don't let them use smoke and mirrors to get you to blame women's
athletics for that decision.
 
>(the # of football scholarships is
> definitely another issue- cut down on the scholarships and Lord knows we
> might have real students playing! My goodness a "walk-on". That is an issue
> for another day.
 
This aspect of scholarships is different, but not limited to football.
The number of the given to football is inextricably linked to almost
every other decision made within an athletic department.  One of my
solutions would be to completely seperate men's and women's athletics,
give them the same number of scholarships (or whatever the proportion
ought to be at any given institution based on general population) and
let each department divvy them up however they like.  Maybe this would
make it clear that wrestling is fighting football, not women's
gymnastics.  But I doubt it.
 
>All I know is that foreign schools are not giving
> scholarships to Americans;
 
Of course they're not.  The US is the only country in the world where
 big time athletics is linked to colleges.  Foreign universities don't
give athletic scholarships to their own citizens, either.
 
>foreign leagues limit American imports;
 
And the new American premier soccer league limits foreigners.  I'm yet
to be convinced that it's really going to help them.
 
>and I have
> yet to see how limiting (not banning) foreign athletes on Athletic
> Scholarships- will hurt college hockey- in the long run it will help all of
> American hockey. You want to bring in Canada's best and brightest minds with
> the idea maybe they will stay here- fine.
 
Actually, everyone seems to be convinced that American hockey has been
doing just fine without limiting Canadians.  We won the World Cup; made
a very respectable showing in the World Juniors.  We're now producing
players from parts of the country we didn't see them from before, such
as Chicago.  You're going to have to find some actual evidence before
I'm willing to believe that Canadians (or even those darn Europeans) are
about to ruin hockey, college or otherwise.
 
J. Michael Neal
 
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