Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by John T. Reed.

I am Jack Reed. I was an assistant football coach at Miramonte High School in 1994 and 1995 and head boys volleyball coach there in 1995. (925-820-7262, fax 925-820-1259, 342 Bryan Drive, Alamo, CA 94507) I also coached my son in youth football and wrote five football coaching books that mention him as a result.

My son Dan graduated from Miramonte in 1999. He was recruited by a number of colleges for football and chose the Columbia School of Engineering. In the course of his last two high school years, we learned a lot about the college athletic-recruiting process, lessons which we wish someone had told us before we started. In this Web page, I am sharing those lessons. I hope other parents will do likewise and thereby create a body of knowledge which can benefit future Miramonte athletes.

Five levels

There are five main levels in college athletics. Schedules of NCAA four-year college football teams.

NCAA	NAIA	NJCAA
Division I	one level	one level
Division II
Division III

Some levels have official or unofficial subsets:

NCAA I		Example schools
I-A	115 major colleges with full athletic scholarships	Stanford, Cal, Notre Dame, UCLA, Army, San Jose State
I-AA scholarship	Some full scholarships, mostly partial scholarships	St. Mary's of California, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
I-AA non-scholarship	No athletic scholarships	Ivy League, U of San Diego
NCAA II
II scholarship		Davis
II non-scholarship		Humboldt State
NCAA III
III high academic standards	no athletic scholarships	Amherst, Pomona, Claremont, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Tufts, Williams
III lower academic standards	no athletic scholarships	LaVerne

California colleges with football
Scholarship Nonscholarship (changes---check current situation)	Public	Private
I-A	Cal, UCLA, Fresno State, San Diego State, San Jose State	Stanford, USC
I-AA	Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Cal State, Sacramento State	St. Mary's, U of San Diego
II	UC Davis, Humboldt State
III		Cal Lutheran, Chapman, Claremont-Mudd, Menlo, Occidental, Pomona-Pitzer, LaVerne, Redlands, Whittier
NAIA		Azusa Pacific (1998 national champion)
NJCAA	Many---click on NJCAA to see list at their Web site

Miramonte recent college football recruits
Division	Player	College
I-A	French '96	San Jose State
	Bennett '96	UCLA
	Babcock '97	UCLA
	Dorsey '99	Miami
	MacDonald '99	Cal
	Smith '00	Duke
I-AA	Soucy '96	Cornell
	Kruse '97	Princeton
	Olson '98	Yale
	Reams '98	Yale
	Maimone '98	Dartmouth
	Sungar '98	Dartmouth
	Brecht '98	St. Mary's
	Goeriz '99	Yale
	Reed '99	Columbia
II	Cragholm '94	Davis
III	Reidenbach '94	Wesleyan
	Supino '94	Williams
	Howard, Steve '94	Middlebury
	Reidenbach '93	Amherst
	Hartley '95	Menlo
	Mattioda '99	Menlo
	Tsuboi '99	Middlebury
	Howard, Jake '96	Pomona
	Wagner '96	Pomona
	Hattersley '97	Pomona
	Lyon '96	Willamette
	Cosden '97	Pomona
	Nicol '99	Amherst
	Brown '98	Puget Sound
	McCartt '97	Pomona
JC	Kermode '98	DVC
	Roque '94	DVC
	Hartley '95	Laney

A Miramonte player from the Class of 2000 complained that he is not on the above list. That’s because I stopped monitoring Miramonte after my son graduated in 1999. If a current member of the Miramonte community would like to continue listing Miramonte players who go on to play college football, I will be glad to link to that site.

Within each level are different philosophies regarding academic standards. NCAA Division I-A athletes must have a 2.0 average in high school and a 1010 SAT score or a GPA of 2.5 or higher and an SAT score of 820. (although a federal judge recently said the SAT minimum was illegal discrimination) There is a sliding scale which says the higher your grades the lower your SAT can be and vice versa. There is an NCAA Guide for College-Bound Athletes on the Internet at http://www.ncaa.org/eligibility/cbsa/academic.html.

But some Division I-A schools, like Stanford, Rice, Duke, and Northwestern, independently adopt higher academic standards than required by NCAA for their recruited athletes. In general, a slightly lesser athlete can get recruited to such schools if he has the grades. The I-A service academies (Army, Navy, Air Force) not only have higher academic standards, they have higher standards regarding health, physical aptitude, and citizenship. They have a convoluted admission process involving Congresspersons. Service academies can carry 200 players on their squads if they wish compared to about 90 elsewhere, because every service academy student, athlete or not, is on full scholarship. The majority of high school football players do not want to attend a service academy. The bottom line is that athletes who are not recruited by other I-A schools can sometimes get recruited to a major service academy.

Athletic standards also vary among Division I-A schools. You can get an idea from rankings in Sports Illustrated and other news sources. Roughly speaking, the higher the team is ranked, the higher their athletic standards for football recruits. Kenny Dorsey, MHS ’99, went to Miami on a full scholarship. They ranked 24th in one poll in 1998—second in the nation in 2000 after he got there. In a 1998 news story about Derek Goeriz, Miramonte Coach Burnsed was quoted as saying he thought Derek was Pac-10 material (e.g., Stanford, Cal), but that Derek only got I-A interest from WAC schools (e.g., San Jose State, Air Force). Derek went to Yale, which is Division I-AA (Ivy League). Peter French, MHS ’96, got a football scholarship to San Jose State. Adam Smith, MHS ’00, committed to Duke before his senior year at Miramonte.

In general, the higher the academic and other standards, the less athletic their recruits, but all I-A recruits are once-in-a-blue-moon-type players for Miramonte (although that may be changing).

Here’s a graph that roughly shows where the various divisions, leagues and schools are with regard to athletic and academic ability.

Athletic ability	High	II I-A Stanford Service academies   Patriot Ivy III Haverford Group, NESCAC
	Medium
	Low
		Low	Medium	High
		Academic ability

Invited walk-ons. Players who are not good enough to be offered a full scholarship initially by a I-A college can sometimes be invited walk-ons at those schools. Kickers are almost all invited walk-ons initially. Drew Bennett (MHS ’96) was recruited by Princeton, but chose to be an invited walk-on at UCLA (Pac-10). He was later moved up to scholarship status and started off and on during the 1999 season. He later became a star receiver for the Tennessee Titans. Miramonte coach and graduate Sanjay Lal was an invited walk-on who was upgraded to scholarship status at national champion Washington. Mike Babcock (MHS '97) also walked on at UCLA and is still on the team in that status.

Being an invited walk-on can be extremely valuable if the school in question is one which the athlete would have trouble being admitted to without help from the football coaches. To put it another way, a scholarship provides help with both admissions and finance. Invited walk-ons get no help with finance initially, but they do get the same help with admissions.

Division I-AA. Along with Division III, Division I-AA is the main stomping grounds for Miramonte football graduates. Division I-AA schools do not have to give scholarships and they do not have to meet I-A minimum attendance standards. The Division I-AA schools that give scholarships, like St. Mary's, generally only give a full scholarship to one or two athletes. Others get partials. Andrew Brecht (MHS ’98) is a football player at St. Mary's. Other I-AA schools, like the Ivy League and University of San Diego (the St. Mary's of Southern California) have no scholarships.

Academic standards vary considerably within Division I-AA. At the top are the Ivy League schools. Miramonte sent MHS '98 grads Ryan Maimone and Gannon Sungar to Dartmouth and Derek Olson, Keith Reams, and Derek Goeriz to Yale and my son, Dan Reed, to Columbia. Brett Nicol (MHS '99) was also recruited by several Ivy teams, but chose to go to Division III Amherst. Two other recent Miramonte football graduates, Justin Soucy (MHS '96) and Steve Kruse (MHS '97) were recruited by Cornell and Princeton respectively.

To understand the Ivy League recruiting standards, read the book A is for Admission. It was written by a former Dartmouth admissions officer. Basically, the Ivies have an "academic index" for athletes. Your academic index is determined by your class rank or GPA if your school does not give out class rank and SAT scores. SAT II’s are only considered if they are higher than the average of your SAT I scores. (The book is out of date regarding SAT II's.) My son’s high school did not give out class rank. His GPA was 3.4, which gives him an academic index score of 67 (You look it up in a table in the A for Admission book). Dan’s SAT I was 1430, which gives him a 1430/10 = 143 score. The total academic index in Dan’s case is the sum of the GPA and SAT scores. In Dan’s case, that's 67 + 143 = 210. Because class rank is so important, sending your kid to a high school that reports class rank and has a lot of smart kids could keep him out of the Ivy League if he was marginal.

Ivy football has four academic index bands. Roughly, they are:

top	205+
upper middle	190-204
lower middle	180-189
bottom	170-179

Logically, you would think that the higher your band, the less athletic you need to be to get in. But the Columbia head coach said no. He may just have been being diplomatic. The purpose of the bands is to equalize competition within the Ivy League. The most popular teams, like Harvard and Princeton, must get most of their players in the top two bands and are only allowed two bottom-band players. The least popular teams, like Penn, are allowed something like 16 bottom-band players. Ivy League football teams recruit 35 players each per year, which, surprisingly, is about twice as many as football factories like Notre Dame and Nebraska are allowed to recruit. If they did not allocate different band quotas to different Ivy League schools, Harvard or Princeton would win the championship every year. Harvard won in 1997; Penn in 1998, Yale and Brown in 1999.

Support. Being recruited by an Ivy League football team is the equivalent of being a permanent invited walk-on at a I-A school. The coaching staff "supports" your application. That is, they turn in a ranked list of desired recruits to admissions. Admissions rejects some and accepts others. When they get to 35, the process stops for that year. You get admitted because of football, but you get no athletic scholarship. Most Ivy athletes are on full or partial scholarships, but those scholarships are based strictly on financial need.

