Ivy League Hustle
Columbia student-athletes tell all
“If I weren’t playing baseball, I wouldn’t be here,” admits Nick Hoyt, CC ’09, a starter for the baseball team. “My grades on their own wouldn’t have been enough. I wouldn’t have gotten in.”
“Honestly, my family doesn’t have a huge background in the education department,” continues Hoyt, whose name has been changed to protect his privacy. “My dad went to college for two years. My mom was a hairdresser. My brother didn’t go to college and he’s working toward being a fireman in Florida. So I was pretty out of place applying to school.”
It wasn’t until November of Hoyt’s senior year of high school that an elite education became a possibility, when a friend of his father’s told him that with his grades and talent for baseball, Hoyt might just make an Ivy League student. Hoyt laughed it off, but he was curious. He had a 97 average and SATs in the mid-1200s; the Ivies were not so much of a stretch.
Hoyt researched the rosters of various Ivy League baseball teams, looking to see if they had any openings for his position. A few of them did.
Though Hoyt was attracted to the baseball programs at some less prestigious schools, he ultimately had to be practical. “Talking to the coaches in my local area, they said I’d be better off going to an educational school and getting the best education possible, so I’d have a fallback if baseball didn’t work out,” Hoyt recalls. “They said no matter what school you go to, if you have talent, you’ll be noticed. Scouts go to random games and they will pick you out.”
Hoyt is not a typical Columbia student. He’s not even a typical Columbia athlete, really. He doesn’t aspire to go to medical school or law school; he wants to be a Major League Baseball player—not exactly the career track most Columbia students follow. In fact, athletics in general don’t seem to be part of mainstream campus life. On this campus, recruited athletes exist as a group apart, dining together, studying together, and living together. When they do mix with regular students, there is often tension. Students who go to Columbia solely for the academics are frustrated that recruited athletes can get accepted with less impressive academic credentials and, once they are here, receive extra benefits, ranging from admissions extensions to early scheduling. On the flip side, athletes must cope with the stigma of not being good enough in the classroom, while also playing in front of empty stands all season.
Although Hoyt is still a year or two away from peak professional recruitment time, it’s still a topic that preoccupies his thoughts. “If I had a chance, I would honestly take it,” Hoyt says. Should Hoyt get a phone call from a professional baseball representative sometime next spring, he will walk away from his economics and psychology concentrations and go where the League wants him, his wallet several thousand dollars heavier.
Is that any way to repay the University that possibly nudged Hoyt ahead of some other more academically qualified but less athletic candidates? Probably not, but this is the risk that comes with recruiting students based on their athletic skills. On the other hand, the financial and reputational benefits that come with admitting talented athletes can also be reason enough. Columbia’s alumni base are frequently the most avid fans of sports, and a winning sports program can attract alumni dollars.
Hoyt believes that he got into Columbia because of baseball and he’s probably right. According to Reclaiming the Game, a book on Ivy League athletic practices co-written by William G. Bowen, former president of Princeton, male recruited athletes have a 66 percent probability of admission at Ivy League schools, over four times that of their non-athlete male peers who only have a 15 percent probability of admission. The SAT of the recruited athlete falls well below that of the average Ivy student, some estimates placing it at around 1200. The disparity in SAT scores between athletes and non-athletes actually varies by sport, with hockey, basketball and football players earning the lowest SAT scores. Baseball is not far behind these three. True to the stereotype, the less high profile sports, such as fencing and crew, boast athletes with higher SAT scores that are only about 30 points below the male student average.
Hoyt is hardly the only athlete to benefit from Columbia’s relaxed admission standards. Former rower Owen Langley, whose name has also been changed, CC ’08, was recruited for the Heavyweight Crew team. Tall and powerfully built through the neck and shoulders, Langley was a decent rower for a competitive prep school, but it wasn’t his athleticism alone that caught the coach’s eye.
“From what I heard from the coach, some of my grades were good enough to boost the average for the crew recruits,” says Langley. “It wasn’t that I was actually
that good at crew… The grades were the main selling point.”
In November of his senior year, Langley was still undecided as to what college he wished to attend. He was scheduled to visit Columbia the weekend before the Early Decision deadline, but had to cancel because he had too much homework to do. Columbia admired Langley’s dedication to maintaining his 3.9 high school average and invited him to visit the next weekend instead. Langley made the trip and fell in love with the school. Unfortunately, the Early Decision deadline had passed.
