I find myself getting sucked into this one despite my best efforts...
 
Dylan Niksa wrote:
>
> I'm new to the list, so please excuse my commenting on an issue that
> everyone seems pretty tired with: US players vs. foreign. Many have
> mentioned they don't care who they are watching at their respective
> school, Americans or Canadians.  I'm just curious how they would feel if
> their son lost a scholarship to a division I school because a Canadian got
> it first.  Your son loses a university education, while a Canadian player
> benifits from your tax dollar, which his family didn't contribute to.
>
 
I've got a ten-year old who has a dream to play college hockey.  When the time
comes, if he's good enough then he's earned it.  If he isn't good enough, and
he gets beaten out by some Canadian player, then he didn't earn it.  It's
that simple.  If a kid isn't good enough to get an athletic scholarship, then
he'll just have to make it on his academics.  If a kid hasn't excelled in
either, then he gets what he deserved.
 
As far as athletes go, in revenue *producing* sports it's easy to argue that
the athletes are contributing much more in dollars than the scholarship costs.
In that case, the question becomes not one of whether some foreign player
"cost" the school money, but how much the foreign player "made" for the school.
This is truest in football and pituitary ball, but there are definitely
revenue positive schools in hockey.  I'm sure that, for example, Maine's
packed out Alfond crowds are an example where recruiting top Canadian players
in addition to American ones makes financial sense (because winning teams are
better off financially).
 
Tony Buffa then wrote:
>
> As a faculty person in a Div I school in California I can tell you that
> you do not need to be Canadian to jump over a better student into college
> (for free) .... athletic scholarships, special slots for athletes, etc,
> are the rule of the game, and altho most parents don't think about it,
> many tax dollars do go to marginal student-athletes over better prepared
> students who are not athletes.  Fact of life.  So I am not sure we should
> blame the Canadiens.  As long as American universities (with full Div I
> programs) treat their athletic programs as a win-at-all-cost business ....
> anyone can take advantage of it.
>
> BTW  -- IMHO you can thank the lawmakers (at least in CA) in the state
> capitol who continue funding for these programs out of taxpayer dollars.
> Then again, I have a feeling the general populace of CA would be more
> upset if they deleted the UCLA football team compared to getting rid of,
> say, the Physics Dept.
>
 
Well, the UCLA football team makes more money than the Physics Department.  :-)
:-)  :-)
 
Seriously, what is win-at-all-cost?  To my mind, that is a school arranging
for cheerleaders to "entertain" recruits when they visit the campus.  It's
schools "graduating" athletes who are still functional illiterates (was this
Dexter Manley or was it some other football player?).  It's schools not caring
about a player's academics, just so long as he stays academically eligible.
It's schools not caring about preparing an athlete for a future outside of
professional sports.  That's win-at-all-costs to my mind and there's been
plenty of it in college sports but I think college hockey has been remarkably
free of these stains.
 
Is it proper to take a borderline student who has excelled in athletics?  I
think so.  Schools rightly look for students who will provide more than
just aced problem sets and A's on exams.  Part of my application to MIT was to
describe what things other than booklearnin' I had done.  I knew ahead of time
that they wanted lots of activities in addition to my academics.  If you
had a total of 1400 on your SATs but hadn't done a thing outside of the
classroom then you could conceivably be turned down in favor of someone who
had a total of 1300 but had done loads of extra-curricular activities.
(Especially if the 1300 was 700 on the Math and 600 on the Verbal.  :-)   )
And an interview was part of the application, presumably to try to get as
many well-rounded students as possible and not all socially inept geeks.  One
week there, however, showed me they'd failed.  :-)   But the intent to provide
a well-rounded student populace was there.
 
Schools pride themselves on offering many things in addition to classes, so
in the same way that the editor of the high school newspaper and captain of
the chess team would get a break over the kid who never did *anything* outside
of the classroom, so too it is reasonable for a borderline applicant to make
it based on some other excellance, namely athletics.  Schools are looking at
the total package, and I would not use the pejorative win-at-all-costs term for
this.  As long as the kid is at least borderline, and then performs well in
his academics, then the kid's interests and the university's are both well
served.
 
On to my final point (for all three of you who are still reading)...
 
I wasn't going to post my response to someone's comments about the Boston
media and Blaine Lacher, since I thought all the Lacher talk was getting
rather off-topic and belonged more on the Broons list than HOCKEY-L, but
since I've already posted this much blather I might as well go for the hat
trick...
 
IMO it's instinctive for people to knock the media.  But in the Lacher case
I think there's been appropriate enthusiasm mixed with restraint.  Virtually
every article or TV report I've heard has given the caveat, "It's still early,
but..."   The facts are that the goaltending was the single biggest
questionmark for the team and after three games he has a 0.67 GAA.
Already he has stolen more games for them than
Jon "Technicolor Five-Hole" Casey did all last year.  So
there is reason for real enthusiasm which has certainly been generated, but
that enthusiasm has always been tempered with "it's still early."  Even Derek
Sanderson -- that frequent bastion of stupidity -- was quoting that line.  So
IMO the media has handled the Lacher case exactly right.  I think that they
tend to handle pro sports correctly since usually they know what they are
talking about.  Where they get into trouble is when they get going on issues
they aren't informed about, such as Will McDonough and Maine last year.
 
Now I'd better take advantage of my old academic training and get back to work.
I can see I'll be going through lunchtime thanks to this diatribe.  :-)
 
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