Position and band quotas. Ivy football teams have two types of quotas to meet. They must get the right number in each academic index band (actually, they only have to average the right number over four years) and they need the right mix of running backs, linebackers, etc. As an Ivy football recruit, you are essentially competing for admission only against others at your same general position and others in your same band. There are about five positions in the Ivy coaches’ minds: line, skill, power, kicker, and quarterback. Line means huge offensive and defensive down linemen. Skill generally means speed, agility, and good hands and includes running backs, wide receivers, and defensive backs. Power refers to a player who combines both size and athletic ability, that is, fullbacks and linebackers. In the Miramonte Class of '99, Kenny Dorsey was a quarterback, Derek Goeriz, Brett Nicol, and Bo Mattioda were power players, Mike MacDonald was a lineman, and Dan Reed was a skill player.

At the time Dan committed, Columbia said their top-band quota for 1999 was four players and only two slots were left.

Division II. We visited UC Davis when Dan was a sophomore, but did not contact the coaches. We assumed Dan was not good enough to play at that level. Division II schools have slightly lower academic standards than Division I-A (if you can imagine). They also have fewer athletic scholarships.

Division III. They have no athletic scholarships at all. Some have very high academic standards (e.g., Pomona, Williams, Amherst, MIT). Some of these are members of the The Selective Liberal Arts Consortium, informally known as the Haverford Group. Others, like LaVerne or Framingham State are listed as “competitive” in Barron's Profiles of American Colleges. That’s on a scale where Stanford is “most competitive,” Cal is “highly competitive,” UC Davis is “very competitive,” Cal State Fullerton is “less competitive” and Humphreys College of Stockton is “noncompetitive.”

Geographic dispersion. You might think colleges would be distributed around the U.S. about the same as the population. Wrong. There are distinct regional differences academically and within football. The Northeast is the selective college capital. The list of the top twenty or thirty schools is predominantly Northeastern. The South has only three selective schools: Duke, Rice, and Georgia Tech. The Northwest has none.

In football, I-A schools are well dispersed. But high academic I-AA schools are mostly in the Northeast. Northern California has only one Division III football college: Menlo. Southern California has a bunch. The only whole league of high academic Division III football schools is the New England Small College Athletic Conference. Other Haverford type schools are scattered and play in non-Haverford leagues.

Junior college. California is the junior college football capital of the world, hosting about half of all junior college football teams on the planet. Dan and I only visited two junior colleges—West Hills and Reedley—because they were among the few with dorms. We were quite surprised. The football players all seemed to be from Miami or Philadelphia. The dorms were almost 100% football, basketball, and baseball athletes, a practice that has been banned in NCAA. They seemed old, maybe 20 or 21, for freshmen and sophomores. And they appeared to be I-A in athletic ability. Indeed, a high percentage of them get I-A scholarships out of JC. This is apparently not true of all JC’s. We attended a Diablo Valley Community College game and recognized a number of players as recent local high school players.

How good do you have to be to play college football? Dan thought he could play at DVC when he watched the game as a junior. I generally agreed. At Division III schools in California, Dan looked a bit bigger than most of the other players when we walked around. (he was 6'2" 175 lbs at the time) Several Division III coaches half-jokingly suggested that Dan skip his senior year of high school and said they would start him on their varsity right now. The Amherst coach suggested that Dan and Brett Nicol might be the starting backfield there for all four years. (Brett ended up well down the depth chart at Amherst and had not yet had a single carry after his sophomore season.) I saw video of a Division III Occidental games and thought that Dan could play right away for them. Every Division III coach we contacted wanted Dan based on his junior video. No Ivy school did.

The Division III schools all said Dan was a running back. The Ivies said he was a running back or maybe a safety. Some Division III coaches talk about starting as a freshman; Ivy coaches, about maybe playing special teams, injury backup, or JV as a freshman. Colleges typically play about five or six JV games on Sunday or Monday during the season. The J.V. team has no separate coaches and generally consists of guys who did not play on Saturday. We had no contact with NAIA schools, but the NAIA national champion, Azusa Pacific, a scholarship program, only beat Pomona (where Ryan Hattersley and Jake Howard play) by 14-0.

We watched the 10/3/98 Columbia-St. Mary's game in person and I thought both teams were awfully big and fast. (Columbia squeaked out a victory in the last 15 seconds.) But after they saw his senior video, three Ivies wanted Dan and were quite enthusiastic. Harvard was temporarily enthusiastic about getting him. I also saw highlight films at Yale, Columbia, and San Diego (all I-AA). I was very impressed with the speed and size of the players. The college coaches all comment that Dan “has a big frame” and will get much heavier and maybe a little taller and faster. I hope so. At the time, Dan pointed out that he was only 17 and the guys playing in college are mostly 20 to 22. True. True.

I attended a Southern California Division III football practice in the fall of 1999 and concluded that the starting players on some Division III teams are generally guys who were all-league in high school, but are too small for higher level college football. The benchwarmers on a Division III team started in high school, but did not make all-league. Some Division III football players are ordinary-size guys whom you would not suspect of being college football players. Division I linemen and power players turn heads when they walk into a room because of their huge size. Football competition at Division III schools is also reduced in some cases by their high cost and high academic standards. Two college coaches who read this page said the Division III schools I mention here, other than NESCAC, are generally among the weaker ones. They say Division III is a bit stronger than I make it sound. In November of 2000, I visited a Division III Tufts University practice. They were almost all very big—much bigger than the Pomona players, and there were over 80 of them. Pomona had thirty some. So apparently, there’s Division III and there’s Division III. I urge you to attend a practice and a game at the school you are interested in to get an accurate reading on how competitive it is.

Yale’s Keith Reams said Ivy football players were bigger and faster than high school players, but not more athletic. In a call from Columbia’s football camp, Dan said he agreed with that assessment. Dan said he was as effective juking Ivy players as he had been against high-school players, but that he was often late getting his shoulder down in the Ivy League because the defenders arrived unexpectedly quickly. He soon became quicker “out of self preservation” he says.

Ivy League players are big, smart, and pretty good. If they were huge or better than pretty good, they would be Division I-A players. When I expressed surprise that Columbia wanted my then 4.8 son to be a tailback, Columbia’s recruiter David Patenaude said, “Mr. Reed, if your son were .2 of a second faster in the 40, he’d get a full scholarship to Stanford.” Stanford head coach Tyrone Willingham and I later sat together and talked for some time at a football convention in Orlando (we were both speakers there). I forgot to ask if that “.2 of a second faster” statement was correct. College football players typically see their 40 time drop by .1 from what they ran in high school. That would put Dan at 4.7 which is .2 above 4.5. 4.5 is, indeed, the kind of speed you might see in a Stanford free safety.

High-school football teams have a wide range of abilities because they are drawn from a small geographic area. College teams, on the other hand, have a very narrow ability range because they are selected by ability. That makes sense, but it did not occur to me until I watched a Division III practice for three hours. When my son talks about his Columbia teammates, I was struck by the clear respect they all have for each other’s abilities. In high school, the starting lineup consists of stars, average players, and lousy players. The stars resent the lousy players. But in college, there are no lousy players. At the college level, everybody was a star in high school.

1997 and 1998 were bumper years for Miramonte. If you look at the list of Miramonte players who went on to play college football, you can see that 1997 and 1998 were extraordinary years. They also won NCS both of those years. That is not a coincidence.

Class	Number of college football players	Mats success
1994	5	Playoffs
1995	1	Playoffs
1996	6	League champs
1997	5	Playoffs
1998	7	NCS champs
1999	7	NCS champs, #2 in CA Division III
2000	?	Playoffs
2001	?	NCS champs

Ivy recruiting process. Some Ivy League recruiters visit Miramonte during spring practice. They ask Coach Burnsed if he has any Ivy prospects. He tells them the names of several players and gives the recruiter game tapes from last year. They also get names from recruiting services they subscribe to. The recruiter goes into the film room, views the tape, then says, “I want to talk to these players.” The players are then gotten out of class and have an interview with the recruiter. In 1998, my son was gotten out of class by Columbia in the spring. Princeton requested a spring interview with Dan, but the student sent to get him went to the wrong classroom. Nice to know that your whole future could turn on some clerical or lazy student error.

The heaviest Ivy recruiting at Miramonte seems to have been done by Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth. As far as I know, Harvard, Cornell, Brown, and Penn never showed up at Miramonte in 1998. We never contacted Cornell, Penn, or Brown and they never contacted us. I suspect one or more of them probably would have recruited Dan if we had sent them a tape and shown interest by visiting in August.

A visitor to this Web page said Princeton and Yale and other colleges have week-long summer camps for high-school kids. Attending one of those camps can give the coaching staff there a chance to meet you and see what you can do. If you make a good impression, that could make the difference in your getting admitted to that school. However, it could also go the other way. Dan had a bad camp at Reno in June of 1999. (He had no interest in going to Reno. His high school went there en masse every June.) We don’t know why he had a bad camp. The normal way to get recruited—send a video tape of your best game—is more likely to show you in a better light than the camp. Attending a college’s camp is to submitting a best-game video what live TV is to pre-recorded TV—you can edit out the mistakes if you’re not live. Camp might be good if you have an extremely attractive personality and can get to know the coaches. Camps might be crucial if you are second-string to a superstar your varsity years of high school. If the coaching staff gets fired, as the Princeton staff did after the 1999 season, having gone to their camp the previous summer probably won’t matter much for getting the new coaching staff to recruit you.