“If you really want to know,” Langley says. “I got an extension on the Early Decision [deadline]. The coach got me an extra week.”
Langley was accepted Early Decision.
According to regulation 14.1.7.1.1 in the NCAA Division I Manual, on Special Admission: “A student-athlete may be admitted under a special exception to the institution’s normal entrance requirements if the discretionary authority of the president or chancellor (or designated admissions officer or commitee) to grant such exceptions is set forth is an official document published by the university (e.g. official catalog) that describes the institution’s admission’s requirements.
The Eye asked the Office of Undergraduate Admissions about the relationship between admissions officers and coaches along with queries about the nature of admissions exceptions for athletes. Jessica Marinaccio, executive director of undergraduate admissions, released this written statement:
“It is within the purview of the Office of Undergraduate Admissions to grant extensions to students for a variety of reasons. The granting of extensions is determined on a case by case basis and is an opportunity available to all applicants. Past reasons for extensions have included financial hardship, natural disasters, family emergencies, etc.”
The Ivy League Intercollegiate Athletic Admissions Statement, which is linked off the Office of Undergraduate Admissions website, details specific regulations about admissions, though there is no specific mention about the right to grant extensions; students are just reminded to pay attention to deadlines.
But the perks don’t stop there. Once athletes get into Columbia, they receive additional help from Jackie Blackett, associate athletic director for student-athlete support services, is responsible for coordinating all of Columbia’s athletes’ schedules, dealing with academic problems as they arise and helping athletes with their career choices. Hoyt speaks of her as though she is a Mother Teresa with muscle, a woman who not only wants to help, but also makes things happen.
“We have a target GPA of 3.2 or higher for our department as a measure of how we’d like our teams to perform academically,” Blackett says. “Students having difficulty with a class may request a tutor through my office. We maintain a list of tutors in as many subjects as possible.”
These tutors are provided free of charge to the athletes.
When a conflict occurs between an athlete’s sports schedule and his schoolwork, Blackett mediates. If an exam is scheduled at the same time as a practice or a game, Blackett will either secure an alternate test date for the athlete or some type of concession from the coach.
“At the beginning of the year, there was an orientation meeting ... part of what we were told was that if we needed any help with our classes, we should come to her,” remembers Charlotte Dennis, an ’06 graduate and recruited fencer, whose name has also been changed. “She later clarified that to mean that if we had gotten shut out of a class we needed, she would get us in; if we needed academic help, they would provide tutors; if we needed to drop a class past the drop deadline, they would help us do that.”
As a result of an initiative launched by the Athletic Department and the Dean’s Office last year, athletes now have “priority scheduling.” Blackett explains that “priority scheduling” is a privilege whereby athletes can register for classes before any non-athlete of the same grade. The program is designed to ensure that athletes, with their limited schedules, can still fulfill their academic requirements and not get locked out of the classes that fit into their window of free time every day.
Athletes are also often at an advantage when it comes to career opportunities.
“We have a lot of athletes interested in the financial world,” Blackett says. “In finance, you tend to work on a team. So, that’s a natural for a student-athlete. We have a lot of alumni on Wall Street and they are very, very eager to come back and talk to the current athletes and give them the benefit of their expertise.”
These benefits, reasonable as they might be, often rankle faculty and other students. Professor S, who did not want to give his full name, a tenured professor in the English department, finds this attitude toward academics very disappointing. Coming to Columbia from Oxford and having served as a professor at Indiana University, he did not expect an Ivy League institution to place the kind of emphasis on athletics that is found here.
“I am scandalized,” says S. “That’s really the only word for it.”
S is shocked not only by the admissions breaks given to recruited athletes, but also by the sheer number of athletes in the class. While teaching at Indiana, a school in the Big Ten athletic conference, S found that he was much less aware of the presence of athletes than he is here at Columbia. At Indiana, there were proportionally far fewer recruited athletes enrolled due size of the school. According to Bowen’s research, 16 percent of Ivy League students are recruited athletes.
“I don’t believe that it’s inherently unfair to treat athletes differently, but what if they quit,” speculates Dennis. “Columbia is a really, really hard place to be an athlete. Uniquely hard, I’d say.”
Although some athletes may have an easier time gaining entrance into Columbia, it wouldn’t be fair to say they slack off once they’re here. When Hoyt arrived at Columbia, he was dismayed at the choice of majors the school offers.
