“The mechanism is very simple,” he said. “We said to every school, you can make the allocation you want across sports, you can use whatever considerations your dean of admissions wants, but every time you take an athlete whose AI is below a certain level you’re going to need one or more athletes above that level to balance them out.”

Men’s basketball head coach Frank Sullivan declined comment, and men’s ice hockey head coach Mark Mazzoleni could not be reached.

Football remains the only Ivy Championship sport to be regulated separately because the League has recently—and successfully—modified its regulation of football, Orleans said.

But football in the Ivy League also has “peculiar competitive considerations,” he said.

“We’ve worked very hard to get an admissions structure in which everyone is competitive,” he said. “We’ve reduced the numbers in football twice in the past ten years, and I think [this time] there was some unwillingness, given all the other changes we’re making, to risk upsetting both the academic success and the competitive balance.”

Athletic Director Bob Scalise declined comment on any of the presidents’ changes, but a spokesman said he will comment in the fall.

“Perhaps, as the 2003 fall season gets underway, and Bob has had occasion to get a better feel for the implications of these changes, he will comment on the issue,” assistant Athletic Director for Sports Media Relations John Veneziano wrote in an e-mail.

Dov Grumet-Morris ’05, goaltender for men’s ice hockey, said the league-wide changes to the academic standards will not have a great impact at Harvard.

“All personnel involved will make the appropriate adaptations and I’m sure that there will be no major problems,” Grumet-Morris wrote in an e-mail. “I know, at least from our end, that our coaching staff does an excellent job of bringing in the type of student-athletes who are capable of adding to the academic community as much as they do to the athletic one.”

He added that the rule changes “will not be the deciding factor” in the team’s ability to compete beyond the Ivy League.

Mandatory Rest

The change most likely to have an immediate impact and incite the greatest response is the alteration to the mandatory rest period.

This spring, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’69, Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 and Scalise—at the time Harvard’s representatives on the Ivy Policy, Admissions and Administration committees—jointly presented the “Harvard Proposal” to spread the 49 days over the course of the year.

Lewis, who is departing as dean next week, wrote in an e-mail that the rest period would “really help with the problem of intensity” if applied during the season as well as in the off-season.

“The main point is to give athletes a break at the times of year when they need it the most, when the competitive schedule and the academic schedule are both at high intensity,” Lewis said.