An article in the 6/25/01 Sports Illustrated said these camps violate NCAA rules prohibiting the use of camps to evaluate or recruit players. Evaluating and recruiting players are exactly what these camps are used for. The article also said that almost everybody’s doing it. I never found that a persuasive argument for cheating. Teams that have summer camps for evaluating and recruiting are cheating their opponents and the NCAA. If a coaching staff is willing to cheat them, what are the chances they are also willing to cheat you or your child? Above normal I would guess. Columbia has no camp for high school players.

Senior season. The senior season is the main determinant of whether a player will be recruited. To be more specific, the video of a player’s senior season is the main determinant. Colleges would like to receive a senior video in September or October so they can urge targeted recruits to apply for early decision. Derek Goeriz and Brett Nicol did that in 1998 and were accepted early at Yale and Amherst respectively.

Dan Reed did not apply early decision anywhere because he had no strong first choice at that point. If we had it to do over, we would have sent in an “early action” application to Harvard. “Early action” is binding on the college, but nonbinding on the student. Only Harvard and Brown offered it. We did not do early action at Harvard because Dan had not been carrying the ball very much in early-season games (lopsided Miramonte victories) so we had little in the way of a senior video to show the Harvard coaches. A college coach who read this page said a half-game tape would have been enough. What they don’t want is only a highlight tape, because anyone can make himself look good in those. They want to see him winning his battles on every play. Also, we got no telephonic or personal letter encouragement at all from any Ivy coach during the 1998 season, so we assumed that Dan was not an Ivy prospect.

Junior-year video tape. Players should make a video tape of their junior season if they played extensively. College coaches have no interest whatsoever in JV or freshman tape. Coaches prefer a game-only tape, but they will accept a combination highlight and game tape. In 1998, Dan Reed made a highlight tape of his junior season and a whole-game tape of his best junior game. This tape was mailed or taken to the colleges in which he was interested. On the basis of the junior video, numerous Division III schools like Pomona, Williams, Amherst, and Tufts began recruiting him. Ivy teams were apparently less impressed with Dan’s junior video. They were polite and sent him weekly recruiting letters, but he got no phone calls or personal letters. Division III coaches called and sent personal letters throughout Dan’s senior season.

Dan made his junior highlight tape using a Macintosh Performa 6400 computer using Avid Cinema software. The software costs around $100. By senior year, we had a Mac G-3. We got Avery laser printer labels for the video cassettes at Office Depot. Videos should be labeled with the player’s:

• name
• school
• graduation year
• jersey number
• team colors
• positions

This information was repeated using titles at the beginning of the tape as it appeared on the screen. Remember that college coaches receive thousands of videos each year. You may know which player is your son, but the coaches don’t even know which team to watch on the video unless you spell it out.

Highlight tape. In 1998, we found that Miramonte was so strong that the first string rarely stayed in the game after half time. Accordingly, we felt we needed to make a highlight tape rather than just rely on a game tape. Junior year, Dan only started three games at tailback, so we had relatively few highlights. That year we defined a highlight as a play in which he gained four yards or more. That was the tape the Ivy coaches were not impressed much by. Senior year, Dan started every game. With the increased amount of material, we set a higher standard for highlights in 1998.

Dan’s best 1998 game was the NCS championship game, which was not played until December 6th. It took us another week to duplicate and mail the tapes to the Ivy coaches. Send them Priority mail. The post office has free video mailing boxes for that purpose. View each tape before you send it. I took a copy to a friend’s house for him to see. It was just static on his VCR. I wondered if we had sent unviewable tapes to the Ivy coaches!!! Apparently not, but if I had it to do over, I would pop every tape into my VCR and check it before I sent it out.

At least one coach, Harvard, commented that the tape was received rather late, around December 20, but he nevertheless called Dan on December 23 to offer a paid visit. In fact, after a whole season of never getting a phone call from an Ivy coach, our “switchboard suddenly lit up” when Dan’s senior highlight and NCS game tape arrived at the Ivy coaches’ offices. In rapid succession, Dan was called by Harvard, Yale, and Columbia. We had never contacted Dartmouth or sent them a tape, but their offensive coordinator visited Miramonte in December and asked Floyd if he had any Ivy prospects. He gave him Dan’s name. Dartmouth called Dan and we sent them a video. They then offered a paid visit as well.

I video taped every game with our family camera, but the tape we used to make our highlight and game video was the team tape. It was higher quality, probably made by a super VHS or digital camera instead of our VHS. The team cameraman also had a better angle, the press box roof, for most plays.

The parents of a lineman may want to make their own tape in which the camera would be focused and zoomed in on their son. The team video tends to follow the ball and is zoomed out to show many players. It’s hard to see what the linemen are doing in a team video. The end-zone-behind-our-team vantage point is probably also best for a lineman’s video.

We broke Dan’s highlight portion of the tape into three categories:

• rushing and receiving
• kick returns
• big blocks

Avid Cinema lets you create titles and we began each segment with a title like “Kick returns.” Players who play different positions than Dan would have a different breakdown. Dan’s highlight portion of the tape ran four to seven minutes. That’s about the right length. We put the NCS game on the same tape after the highlights. Avid Cinema has all sorts of jazzy transition effects. Dan used none of them. “Just the facts, ma’am.”

I get the impression that the decision on whether to recruit a player is based on these three things in this order:

1. performance on video tape
2. coach recommendation
3. size and/or speed (must be adequate for the particular level)

Based on coach comments, it is clear that college coaches scrutinize a player’s video far more than one might expect. We heard comments from coaches about how much Dan hustled when he did not get the ball, how well he faked, his toughness, and other subtle points. I surmise they look at the following:

• speed
• stamina
• toughness
• aggressiveness
• diligence when not at the point of attack
• discipline regarding position assignment
• rules violations
• post-play celebrations and other antics

Players must be on their best behavior every second they are within sight of the camera. Any loafing could doom their application. The cameraman is often drawn to eye-catching sideline behavior. That could make a bad impression on a college coach. View the entire tape before you duplicate it to see if any portion should be cut out or if another game should be used instead.

Visits to California by the coaches. The offensive coordinators at Dartmouth and Yale and the Columbia head coach all visited us in our home. These visits seemed to have no purpose other than to avoid being “outvisited” by the competition. That is, each coach came to our home because he did not want to seem less interested than the other college’s coaches. We also attended very useful informational meetings hosted by the Yale and Columbia head coaches in the Bay Area in December.

Deadlines. It is best to meet the various application deadlines, but we found it was not necessary for many purposes if you are being recruited by the college for a talent like football-playing ability. Brett Nicol applied for early decision at Amherst. He was accepted even though he missed the early-decision application deadline.

Dan had not listed Yale as a school to which ETS should send his scores. When the Yale recruiter started calling heavily in December, Dan hurriedly told ETS to send the scores to Yale. Yale called to say that Dan was accepted at the end of January.

We never contacted Dartmouth at all and sent them neither a score nor an application. But when their recruiter began calling in December and January, Dan relented and filled out a Dartmouth application. We handed it to the Dartmouth offensive coordinator in our living room on January 18, which was 18 days after the deadline. One of Dan’s teachers set a mandatory Dartmouth recommendation form aside and forgot about it. No matter, on January 23, Dartmouth called to say Dan was accepted.

One Miramonte grad who is now playing football in the Ivy League was not recruited until April of his senior year! Apparently, one of that college’s recruits who appeared to be signed in February changed his mind or got hurt or some such in April. That seems to be a very rare occurrence.

On the other hand, a Dublin High fullback named named Derlyn Gross said in the 7/16/99 San Ramon Valley Times that missing a November deadline to apply to Cal prevented him from playing football there. He turned down a St. Mary's scholarship to accept what he thought was an offer from Cal coaches. He is now going to Chabot, a non-scholarship junior college. I am a bit skeptical of that story. Several years ago, San Jose State gave a very late scholarship to the Foothill player who scored the fumblerooski touchdown against Miramonte in the '94 playoffs. But Gross’s story reemphasizes what I said in the first sentence in this section: it’s not a good idea to miss deadlines. But if you did miss a deadline, do not assume the situation is uncorrectable.

Senior grades. In January, the various Ivy League colleges that were recruiting Dan called Miramonte to get the latest on Dan’s grades.

Dan got C’s in English for his first three years at Miramonte and a B senior year. To try to offset the C’s, we signed Dan up for a University of California extension AP English Comp and Literature correspondence course. It cost about $500. He got an A- in the course, but he did not complete it until late February. We had UC sending his pre-final grades to the Ivies in January in the hopes that they would be impressed by his extra effort and the grades he was getting in that course. We do not know if it worked, but he was accepted by Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale. One of the virtues of the UC course is that if you do not get a good grade you can just not mention it. Whereas if you take a high school summer school course, your grade goes on your transcript whether you want it to or not.

Visits by recruits to the college. There are two kinds of visits: official and unofficial. An official visit is a two-day trip to the college paid by the school. These are provided by both Division I-A and I-AA schools. I do not know about Division II. Athletes are only allowed a total of five official visits. My son was offered three: Yale, Dartmouth, and Columbia. He accepted Yale and Columbia, but had to turn down Dartmouth because the date they picked was after Yale and Columbia said they needed a decision. Harvard initially offered Dan a visit, then changed their minds.

An unofficial visit is made at the expense of and on the initiative of the recruit. There is no limit to the number of unofficial visits you can make, although overnight stays in the dorm are limited to 48 hours. Dan and I did the “I-95 Tour” in August of 1998, visiting Johns Hopkins, Swarthmore, Princeton, Columbia, Yale, Wesleyan, Amherst, Williams, Harvard, MIT, and Tufts. We also made unofficial visits to Pomona, Claremont, USD, and two junior colleges in the spring of 1998, and an unofficial visit to Occidental in December of 1998.