“I was looking into accounting at first, but we don’t have that here,” Hoyt says. “I actually wanted to do something with exercise science, or strength training, but we don’t have that either.”
Before Hoyt settled on a double concentration in economics and psychology, he was tempted to major in chemistry. He had taken two years of chemistry in high school, including the Advanced Placement course. But, when Hoyt brought up the idea of taking general chemistry, the introductory course, to his academic adviser, he came away discouraged.
“The guy asked me if I wanted to go pre-med,” Hoyt says. “I just sat there. Did I really wanna go pre-med and do a sport? He tells me all the other factors that go into it. You have to do a lab that counts as no credit and is about five hours long. With baseball in the spring, and winter and fall practices, I decided not to do it.”
It is difficult balancing the demands of baseball and schoolwork. In season, Hoyt is in the field practicing for four hours a day, six days a week. One hour a day, three days a week, he has mandatory team weight-lifting sessions. By necessity, all of his classes are jammed into the morning, to make way for these afternoon practice and gym workouts. On top of this, Hoyt often travels long distances on the weekends to play baseball games.
“I can tell you I’m physically exhausted 90 percent of the time,” says Hoyt. “When I’m just getting out of my classes, I know the stuff. But, you go to practice and you get wiped out. When you’re in practice it’s almost like you’re in a different mode. You turn off the whole student side of you and you’re in athlete mode. Our coach actually says, ‘No talking about school whatsoever in practice.’”
This emphasis on athletics over academics is turning some student-athletes into athlete-students, a fine but important distinction.
Professor S sees this mind-set play out every day. “They show up to class fatigued,” he says, declining to elaborate on the difficulties of teaching athletes.
“Columbia can have any freshman class it wants,” says S. “And it is electing to reserve a significant portion of admits for students with athletic skills.”
Hoyt imagines that he would get more out of his education if he weren’t an athlete.
“I would probably challenge myself more in classes,” says Hoyt. “If I got out of the baseball realm, I could schedule my classes at a more ideal time, as opposed to now when it’s all in the morning.”
After they leave the field, Columbia athletes don’t stop being athletes. The pressure extends beyond the classroom, affecting every area of the student’s life from diet to social outings. Hoyt is a brother in the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity, also known as the “baseball frat.” According to Hoyt, ZBT’s members are about 85 percent
baseball players. Of those who are not baseball players, most of them used to be. Hoyt says that the fraternity helps to create even greater community on the team. Players will often gather at the house to watch 24 or Deal or No Deal. They have Superbowl get-togethers and regular Buffalo-wing-eating contests. Of course, there’s a lot of partying and bar-hopping, but when asked about these activities, Hoyt was uncharacteristically mum. I pushed him, thinking that he was withholding some lurid story about what the team had done last weekend. But Hoyt is just not a partyer.
“I’m a laid-back kind of guy,” Hoyt says. “My choice is to stay in, because I have fun being relaxed. I don’t like ‘burning money.’ I call it ‘burning money’ when you drink and ride cabs around the city ... Also, drinking takes away from my fitness. Every night out erases a day in the weight room.”
Hoyt is serious about his fitness, so serious that, when he does indulge in drinking, he forces himself to work out the next day, hangover notwithstanding. He’ll run, do abs, anything to avoid developing a “beer belly.”
Hoyt’s decision to “stay in” is aided by the fact that he has a steady girlfriend, who he began dating in high school. More often than not, Hoyt will spend his weekends with Becca, who is still in high school.“
“When I’m here, it’s all business between baseball and school. I have to do well in both. I feel like if one of them goes down, the other will, like in a domino effect,” he says. “But when I’m with Becca, I can really take my mind off things and relax.”
Becca is one of Hoyt’s few connections outside of the baseball team. At times, it seems like he wishes there were others. He remarked that he really enjoyed the conversations he would have with his Carman floormates last year. When asked what he would be doing if he weren’t playing ball, Hoyt says he might join a student publication, do some sportswriting. He always thought he would be good at sportswriting.
Of course, not every recruited athlete is willing to continue making those sacrifices for all four years of college.
“I’d still be rowing if it weren’t so much fun not to be rowing,” Langley says.
Langley’s decision to quit the crew team highlights a sensitive issue. When recruited athletes quit, questions of equity and fairness arise—fairness to the other
athletes on the team and fairness to the applicant whose “spot” the recruited athlete took in the admissions process. It should be noted that Columbia recruits do not get athletic scholarships, meaning that there is not a formal way to walk away.
