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February 27, 2008, 09:47 AM ET
Congrats, Jeff Orleans!
This morning’s New York Times sports section has a nice piece on my friend Jeff Orleans, who has just announced his retirement from what will sound to most readers like a very odd job: Executive Director of the Council of Ivy Group Presidents. Contrary to what you might think, the “Ivy Group” is not an elite academic cartel, pooling the resources of some of the country’s most prestigious universities. Rather, it is the organization set up a generation ago to help coordinate and set standards for Ivy League sports. Jeff is in some sense the “commish” of the Ivy League, although unlike the commissioners of professional sports, he has no formal power whatsoever. Jeff works with the Ivy presidents to establish consensus on what is fair and appropriate in intercollegiate sports in the environment of the absence of athletic scholarships.
Those of you who reside in or root for the major intercollegiate sports powers might think this is an easy job, but it is not, since the Ivies are fully as competitive with one another as Michigan and Ohio State. The Ivies have tried to make the stereotype of the “scholar-athlete” — which I think is a mockery in much of intercollegiate sports — a model, and I think they have done quite a good job. This is because the Ivy presidents have taken the ideal of the scholar athlete seriously, and Jeff has been able to help them work out rules and strategies to make it work. This is not a glamorous job, but Jeff has poured himself into it, all the while enthusiastically attending Princeton athletic events (the Ivy Group office is on our campus) without showing partisanship. Quite a feat for a man who is as much a sports nut as I am. Jeff is, alas, a Yalie (college and law school), but he gives the Bulldogs a good name, and proves that there are some honest lawyers.
If you agree with me that the major university presidents are doing a lousy job of making sports an educational activity, then you ought to be interested in what Jeff and the Ivies are doing. Don’t tell me that it is only rich elite colleges that can do it. It is a question of whether sports and education are compatible, and whether the term “scholar athlete” has to be, as it mostly is today, an oxymoron. The jury is out on that question.
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