Dan and I got the distinct impression that Swarthmore hated athletes. Their weight room was a dungeon. Most of their major teams had awful win-loss records. The football team had not won a game in years and saw a mass resignation the previous season. To help the coach garner some alumni and/or administrative support, I wrote him a letter saying that on our visit, we got the impression that Swarthmore hates its sports teams and takes perverse pride in their lack of success. I said that we did not want to be involved with such a program. The 12/11/00 Sports Illustrated reported that Swarthmore has decided to drop football after 122 years. I got news for you. Swarthmore dropped athletics years ago. Their brochure mentions of intercollegiate athletics border on fraud. The article also says they are reducing the number of recruited athletes to 10% to 15% of the student body. Uh huh. Now if they can just find a league consisting entirely of colleges that have that same policy and similar academic standards, they may actually win a game in some sport. Otherwise, their teams are on a Charge of the Academically Superior Light Brigade. Avoid the Swarthmores of the college sports world.

On spring break in 1998, Dan and I just got in the car and headed south. We called several coaches on the way, but did not make many formal arrangements. That was a mistake. We easily found hotel rooms the first two nights, but had great difficulty finding a room near UCLA and on Route 99 on the way home. We almost missed two coaches because of the short notice we gave them.

Contact the coach a week or two in advance. Send him a letter, unofficial transcript, and video. If your son’s grades are weak, you may be reluctant to send the transcript. You have no choice. The coach will ask for a transcript. You can get unofficial transcripts from the Miramonte counseling office.

When Dan and I went back East in August of 1998, we had learned our lesson. The whole trip was wired with car and hotel reservations and coach meetings pre-arranged. That trip went much more smoothly and was far more productive. I recommend the Princeton Review book Visiting College Campuses as useful for finding convenient, inexpensive hotels near college campuses.

The typical unofficial day visit includes an interview with one or more coaches and a coach-guided tour of the athletic facilities and perhaps other campus facilities like the dining hall and academic buildings. Unofficial overnight visits typically include staying with a football player student, attendance at an athletic event, eating in the dining hall, and perhaps other events. Dan made unofficial overnight stays at Pomona, Claremont, and Occidental. Division III schools will provide 48 hours of free room and board, but you must provide your own transportation to and from those colleges.

Dan and I each took a list of questions to each coach interview. When we got into our rental car to go to the next school, Dan filled out an “after-action report” of his impressions when the school and coaches were fresh in his mind. He then wrote a thank you to the coaches and we mailed it at the next mailbox within hours of visiting the school. After overnight stays, Dan sent separate thank you’s to the coaches and student hosts.

Official visits are formal, tightly-scheduled 48-hours stays. They also include bunking with a football-player college student. But added are welcoming speeches and meetings with various dignitaries like the coaches, college president, and professors. On a typical recruiting weekend, about 20 recruits will arrive simultaneously from all over the U.S. When Dan’s group got to the Columbia team room, they found Columbia home football jerseys imprinted with their names and high school numbers already hung in the lockers. Yale did a similar thing, putting engraved nameplates with the prospective recruits’ names on lockers in the team room along with jerseys with the recruits’ high school numbers. Columbia gave the recruits a tour of a Wall Street securities exchange. After supper and a basketball game, the Columbia student hosts took the football recruits and a group of female field hockey recruits out on the town.

Prospective recruits must know that they are being evaluated every minute of a visit. That includes when they are away from the coaches and only with the college players. Anything they say or do can and will be held against them in a coaches meeting. Before his visit to Yale, my son was told he was their number one running back recruit, that admissions accepted him, that he had full support of the football coaching staff, and that all he had to do to go to Yale was say yes. But when he was flying home from Yale, they gave his slot to another player they ranked lower than Dan. Why? The Yale coach said Dan gave them the impression he was not that interested in Yale during the visit by:

1. Shrugging his shoulders when he was asked how he was enjoying the visit. (Dan says he answered “Great,” does not remember shrugging his shoulders, but that if he did, it only signified, “What’s not to like?”)

2. Asking about financial aid. (We did not expect any and were willing to go without it, but were curious as to whether we qualified for any. Dartmouth and Columbia had told us up front that we qualified for none. We had submitted a financial aid application to Yale, but never got an answer. Accordingly, we told Dan to ask if he would get any aid at Yale.)

3. Refusing to commit to Yale during the visit. (I told Dan not to commit during the visit. I did not want him to succumb to pressure while surrounded by Yale players and coaches, then have “buyer’s remorse” when he got home. I had told the Yale coaches that was my policy repeatedly in the weeks leading up to the trip. They did not object to our waiting until a day or two after the visit to decide on a college, but they apparently forgot that conversation when the weekend arrived.)

I asked the Yale coach why he did not tell Dan that they were on the verge of giving his slot away. They said they hinted about it to him during the visit, taking him aside and saying they were not telling the other recruits this, but that there were only a couple of slots left if he wanted to come to Yale. They admitted that they should have been more explicit.

Parents are allowed to go on official visits. They must pay their own travel expenses, but the college pays their room and board for the 48 hours. I regret that I did not go with Dan to Yale. Had I been there, I probably would have sensed the Yale coaches being on the verge of giving Dan’s slot away and could have discussed it with them and with Dan. I would have changed my policy of waiting until a day or two after the visit to decide had I known that Yale could not wait that long.

I did not go because of the expense and because I explicitly asked the Yale coach the week before if Dan was being evaluated in any way during the visit. He said some other recruits were being evaluated during the visit, but not Dan. I asked if Dan could forego the trip and accept admission to Yale right now and the Yale offensive coordinator said, “Yes.” We went ahead with the trip because we had only spent about three hours at Yale and felt we needed the additional information a visit would provide. Dan liked Yale and Columbia equally and thought the trip would help him choose between the two.

In general, college football coaches hosting official visits are as skittish as insecure teeny boppers in love. They hyperanalyze every word and action trying to figure out if the recruit “loves” them. Even the slightest unexpected word or deed tends to cause them to jump to the most pessimistic possible conclusion regarding the recruit’s feeling about their team. The Columbia recruiter worried out loud that Dan did not seem very excited about the trip on the phone several days before he went there. Prospective recruits must be careful not to say or do anything that might be construed as lack of interest.

The Ivy League colleges are permitted to host 70 official visits. But remember that they only get to keep 35 players. Some are lost to competing schools. Others are simply rejected by the coaching staff in spite of having been given an all-expense-paid trip to the college by that same staff.

The official visit offer is only extended after the player has been accepted by admissions (contingent on the support of the head football coach). If you are offered a paid visit by your first-choice college, ask if you are totally accepted or are still being evaluated in any way. I surmise that there are two categories of official visits from the perspective of the coaches:

• Visits by recruits the coaches are already sure they want
• Visits by recruits who are still being evaluated by the coaches

If the coach says you are already a totally-accepted recruit, turn down the visit and accept the offer of admission on the spot. If they only rate you as a backup, that will smoke them out immediately. If they really want you, it’s a done deal. Accepting a paid visit is dangerous. We did not know that until it was too late.

When you visit a college that you like, three things can happen and two of them are bad:

• You like the college and they like you
• You like the college, but somehow give the impression that you do not
• You like the college, but they change their minds about you because of something you say or do or fail to say or do during the weekend.

In view of the risks, you should not go on a college visit unless it is absolutely necessary for you to make a decision about attending the college. If you go through the formality of the visit when you already know that you want to go to the college in question, you may snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. A college coach disagreed with this advice. He thinks all recruits should accept the official visits. I only have the one year of experience witth one player. He has more. He also has the perpsective of a coach. My perspective is that of a father. Coaches want all the info they can get. But it simply is not in your interest to give more information than necessary to get admitted.

Coaches at selective schools are terrified that they are being used by a student who wants admission, but who plans to quit football after he is admitted. Yale coaches interrogated Dan harshly, apparently standard treatment for all visiting recruits, as to his commitment to playing four years of football. Recruits who seem less than totally committed to football are instantly crossed off the list. None of the coaches concluded that was a danger with Dan. He told them he had been playing tackle football since he was 8, had never missed a single game, that he had attended six non-mandatory football camps, and that he had originally wanted to go to Stanford, but crossed it off his list when he discovered he could play college football, but not at Stanford.

Chronology. College coaches generally find out about your son from Floyd in the spring of their junior year. During the summer and fall, they send a weekly letter to your son at your home selling their school. If you are high on their list, they call you as often as weekly. In December, when their own seasons are over, they come to Miramonte in person to talk to Floyd and prospective recruits. Players are gotten out of class for this purpose. Once they have seen your senior video, the coaches rank prospective recruits and begin to offer paid visits. The visits take place over about four weekends in January and beginning of February.

Dartmouth offered Dan a trip for January 23. We accepted, but then they postponed it saying it was too short notice. Had they not done that, he would have visited Dartmouth and may have liked it well enough to go there. Dan went to Columbia on January 28 and to Yale on February 5th. Columbia brings recruits in Thursday night and sends them home Saturday afternoon so they can visit the NY Mercantile exchange during business hours on Friday. Other schools bring the recruits in on Friday and send them home on Sunday.

Yale tried to move Dan’s visit up a week because the later the visit, the greater the chances of losing the player. We were unable to agree to the change because of the Columbia visit. Dartmouth then offered a trip on February 12th, but both Columbia and Yale said they could not wait until after the 12th for a decision, so we turned Dartmouth down.

In the Ivies, you must decide which college you will attend no later than around February 6 to 9 in our experience. It probably depends on how high your son is rated by the college in question and who else they are recruiting. But the longer you wait, the greater the chances that you will lose your slot. The Division III schools want you to commit as early as possible, but they seem to have to wait until the normal end of April deadline to get all their answers.

