Tags
athletics, college athletics, college sports, Emancipation Proclamation, Ivy League, NCAA, NIL, sports, student-athletes, Transfer Portal, UCLA, USC
![](https://socalsportschronicles.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-14.jpeg)
The annual climax of the collegiate version of this sport is coming soon…
I’M GOING TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST…
I reckon it’s because I’m rapidly becoming an old so-called “fuddy-duddy” who, being that it’s approaching three and a half decades since I earned my bachelor’s degree, prefers the way things used to be.
But…
I DO NOT like the direction that college sports in general – particularly football and basketball (both genders) – is going.
At all.
In fact,
I feel that while the transfer portal and the Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) opportunities was and is necessary in order for student-athletes to be able to not be stuck at a college and in a sports program that’s not working out for them and to be able to earn some money without putting their program on probation, just like the average student can,
Serving as an Emancipation Proclamation of sorts,
Things have gone far too far in the sense that the lack of loyalty that the transfer portal and the NIL has produced; I know of a quarterback that has played for four different schools, including USC, over the course of his college career while never staying for more than one years at any of them.
Not to mention athletes increasingly basing their college choices solely on how much NIL money they can get from the schools they’re considering.
Which in my view is ruining college sports.
I’ve always advocated a rule that stipulates one of two conditions as far as transferring…
- Putting in an eligibility requirement in which a student-athlete must wait two years – until after his sophomore year or his red shirt freshman year – before he or she can enter the transfer portal, similar to Major League Baseball where a player must wait six years before he’s eligible for free agency
Or…
- A student-athlete can enter the transfer portal at any time and do so for the first time without any penalty, but if he or she re-enters the portal after that first time must sit out a year
But that’s neither here nor there as such a rule is about as likely to pass as a snowball not melting in Palm Springs in the middle of the summer.
And it’s not what I wanted to talk about, anyway.
It’s become fairly clear that with the transfer portal and these NIL opportunities, certain schools are becoming have-nots in that because of their NIL program not being as robust as others and their admissions requirements being such that an athlete would take a pass on such school as it would be too hard to get accepted.
Like my alma mater UCLA as well as Stanford;
How many student-athletes have transferred to that school in Palo Alto through the portal that you’ve heard of?
With that four percent acceptance rate up there, I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer was none.
Which got me to thinking…
![](https://socalsportschronicles.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-15.jpeg)
Baseball has the New York Yankees. Softball has these UCLA Bruins…
While not being located in the northeast, though it may not be intentional certain institutions have become Ivy League-like while playing in a Power Five Conference where too many of its schools, for lack of a better way to put it,
May not put as much of an emphasis on academics and academic achievement as those certain institutions that I mentioned,
Plus several more.
Which is how I came upon the idea of the Ivy League organizing a Western Division of schools whose athletic philosophies are more in tune with Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Princeton than with Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia and Oklahoma.
Who academically has more in common with Penn than with Penn State.
Here is what an eight-school Ivy League West (or South West) would look like if I were organizing it…
- UCLA
- California
- Stanford
- Rice
- Northwestern
- Vanderbilt
- Duke
- Tulane
I picked Tulane over other top schools like Virginia and Georgia Tech due to the Green Wave’s 11.5% acceptance rate being lower than the Cavaliers’ and Yellow Jackets’.
I would have chosen Notre Dame over Tulane due to that school’s strong academics, but that Fighting Irish football program would be much too dominant.
As the top two public colleges in the country, in my opinion UCLA and Cal would fit in nicely in this new division.
At least more than, with all due respect, other solid public schools like North Carolina and especially Michigan;
A newly crowned football national champion like those Wolverines, along with USC, would be the proverbial bully in the schoolyard to the Rices and Vanderbilts along with the Browns and Dartmouths.
And speaking of old ‘SC,
While I know that their academic reputation has grown leaps and bounds, I just feel that they put a little too much emphasis on athletic achievement – particularly in football, but in other sports, too – to be truly considered as an Ivy League-type school.
Which would make such league a joke with no one else winning but those Trojans in most of the sports offered;
Have you seen how their women’s basketball team has been performing lately?
Anyway,
I know that an Ivy League West division featuring UCLA and Cal has about a .000001% chance of ever happening.
Not with the debt that the Bruins are still saddled with, which being in the Big Ten starting August 1st will go a long way to resolve such debt.
Or the fact that UCLA’s $3.873 billion endowment is far below most of the other schools I mentioned in this new division.
But the conviction that those Ivy League schools, with their no athletic scholarships and their football teams not allowed to play in the postseason, have the right idea in how to go about things in collegiate sports,
Is increasing in my mind.
![](https://socalsportschronicles.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/image-16.jpeg)
Joe Bruin, UCLA’s iconic mascot…