“I have a very traditional and idealistic view of athletics in the Ivy League,” Lewis says.

At their meeting last June, the Council of Ivy Presidents voted to reduce the number of football recruits from 35 to 30—part of a larger trend that has seen the number drop repeatedly since 1994, when 50 recruits were permitted.

But Lewis has warned against this movement to reduce the number of athletic recruits, which he says will make well-rounded student-athletes less attractive to coaches. Without athletic scholarships, a student’s financial aid cannot be tied to his participation in a sport, and so coaches sometimes have difficulty keeping a player on a team.

He says this might lead coaches to recruit more professionalized athletes who would be more likely to stay on the team, but less likely to participate in other activities.

“I would worry that even among students involved in athletics, significant commitments to activities other than athletics would come to be discouraged, not valued, as we so strongly believe they should be,” Lewis says.

He also says that he believes that recruited athletes who quit their teams, as he did when he was an undergraduate, often go on to contribute much to campus life in other areas.

“There are some real campus leaders in that category, people who’ve made enormous contributions to the College, and that’s the ideal,” Lewis says.

This is all hypothetical, Lewis says—there are no definite plans to further reduce the numbers of recruits in football or any other sport. The reduction in numbers and academic standards, however, will be two of the major topics of discussion at the Athletic Committee’s next meeting on May 2.

Scalise says that he and the other athletic directors are under a mandate from the Ivy Presidents to consider ways to reduce recruits, raise academic standards, and at the same time remain competitive.

“We athletic directors are grappling with this, and it’s really hard,” Scalise says. “It’s like building a building on budget, on time, and with high quality.”

Lewis says the move to reduce recruits is part of a larger trend to decrease intensity in college athletics, which stems from James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen’s 2001 book The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values.

Shulman and Bowen argue that athletes have a significant admissions advantage and that Ivy League sports are becoming increasingly professionalized—although Harvard is not included in the study.

Some scholars questioned its statistical methods, and Lewis has warned against adopting the recommendations of the book.

But Lewis says The Game of Life is one of the reasons why the Council of Ivy Group Presidents decided last June to implement the “seven week rule” for the 2002-2003 academic year. The rule mandates that teams take a seven week hiatus at some point during the academic year.

Intended to allow athletes time to focus on their studies or on other extracurricular activities, the measure met with widespread dissatisfaction among student athletes.