“Likely letter.” When you commit to an Ivy League college that recruited you, you immediately (fax, Fed Ex) receive a “likely letter.” That says you are likely to be admitting to the college in question, explaining they cannot be more definite because of Ivy League rules. The recruit does not have to sign anything at that time, but the recruit’s verbal commitment is considered binding. The letter goes on to congratulate you on your accomplishments and urges you to keep up your grades and behavior through the rest of your senior year. A 1998 Amherst recruit who slacked off in the spring of his senior year had his admission revoked.

Formal acceptance. On April 1, Dan got a “fat envelope” UPS 2nd day from Columbia confirming what the “likely letter” predicted and formally admitting Dan to Columbia’s School of Engineering. The fat envelope contained, among other things, a letter to be signed by Dan in which he commits to attend Columbia and sends a $500 deposit.

Book recommendations. There are several other books you might find helpful. I believe Miramonte should have them in the library, counseling center, or coaches office. I read dozens of books on the college recruiting process. These are just the most useful ones.

The Football Green Book (directory of football coaching staffs) 800-909-0010

The Select by Howard Greene (Detailed analysis of extensive surveys given to students at 20 elite colleges including Stanford and Cal, Ivy League, Williams, and others—This book reveals such things as the % of students negatively affected by crime or alcohol or sexism on the campuses covered)

A is for Admission by Michele Hernandez, a former Dartmouth admissions officer

Peterson's Sports Scholarships & College Athletic Programs (Sports-oriented college directory)

Guide to College Athletic Recruiting for Miramonte Students by Steve Harwood (Miramonte PA announcer)

Letting Go by Coburn and Treeger

Recruiting Confidential by David Claerbaut

Team media guides (The colleges are very restricted as to what they can give you, but this is one of the few allowed items. Ask for them. Media guides contain a wealth of information about the team, players, coaches, school, facilities, football tradition, etc.)

Out of date. We learned that we middle-aged parents are somewhat out of date on colleges. Richard Moll, author of The Public Ivies and Playing the Selective College Admissions Game, warned of this when he spoke at Miramonte a couple years ago. My wife and I thought Harvard and Yale were the two top schools in acceptance rate (admits ÷ applications) among private schools. Actually, the ranking is Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Stanford. (Colleges that cost nothing to attend like Cooper Union and the service academies have comparable acceptance rates, but lower SAT scores.) Columbia has apparently climbed in acceptance rate because of New York City’s recent image upsurge. Our sons’ generation only became aware of the outside world in the last several years and they like the city of Mayor Giuliani, the perennial world champion Yankees, Seinfeld, Friends, and Letterman. In terms of acceptance rate, Yale is now in fifth place behind Brown in the Ivy League. Because of “irreverant” guidebooks and college visits, I suspect prospects are increasingly aware of what a rotten town New Haven is and that is dropping Yale in the rankings. One guidebook calls New Haven “the Beirut of New England.” When I went to college, many of my peers at West Point and nationwide had never visited their college until they arrived there as freshman. Read the various guide books before you hold forth on the desirability of the various colleges based on your 30-year old information. Note that the Insiders Guide, which likes Yale, is published by the Yale Daily News.

Internet. There is now a ton of information on the Internet. Each team has its own Web site with schedules, past results, rosters, and so forth. The rosters give name, position, height, weight, hometown and high school. Click here to see an Ivy example—Columbia. You can also listen to college football games for free on the Internet from anywhere in the world. Columbia’s games, for example, are available at www.wkcr.org, Columbia’s student radio station. Some games are available on www.broadcast.com. Most are available either there or from the college’s radio station Web site.

Truth to tell, it appears to me in retrospect that one of the best things a parent could do for a prospective college football player son would be to redshirt him in first grade, that is, have him enter first grade a year after he is supposed to, and send him to a small high school (or one with small numbers turning out for the football team) with low test scores. Redshirting will help him athletically, academically, and socially. The small school will give him maximum opportunity for playing time at the most skilled positions. College football teams are full of former high school quarterbacks and tailbacks playing other positions. But they rarely convert a player who played another position in high school to quarterback or tailback at the college level. The low test scores of his classmates will give him maximum opportunity for a high class rank. Being a year older will give him maximum chances of holding leadership positions in the class and on the team.

This seems like a dumb set of things to do, but the way the rules are set up, these three steps would probably have a tremendous beneficial effect on your son’s chances of playing college football, not to mention helping him in life in general. (A strong academic high school is better preparation for doing well academically once you’re in college. Here, I am only talking about getting admitted to a selective college.) I did not redshirt my son in first grade or any other year, but he and I did grind our teeth when he got to high school and had to compete for playing time against classmates who were a year older and underclassmen who were his age. Apparently many other parents did redshirt their sons. Dan turned 19 on 6/26/00 between his freshman and sophomore years of college. Some of his college teammates are 22 or 23—ages he will attain only after graduation.

I did consciously send Dan to a relatively small high school, but it was mainly because I was coaching there, it had an excellent academic reputation, and an excellent football program. If I had sent him to our local powerhouse Catholic school, De La Salle, he would not have started at tailback. Although Miramonte is small—about 1,000 students of both sexes—it has big numbers on the football team: 50 each on the freshman and JV teams and 60 to 80 on the varsity. Miramonte is arguably the best school academically in our East Bay Region of San Francisco, so we are grateful that it does not publish class rank.

The success or prominence of your son’s high school team means almost nothing to college recruiters. You may be better off recruitingwise starting three years and playing both ways on an 0-30 Podunk team, than starting senior year only on one side of the ball for the state champion of the large-schools division. They are recruiting you, not your team. So what you want is maximum opportunity to show what you can do at the most skilled position you can play. (You do need some help from your teammates to succeed. A great running back will have nothing for his highlight film if his teammates do not block. A great receiver will have no highlights if his quarterback cannot throw accurately or if his team never passes or his line cannot protect the passer.) For quarterbacks and receivers, the style of offense is probably important. For example, great passers will not get much chance to show off their arms on option teams as a general rule.

A small high school head football coach said he disagreed with me slightly. He said a player should go to the largest high school where he is competitive (a starter) because college recruiters discount small high school success to an extent.

Epilogue. 12/19/00. Dan has now completed his first two seasons at Columbia. We now have the reality of his college football experience to compare with the recruited high-school senior perspective.

Upon arrival in August 1999, Dan found that he was fourth string on the varsity depth chart at tailback. First string was a sophomore who was Ivy League Rookie of the Year in 1998. Second string was a fifth-year senior. Third string was a classmate of Dan’s. Dan was ranked last among the recruited tailbacks. There was also a walk-on tailback who was not recruited who was fifth string. He is excellent at running with the ball, but is small.

Blue-White Game
Dan got hurt in the Blue-White game, a pre-season intra-squad scrimmage in September of his freshman year. He missed the first JV game of the season—the first game he ever missed in his 12-year career as a football player. For the rest of the season, he was on the scout team in practice and second string on the JV team. The first three running backs traveled to away varsity games. The third-string tailback only got to play in one game, a blowout loss to Lehigh. Dan never traveled to a varsity away game. He was grateful for that on the grounds that such trips are extremely time-consuming, which is especially galling if you do not play at all, which is what happened to his classmate at 4 of the 5 away games. The Columbia varsity went 3-7, 1-6 in league and tied for last place with Princeton. The Princeton coaching staff was fired. The new Princeton head coach is Roger Hughes. He is the former Dartmouth offensive coordinator who came to our home to recruit Dan, but offered him a trip that was too late. Pirnceton’s fired coaching staff had shown mild interest in Dan, but did not recruit him. Yale tied with Brown for the league championship.

JV games
I attended two of Dan’s JV games. He looked the same, relative to the other players on the field, as he had in high school. His mother attended a third game and had the same comment. The JV team went 3-2 including a last-second victory over Yale. I was at the game and Dan played an important role in it, catching two long passes for key first downs in long-yardage situations and gaining his share of yards on running plays.

New Haven
After the Yale JV game, which was Sunday afternoon, my middle son and I could not find a bus back into the center of New Haven, so we walked from the stadium to the Yale campus. According to the Yale brochure, that’s two miles. Felt like more than that to us. What’s worse, it was through a terrible neighborhood. When the Big Game is played at Harvard, and the home team is losing, the Harvard students have a taunt that says something to the effect of “Yeah, but now you have to go back to New Haven.” Now I know why. (Columbia’s campus is 5.5 miles from its football field, the neighborhood in between is rough, but there are many subways, buses, and taxis. Both Yale and Columbia use shuttle buses to transport athletes and students to and from the fields.)

As we walked, I wondered what had ever possessed me to consider letting my sons go to college in such a town. (When we visited Yale in August of 1998, we did not have time to see anything but the campus. My middle son said “No way!” regarding applying to Yale. Part of the purpose of the 1999 trip was to show him Yale. He is not an athlete.)

Transfer to Division III?

In the fall, I wondered if Dan should consider transferring to a Division III school in view of the fact that he was ranked behind a classmate on the tailback depth chart. Dan assured me that he would show the coaches what he could do in spring football. And that’s exactly what happened. Dan had a great spring and was promoted to second-string tailback on the varsity behind the 1998 Ivy Rookie of the Year. I attended one spring practice and the spring game. Click here for a photo of Dan carrying the ball in that game.

In high school, Dan could be more deliberate about selecting his running path. In the Ivy League, he has to be more frantic, racing to get upfield as soon as possible before one of those fast, smart linebackers gets to him. As expected, Dan’s 40 time dropped from 4.8 in high school to 4.7 in college. In high school, the only opposing linebacker Dan worried about was Dublin High School’s Derlyn Gross. In the Ivy League, everyone is worth worrying about.

Stanford?

Above, I mentioned that, when I sat next to him at a convention, I forgot to ask Stanford coach Tyrone Willingham if it was true that he would have recruited my son had he been .2 faster in the 40. In 2000, I ran into Tyrone again at the American Football Coaches Association convention and I did ask him. He said they not only had skill players who ran 4.6, but they also had guys who ran 4.8, but that speed alone was not enough. The player also had to be an excellent football player.