“Oh my god, I think a huge number of people quit. You only hear about it when a basketball hotshot leaves, but I know so many people,” says Dennis. “I met five people at orientation that I stayed friends with all four years of college (none of them fencers)—not a single one made it through all four years.”
“I think people who get recruited need to think about their reasons for quitting the team,” says Jane Putcher, CC ’08, a walk-on member of the women’s crew team, and an aspiring lawyer. “They were brought to this University to row and definitely got a lot of help and a lot of the University’s money put their way to get them here.”
Though he entered Columbia a committed rower, at the end of his sophomore year Langley experienced what he calls a “shift in his priorities.” Sophomore year Langley began a relationship with a girl he had spent the previous summer thinking about. He started to question why he was spending all of his free time in the rowing practice room.
“Crew became less important,” Langley says. “I became concerned with more self-fulfilling things.”
Langley still exercises, but instead of weight lifting and heavy aerobics, his workout regimen has taken on a decidedly Eastern bent. He does “a lot of body weight things,” such as push-ups, pull-ups, and yoga—anything that involves the stretching or the flexing of his own body weight. He has only been to Dodge twice this year, and that was to join some friends for a swim.
Langley’s diet has also changed as a consequence of his no longer rowing.
“I wanted to stop eating meat when I was rowing, but I never could,” Langley says. “Now I’m a vegetarian and it’s great. I think if I really wanted to, I could have been a vegetarian while I was rowing, but it would have been much harder. I was a lot bigger when I rowed.”
Though no longer a rower, Langley is still on good terms with the team—so good that his three suitemates next year will be crew team members.
Hoyt understands students’ concerns, but can empathize with the decision to leave.
“If you lose passion and love for the sport, then there’s no reason to continue,” Hoyt says. “It’s hard to get it back once you lose it.”
Last summer, Hoyt’s coach got him and a few other teammates on the Hawaii Collegiate baseball team, a cross between a training camp and a showcase for Major League scouts. The summer involved a lot of working out and a lot of baseball, but it also involved a lot of beaches and girl-gazing. And it was all paid for by Columbia.
Something else that was paid for by Columbia was Hoyt’s arthrogram on his shoulder. When Hoyt first noticed he was having shoulder pain, which was later diagnosed as a torn labrum, he went to see one of the department’s doctors. This doctor sent Hoyt to Columbia Presbyterian on the East Side, where they injected radioactive dye into his shoulder and then ran some scans. Hoyt had to pay for his taxi to and from the hospital, but was later reimbursed.
It’s clear that Columbia puts a lot of money and effort into taking care of their athletes. But what is Columbia getting out of the deal? Alumni are a strong source of support for the program, with many athlete alumni coming back to the games and donating to the program.
“What we’re trying to do now is changing not only the student experience but the student-athlete experience,” says Michelle Maguire, assistant director of athletics development and alumni relations. “When we put on events like Gameday at Baker, it draws people back in. When you have more fans and have top-notch equipment, you’re playing for a university and not just yourself.”
There’s also a significant population enthusiastic fans who do come out and support the Athletic Department without being athletes themselves that sometimes goes unnoticed.
“Columbia’s athletics program historically had been under-funded and under-supported relative to its Ivy League peers, especially before the last few years,” said Columbia Athletic Director M. Dianne Murphy in a previous statement made about the program. “One only need attend the basketball Midnight Mania in early November that drew 1,500 students, or the packed broadcast of the Duke-Columbia basketball game in Roone Arledge Auditorium to witness the growing support for athletics. We have sought to make football game day at Baker Athletics Complex a fan-friendly environment, so that our games are really a destination on home Saturdays.” Complimentary admission, buses, beverages, and promotions are testament to that.”
Hoyt will grunt this season out and then get his labrum repaired in May. Hoyt can’t afford not to grunt this season out. Taking the season off would be catastrophic for his chances of being drafted in the next two years. As it is, he’s going to miss the summer leagues.
I watch Hoyt toss the ball with a teammate. The ball flies hard and fast between their gloves. Each time Hoyt reels back and then rockets his arm forward, the ball explodes out of his hand. But it does so with less power than it used to. No one would guess this throwing motion causes Hoyt pain, but it does. Bone hitting bone.
“I can’t imagine my life without baseball,” he says. “I can’t imagine my life without something I’ve loved since second grade.”
—Additional reporting by Sadia Latifi