Kenny Dorsey

In one way, moving up to college football was a step down for Dan. His high school quarterback was Kenny Dorsey. He went to Miami on a full scholarship, started (as a true freshman) three games which they won by large margins, and played extensively in the Gator Bowl, another victory. He set freshman records even though he was a true freshman and the records he broke had been set by Gino Toretta, a Heisman Trophy winner. The quarterback who was ranked ahead of Dorsey on the depth chart, Kenny Kelly, quit to play professional baseball, a decision which some say was influenced by Dorsey’s breathing down his neck at quarterback. Now Kenny is the number one quarterback at Miami as a true sophomore. Miami ended up ranked second in the nation on some polls, but they were not chosen to play in the BCS “national championship” game. Florida State, which Miami beat, is in that game against Oklahoma. Miami was hurt in BCS rankings by losing to Washington. If FSU beats Oklahoma and Miami beats Florida in its bowl game, Miami could win the national championship. I saw Kenny ranked first on an ESPN list of 2001 Heisman candidates! Go Kenny!

Dean’s list

I was concerned about how Dan would handle academics, especially surrounded by college kids and all the distractions of a 14-story high, co-ed college dorm. I need not have worried. Dan made dean’s list. Turns out, at a college as selective as Columbia, the dorm is full of people who studied their butts off to get into Columbia. They still have that habit. If anything, the other kids in the dorm seemed to have the effect of increasing the amount of time Dan spent studying. In the fall, Dan only took four classes because of the amount of time he spent on football. He could have placed into an advanced calculus course because he got a 5 on both the calculus AB and BC Advanced Placement exams, but because of uncertainty about how he would handle the academic workload, and the fact that he had not taken calculus since junior year, he took regular calculus—a wise move. In the spring, he took six classes, which he now says was too much. One was beginning Latin, which was a review after four years of Latin in high school. I also made him get a part-time job after football ended. He worked about 12 hours per week installing ISDN and DSL lines around campus for the University for $10 per hour.

Dumb jock

I warned Dan that other students might resent his football-player status and stereotype him as a dumb jock merely because of his membership on the football team. Indeed, a number of Dan’s classmates confessed to him later in the year that, at first, they assumed he was a dumb jock who only got in because of football. One expressed amazement that he was taking classes in the engineering building in view of the fact that he was a football player. (The percentage of engineering students on the football team is about the same as the percentage of engineering students in the undergrad student body.) After they got to know him, they came to see him as an individual. Some friends of Dan’s non-athlete girlfriend told her, upon learning that she was dating him, “You could do so much better.” The girls in question have never met Dan. All they know about him is his extracurricular activity. Dan does not know if any of those girls made dean’s list.

MTV

I was concerned that Dan, who spent his entire life in a California suburb, might not like New York City. In September, he called me to tell me to tape an MTV program called Total Request Live. “Why?” “I’m on it.” On Friday before the away game at Harvard, Dan and a couple of his teammates were strolling through Times Square. They had the day off because there are few classes on Friday at Columbia and the traveling team had departed for Boston. When they passed the MTV studios in Times Square, an employee spotted them and ran out and asked them, “Do you guys live around here?” Upon learning that they were Columbia students, she invited them to appear on TRL. Dan ended up appearing twice on the program. In each case, he sat in the studio audience. During the show, they gave him a microphone and he got to tell his name, where he was from, what song he wanted, and why. High-school friends now tell him, “Hey! I saw you on TRL!” I pointed out to Dan that if he had gone to Yale, he might have appeared on Good Morning New Haven or some such.

When I visited Dan in New York, he was chewing me out for waiting for the light to change to cross the street. “Dad, you’re acting like a tourist.” So scratch the worries about Dan and NYC. Before he graduates, I expect there’ll be a sandwich named after him at the Carnegie Deli. “The Broadway Danny Reed corned beef on rye.”

He’s in the game

In the fall of Dan’s sophomore year, he learned that he is represented in the new video game EA’s NCAA 2001 for Playstation and Dreamcast. They let you pick which teams you want to play with. If you pick Columbia, you get a team with a black, first-string tailback whose number is 7 and a white backup tailback whose number is 35. My white son is the second-string tailback. His number is 35. The first-string tailback at Columbia is a black guy named Jonathan Reese. His number is 7. Cool.

You can listen to Columbia games for free by Internet at the Columbia radio station’s Web site: www.WKCR.org or in New York area at 89.9 FM. Also, most of Columbia’s opponents broadcast their games on the Internet. You can listen to them for free too through your computer. Go to Broadcast.com or other college radio broadcasts on line for those games. One Columbia game was actually on Internet TV this season on www.collegesportcast.com , but I did not learn about it until I started listening to the game broadcast on radio. When I tried to download the necessary software to see the game, it said it was going to take more than two hours. The game would be over by then and I would not be able to listen while downloading.

First varsity playing time

Dan made his first varsity appearance in the 9/16/00 opening game against Fordham. The first time he touched the ball he ran for 48 yards. (Outside zone right starting with a counter step to the left) That run ended up being about the seventh longest in the Ivy League for the season. For the day, he had 6 carries for 62 yards. Columbia had the game won 43-26. They just put Dan in to run out the clock. Dan was also on the kickoff team throughout his sophomore season.

First varsity season

Dan’s first varsity season is now over. He had 39 carries for 219 yards and a 5.6 yards per carry average. That made him third in the Ivy League among running backs with at least that many carries. The first and second highest yards per carry averages were Yale’s Rashad Bartholomew and Harvard’s Nick Palazzo, both of whom had 5.7 yards per carry. Most coaches probably would feel Dan’s high average was a fluke because of his relatively few carries and having many carries at the end of games that were no longer in doubt. Maybe so. But if it’s so easy to average 5.6 yards per carry in such situations, how come Dan was the only guy in the league who did it? As a coach, whenever I have a player or play with a high average yards per attempt, I give him or it more attempts to make sure it’s a fluke. Dan caught four passes for fifteen yards and fumbled to Yale after one catch. Dan’s stats are at the Columbia and Ivy League Web sites. Also, if you just search for “Dan Reed Columbia” in a regular search engine, you pick up Web pages with his stats at numerous sports Web sites.

At Columbia, you have to appear in at least five games to get a varsity letter. Dan appeared in all ten.

During the 2000 season, Jonathan Reese, the first-string Columbia tailback, broke Columbia’s records for career rushing, single-game rushing, single-season scoring, single-season carries, most games over 100 yards, and single-season rushing. He was also the first Columbia running back to ever rush for more than 1,000 yards. He was rarely injured or tired. Dan got a few plays once when Jonathan’s shoe came off. Dan sometimes was on the field at the same time as Jonathan to take advantage of the defense’s being overly focused on Reese. Other times, Dan played during the main part of the game because Jonathan was injured or winded from a long run. Reese returns as a senior in 2001.

On the kickoff team, Dan had 5 unassisted tackles and two assists. He was named Columbia’s Special Teams Player of the Week for the Lafayette game. He also played a little on the punt-return team during the season.

Here are two photos of Dan on a 26-yard run at homecoming against Dartmouth. The stands visible in the background are the Dartmouth side.

photo1

photo2

Columbia finished 3-7 in 2000, with only one Ivy League win (over Dartmouth). Three of the losses were heartbreakers. Against Bucknell, Princeton, and Cornell, Columbia had the lead with less than a minute left. Against Cornell, Columbia had the ball on Cornell’s two-yard line with two seconds left, but were unable to get the snap off. They lost that game 35-31. Columbia was in the Penn, Yale, and Brown games for a while, but ended up losing by large margins. Columbia was never in the Harvard game even though we got five takeaways.

Attrition

Dan’s freshman roommate, a wide receiver, got very sick in 2000. He missed all but the last game. After having all that time off, and contemplating his likely position on the depth chart, he decided to quit football.

A walk-on tailback classmate who was fourth string-string in 2000, decided after the 2000 season to switch to corner. Several other of the eight tailbacks on the roster in 2000 switched to defense or other offensive positions. Dan still has plenty of competition at tailback, and more coming in this August.

A classmate teammate who lived across the hall from Dan freshman year, decided to take it real easy academically in the spring of 2000. He took one less course than he needed, figuring he’d make it up in summer school back home. Columbia refused to accept the summer Spanish course and insisted that he take a Spanish AP test before they would give him credit. He flunked the AP test and was therefore not eligible for the 2000 season. After Christmas, he transferred to his state university and may try to walk on there.

Hosting recruits

Dan now has considerable experience at the other end of the recruiting process. He has hosted six recruits in 2000 and 2001. That is, they come to Columbia at Columbia’s expense and stay in his room for Thursday and Friday nights. He also escorts them around to their various recruiting functions and takes them out for a night on the town. Four of the six Dan hosted chose Columbia. He should be on commission.

Dan says it apparently matters a lot which weekend you get invited, with the earliest being the best.The reason is many recruits commit during such visits, then cancel their remaining visits sight unseen. The recruiting visits start the first weekend after the students come back to Columbia. In 2001, Dan went back January 14th. So the recruits came on the weekend of the 19th, 26th, February 2 and 9th. Dan accepted a first weekend invitation to Dartmouth, only to have them say it was “too short notice.” Hmmmm. They also said he was their first choice running back nationwide. It may be more important which weekend they invite you than what they say. Talk is cheap.

Dan went to Columbia the second weekend. Yale scheduled Dan for the third week, but later called to try to move Dan up to the second weekend. We declined because of his commitment to visit Columbia that weekend. Dan visited Yale the third weekend and declined an invitation to visit Dartmouth the fourth weekend because both Yale and Columbia said they could not wait that long for a decision.

Don’t read too much into which weekend. There may be other reasons why a college invites you for a particular weekend. Maybe they want you to stay with a particular guy and he is busy the first weekend. Maybe they wanted you for the first weekend and you were not available.

Dartmouth and Yale sincerity

I’m still wondering about the sincerity of Dartmouth and Yale. They both said Dan was their number one tailback recruit nationwide for the class of 2003. (Columbia only said, “He’s very high on our list.”) So it might be interesting to look at the 2000-season stats on the tailbacks they did get in that class instead of Dan. That would be one Jay Schulze at Yale and one Clinton Soper at Dartmouth. Here’s a comparison.

Category	Dan Reed, Columbia	Jay Schulze, Yale	Clinton Soper, Dartmouth
games	10	9	2
carries	39	89	2
net yards	219	383	3
yards per carry	5.6	4.3	1.5
TDs	1	2	0
longest run	48	73*	5
receptions	3	0	0
receiving yards	18	0	0

It would not appear that Yale missed Dan’s services that much, although they surely would have preferred his yards per carry. If Dan had 89 carries and the same 5.6 yards per carry, he would have gained almost 500 yards. Both Yale and Columbia had super-star first-string tailbacks. The difference in Dan’s and Schulze’s carries stem from Yale’s number one guy missing at least one whole game (*I was there). Columbia’s #1 tailback never missed a game. Dartmouth’s Soper may be the next Walter Payton, but he got hardly any chances to show what he could do in games and was not able to make much of the chances he did get.

Just looking at these stats, it appears Dartmouth’s offensive coordinator was telling the truth when he said Dan was his number-one running back recruit. Why he rejected Dan’s acceptance of the first weekend visit is beyond me. I thought it was very dumb of him at the time. He is now the head coach at Princeton, so what do I know?

GQ

Dan is in a photo on page 232 of the May 2001 issue of GQ magazine. He is the guy with the blue shirt leaning against a wall. A diagram numbers the eight guys in the photo so they can discuss the clothes each is wearing. Dan is number 6. The article title says, “The Navy Blazer—Paired with faded jeans or careworn khakis, this classic has never looked cooler. Even these Columbia frat boys think so.”

His being in a GQ is more complicated than you might think. NCAA athletes are not allowed to model—unless they were modeling before they became NCAA athletes. NCAA does not want them benefiting financially from their NCAA-athlete status and they are not allowed to endorse products, which modeling sort of is. But Dan had done some modeling in San Francisco when he was in high school, and the NCAA rule is that you may not start modeling in college, but you may continue of if you already had been modeling. I guess they neither want to launch your modeling career, nor interfere with it. Anyway, Dan had to get clearance from the Columbia football office before he could participate in this photo shoot.

As with his TRL appearance, this appears to be a benefit of going to college in Manhattan

Speaking of frat boys…

When Dan went to college, I told him he could not join a fraternity because they were almost invariably characterized by illegal, extremely dangerous levels of alcohol, and sometimes drug, consumption; often dangerous physical and psychological hazing; and squalid living conditions. He didn’t join one. He helped found one. He is now Webmaster and Sergeant at arms of Columbia’s new chapter of Delta Sigma Phi. Actually, it was the reinstatement of Delta Sig at Columbia. The fraternity’s second chapter was at Columbia in 1901. There is a photo of a bunch of members at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/dsp/pictures.html. Dan is the guy with the triangle (delta) painted on his chest.

Delta Sigma Phi is trying to be different. Its national president said, “Our fraternity is determined to improve academic performance, build a growing membership base, increase the presence of alumni and other advisory support, and end the abuse of alcohol.” Their Q-&-A Web page says, “Delta Sigma Phi will no longer allow itself to be defined by alcohol in the minds of university administrators, potential members and their families, and by the public at large.” Delta Sig’s national headquarters banned alcohol from all Delta Sig property nationwide by 12/10/00. Not even brothers or alumni of legal age can consume alcohol on Delta Sig property. Columbia’s chapter has no hazing in its initiation and has no fraternity house at present.

Dan’s fraternity is also trying to avoid becoming dominated by any athletic team, religion, or other group—apparently a common problem in fraternities.

Fraternities have another problem I was not aware of, but am not surprised at: lower than average grades. Delta Sig wants to change their organization to one with above-average grades.

This all sounds good, but all fraternity statements of purpose sound good. The reality is the majority of fraternities are a bunch of boys playing with fire. If Columbia’s Delta Sig chapter sticks to these new values, I’m a supporter. If they spin off into the usual, see ya.

Changed majors

Dan was a computer engineering major for his first two years at Columbia. But he found the engineering curriculum was too tough for one who also had the year-round football commitment. He switched to computer science. According to the College Majors Handbook, that lowers his expected starting salary from about $65,000 to about $55,000—and will have a similar effect on his income for the rest of his life if he stays in that field. Didn’t change his tuition, room, and board, though. That’s still about $38,000 a year. I hope the coaches appreciate all the sacrifices the players make for the team.

Spring practice 2001

Dan got demoted from second-string to third-string tailback as a result of 2001 spring practice. He did the best of the five healthy tailbacks (first-string tailback Jonathan Reese missed all of spring practice with a hamstring pull) in the spring game, averaging over five yards per carry and doing equally well as a receiver, ball carrier, and blocker. The next best spring-game performance was three point something yards per carry. But the coach said Dan did poorly during the first six days of spring practice, whereas the new second-string guy was consistent throughout.

I’m no expert, but it appears to me that all six of Columbia’s tailbacks could start or play second-string on other Ivy League teams. The last-string tailback at Columbia is also the fastest guy on the whole Columbia team—and the Columbia team as a whole is one of the fastest in the Ivy League! Smart opposing coaches won’t even kick off deep to Columbia. Deep men Jonathan Reese and Justin Logan were the most dangerous kick returners in the league. Columbia received mostly squib kicks. Maybe Columbia ought to put all six tailbacks on the field for kick returns and invite opponents to, “Squib this.”

I jokingly suggested to a Columbia coach that with all the running back talent they have, they ought to switch to a wishbone or wing-T offense—both of which have three running backs in the backfield. Columbia is going to do more two-back formations than last year. Last season, they usually were in a one-back formation. They ran the wishbone at times the season before Dan arrived.

Playing time in college sports

I am developing an idea of how much playing time you can expect based on various factors you can get some information on during recruiting. This will sound logical and obvious, but we did not really focus on it when Dan was being recruited. Now that it’s actually happening, we are forced to focus on it.

Number of players on the team

Your son’s college playing time is likely to be a function of the number of players on the team. There are 110 players on an Ivy League football team. Do the math. Excluding special teams, there are 22 starting positions on a football team. There are about 60 plays for each offense in a college football game. The Ivy League has ten-game seasons so there are (60 + 60) x 10 = 1,200 offensive and defensive plays per team in an Ivy League season. Times 22 players that’s 22 x 1,200 = 26,400 player-plays per season. That means, on average, an Ivy League football player would get 26,400 ÷ 110 = 240 varsity plays per season. but they don’t spread the playing time that way. It’s more like 90% first-string, 9% second-string, and 1% third-string. That leaves 0% for the fourth and later strings—who typically are not even on the traveling squad.

The average Ivy League football position has five strings (110 ÷ 22 = 5). So 90% x 26,400 = 23,760 of the plays go to 22 first-stringers. That gives them an average of 23,760 ÷ 22 = 1,080 plays per season. Second-string averages 9% or 108 plays per season. Third-string averages 11 plays per season. Fourth- and fifth-string have to hope terrorists throw a grenade into a running-backs meeting when they are in the bathroom.

Other colleges have different numbers. Division I-A schools have 85 scholarships. When I visited Tufts University they had about 85 guys on the team. When I visited Pomona, they had about 34. You can see how many guys a team you are considering has in their media guide or program or Web site roster. One thing they all have in common is 11 men on the field at a time and 60-minute games. So unless your son is a super star, the amount of playing time he gets during his college career is very much a function of the number of players on the team.

Special teams helps a lot—giving jobs to place kickers and punters as well as to various offense and defense guys, but they generally try to use first-and second-string offense and defense guys on special teams. Special teams units are not used for charity to low-on-the-depth-chart players.

Here are some comparative team sizes:

Level	Annual recruits	# of games	Team size
NFL	7 draft choices 13 free agents	4 Exhibition 16 regular season 1-5 post-season	42 min. 45 max.
XFL	?	10	38 6 more on practice squad
NCAA I-A	17	10-13	85 scholarships some walk-ons
Ivy (NCAA I-AA)	35	10	110 allowed to go to summer camp more thereafter
High School	10 to 30	8 to 13	13 to 80
Pop Warner	5 to 25	8 to 13	18 min. 35 max.

As you can see, the Ivy League has by far the most players of any level, with the possible exception of the major service academies where every student is on full scholarship and being on the football team provides many privileges above and beyond playing time. This is good news if you are an Ivy League-quality player trying to get into an Ivy League college. But it’s bad news as far as playing time is concerned after you get there.

• Number of games—I asked the Pomona coach once if he would ever schedule more than his usual eight games. He said he would if his number of players were higher. When he has 34 or so, he figures it would be tough to get through more than eight games without injuries hurting the team unacceptably. The more games, the more playing time to go around.

• Level at which recruited—I am coming to the conclusion that the stars at any non I-A level of college football are generally the guys who were recruited by the next higher level. For example, the star running back in the Ivy League last season was Rashad Bartholomew of Yale. He averaged 5.7 yards per carry—.1 more than my son Dan. Bartholomew was a transfer from the Air Force Academy—a I-A school.
The starting quarterback at I-AA St. Mary’s College, which is near where I live, is also a transfer from Air Force.
The walk-on who becomes a starter is a heartwarming part of football—but it is also the rare exception. Rudy was the classic walk-on. If you are willing to bust your butt for four years to get in for one play, walk on. Otherwise, it’s probably not a productive use of your time.
If you are recruited by two levels, you will probably struggle to get playing time at the higher level and star at the lower level. One Division III coach told Dan he would probably start all four years, carry the ball 35 times a game, and break all of that college’s career rushing records. The average Ivy running back who was recruited at the Ivy, but not the I-A, level, probably never starts, carries the ball 35 times a season for a season or two, and breaks no records.

• Injuries—Injuries can turn all of what I just said upside down. Yale’s Bartholomew was hurt in 2000—apparently for two or three games considering the number of carries his backup got for the season. Columbia’s Reese was only hurt for part of one quarter in the Yale game. The Columbia media guides for 1998 and 1999 mention several running backs who got unexpectedly high amounts of playing time because of injuries to other players. So your playing time is determined by the number of players on the team, the level at which you were recruited, and injuries to players above you in the depth chart. Some seasons there are many injuries; others, there are none. There is generally no way to predict.

• Players at your position—When you are recruited, you should pay close attention to who is already at that school at your position. Really good players who are just a year ahead of you, like Columbia’s Jonathan Reese at tailback, mean you will get less playing time. You maximize your playing time by going to where there are no good players at your position or at least where any good players at your position are seniors or maybe juniors. Who is recruited at your position in classes behind you is also a factor, but you have no way of knowing that when you are picking a college. The second-string tailback at Columbia after 2001 spring practice is in the class behind Dan.

• Fifth-year players—It is standard to have players for five years in Division I-A. They call it “redshirting.” Redshirting is not allowed in the Ivy League, but there are a bunch of fifth-year players there. Yale’s Rashad Bartholomew was one. I get the impression it has something to do with injuries or transfers. We cannot afford for Dan to be at Columbia for a fifth year if he were eligible for it by virtue of an injury. I suspect most of the players who are in their fifth year in the Ivy League either are on a need scholarship or have very rich parents. So you need to inquire about fifth years for guys at your position. Do not assume they are all leaving the team four years after they entered. Columbia running back Norman Hayes (Class of 2000) played in 41 games during his college career. Since Ivy teams only play ten games a year, you can see there is sometimes a fudge factor.

Whatever happened to the Columbia football recruiting class of 2002?

We now have three years worth of Columbia Football media guides. That’s enough to examine the careers of the recruiting class ahead of Dan—the Class of 2002.

Frosh jersey #	frosh (’98)	soph (’99)	junior (’00)	senior (’01)
40	J.V.	J.V.	no letter
87	J.V.	Varsity letter
82	Varsity letter	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
99	J.V.	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
JD	never on team
75	J.V.
48	J.V.	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
68	J.V.	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
70	J.V.	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
50	J.V.
30	J.V.	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
29	J.V.	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
39	J.V.
47	J.V.
78	J.V.	Varsity letter
38	J.V.	Varsity letter	injured
22	J.V.	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
IL	never on team
49	J.V.	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
73	Varsity letter	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
18	J.V.	Varsity letter	Varsity letter
6	J.V.
80	not on team	J.V.	Varsity letter
88	J.V.	J.V.
35	Ivy Rookie of Year	Hon. Mention All Ivy	1st Team All Ivy
95	J.V.
65	J.V.
51	J.V.
85	J.V.	J.V.	no letter
16	J.V.	Varsity letter	no letter
28	J.V.
1	Varsity letter	J.V.	not on team
Attrition rate	2/32 = 6.25%	11/32 = 34.38%	14/32 = 43.75%
Varsity letter rate	4/30 = 13.33%	16/21 = 76.19%	13/18 = 72.22%

The left-hand column shows the players listed in the 1998 pre-season media guide. Two of those—JD and IL—were never on the team, or at least they do not appear in 1998 programs. Some players have changed jersey numbers since their freshman year. Green means the player was on the team. Red means he was not on the team. White means he was not active, but was still a team member.

Yards per carry

In a newspaper article after the 1998 North Coast Section Championship game Dan’s senior year, a local reporter described Dan as “the most underrated running back in the East Bay [our region].” In that game, Dan gained 194 yards and scored 26 points. We won 40-0.

I sent the reporter a letter thanking him for the comment, but pointing out that it was his paper’s own fault Dan was underrated—because they ranked local running backs by total yards instead of yards per carry. Total yards reflects a number of things unrelated to the ability of a running back. For example, a team might use its running back less because it has a future Heisman candidate at quarterback.

Well, it’s the same in the Ivy League. They rank running backs by total yards. So I am going to put the yards-per-carry ranking here. Dan may be underrated elsewhere, but not on his father’s Web site.

Player	Team	Carries for 2000 & 2001	Total yards for 2000 & 2001	Yards per carry for 2000 & 2001
Reed	Columbia	44	250	5.7
Palazzo	Harvard	164	907	5.5
Ryan	Penn	187	947	5.0
Reese	Columbia	307	1495	4.9
Atkinson	Princeton	120	555	4.6
Malan	Brown	275	1301	4.7
Gratch	Dartmouth	164	703	4.3
Schulze	Yale	96	407	4.2
Simmons	Cornell	166	701	4.2
Rose	Harvard	37	148	4.0
Carr	Yale	78	265	3.4
Soper	Dartmouth	2#	3#	1.5#

As of 10/3/01

# 2000 only, Soper had no carries in 2001 (listed because Dartmouth recruited Dan and got Soper instead)

There may be other players who should be on this list. I do not have access to 2000 Ivy Stats.
Only 43 carries—Some may protest that it’s easier to have a high average with just 43 carries. True, but players cannot control their number of carries. They can only make the most of the ones they get. It may be that Dan’s average would drop below other players if he got more carries. He and I would love to find out.
Garbage time—Some may point out that many of Dan’s carries come when the game is no longer in doubt. Actually, his yards-per-carry average may be higher when the game is still in doubt. He had long gainers against Fordham, Princeton, Dartmouth, etc. when those games were still in doubt. Every team has second stringers who get similar opportunities to play when the game is no longer in doubt. If it’s so easy to have a high average when playing in both competitive and garbage time, why hasn’t any other Ivy running back done it? Also, there is a question as to whether it is easier to gain yards when second-string blockers and quarterbacks are in the game.

Alcohol

Alcohol is a really big deal to me. My father was a mean drunk. As far as I can tell, all the men in my family who are not teetotalers have had alcohol problems to one degree or another. Because of my father, I am a lifelong teetotaler.

Above, I said that my son had co-founded a fraternity chapter of Delta Sigma Phi at Columbia and that they did not allow alcohol consumption at any frat functions. In the interest of full disclosure, a couple of members showed up drunk at the 2001 pledge initiation.

The general mindset at colleges today, including Ivy League colleges, appears to be that

college= alcohol
alcohol = fun
fraternities = more alcohol
athletic team fraternities = the most alcohol

This is extremely dangerous. According to a National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism study that came out on 4/10/02, alcohol causes the following annual problems for college kids age 18 to 24:

Deaths 1,400
Injuries 500,000
Assaults 600,000
Sexual assaults 70,000
Unwanted sex 400,000
DUI 2.1 million

The excellent book The Select, which I mentioned above, shows the following incidence of “direct negative effect of campus alcohol consumption” (based on surveys of students):

College	Alcohol problem
Princeton	22.3%
Dartmouth	19.8%
Brown	19.0%
Cornell	18.2%
Harvard	14.7%
Columbia	10.8%
Yale	10.2%
Penn	9.9%

Originally, I took comfort from Columbia’s low ranking. Don’t. There is far too much drinking at all the Ivy League schools. These percentages are from teenagers who are extremely ignorant of the dangers of alcohol and extremely insensitive to them. Adults observing the same behavior would probably give much higher percentages at those schools.

During his official visit to Columbia and Yale, then 17-year-old Dan was taken by upperclass football players to bars where alcohol was served. In Dan’s Columbia case, the players were taken to a bar that featured lap dances. The Columbia player bought lap dances for all the high school seniors who wanted them. Dan declined that particular offer.

As both a host and later player hostee, Dan believes that the Columbia coaches did not instruct the players to take the high school recruits to bars or buy them lap dances. However, neither did they prevent it. As a coach myself, I would say that if it happened and the coaches did not know about it, they probably did not want to know about it. The bottom line is that Columbia money bought high school students drinks and lap dances as part of the effort to recruit them to play football there. So much for the high-class, student-athlete approach that most people ascribe to the Ivies.

Dan tells me that it was easy for underage students to buy alcohol in New York and New Jersey—including in bars. He also tells me that it is virtually impossible in California. Why? California sincerely tries to prevent it and generally succeeds with a high tech drivers license that bars scan into a data base. New York, which had a drinking age of 18 in the 1960’s, apparently regards the federally-mandated drinking age of 21 as a law it is not inclined to enforce. So if you want your child to stay alcohol free in college, your chances may be better in California than New York.

I suspect that the various colleges, including the Ivies, are competing not only in academics and athletics for students, but also in who can be the most lenient regarding underage alcohol consumption. That is, the colleges know that there is rampant underage drinking and excessive alcohol consumption by all ages of students, but they look the other way because they fear if word got out that, say, Columbia, was enforcing drinking laws more than other schools, it would reduce both the number of applicants and the yield, thereby lowering the all-important U.S. News ratings.

U.S. News does not take alcohol or drug abuse into account in their ratings. They should. If they did, and weighted it appropriately, it might give the various college presidents the courage to do the right thing. However, like the colleges, U.S. News depends on high school students who think drinking is cool for their revenue, so I would not hold my breath