Anyway, Curmie came across this story a couple of days ago and forwarded it on to netpal Jack Marshall, who, as expected, had a similar take to mine. But Curmie does have a couple of things to say, himself.
There’s a lawsuit out there, filed by lawyers James M. Moriarty, John Louis Cesaroni, and Stephen M. Kinseth (Curmie thinks it’s important to get the names of Walking Lawyer Jokes out into the open), on behalf of two Brown University basketball players: Grace Kirk, a current member of the women’s team, and Tamenang Choh, who played on the men’s team from 2017 to 2022. They’re suing not only Brown, but all the schools in the Ivy League (so also Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Penn, Princeton, and Yale) because the league does not allow its members to offer athletic scholarships.
That, of course, has been the policy of the Ivy League since its inception about 70 years ago. Imagine! A group of colleges and universities that think their primary mission ought to be education rather than athletics! Oh, the humanity! Ivy schools also don’t give merit-based scholarships in anything else: not for talent in the arts, or perfect scores on the SATs, or debate, or, well, anything. Scholarship money is based on a single criterion: financial need. The Ivies are expensive, but they go at least some ways to balance that with generous financial aid packages—Curmie knows of at least three Ivies (there may be more) at which a student with an annual family income of less than $100,000 will pay no tuition at all.
The point is, you’re at one of the nation’s finest educational institutions. Perhaps your skill at sports helped you get in, but now you’re just like everyone else… and everyone else has an impressive résumé, as well.
Ah, but you see, other excellent universities, like Duke and Stanford, give athletic scholarships. Three responses:
1). So fucking what?
2). Let me introduce you to Kyrie Irving, a literal flat-earther who played at Duke. Gentle Reader, do you really think Duke would have admitted anyone that demonstrably stupid if he didn’t have ball-handling skills and a jump shot? Or that Irving’s presence in a classroom (assuming he ever attended) didn’t slow the progress of students who actually belonged at a premier academic institution?
3. Finally, here’s a thought: go to Stanford or Duke or an equivalent school instead of Brown. Ay, there’s the rub, to quote some Danish guy who couldn’t hit a free throw. You see, to get a basketball scholarship at, say, Duke, you’ve got to be really good. Virtually every player at a top-flight basketball school will go on to play professionally—if not in the NBA or WNBA, then overseas. Curmie doesn’t see that future for Choh and Kirk.
Choh’s last year was pretty good; he averaged 14 points and 8 rebounds on a sub-.500 team against so-so competition. Kirk managed only 53 minutes for the entire season, playing for a team that went 4-10 in a pretty lower-level league.
To be fair, Kirk was definitely a star at the high school level, and no doubt could have received an athletic scholarship somewhere. But she chose Brown because it offered “the perfect balance between academic rigor and high-level athletics.” Now, apparently, it has dawned on her that signing with another university might have been a better financial decision, at least in the short term. Well, duh. Someone smart enough to get into Brown couldn’t have figured that out years ago?
Curmie is all for students doing things outside the purely curricular. It is, of course, ridiculous that so many (read: “most”) colleges and universities conceive of themselves as athletics programs that offer a few courses on the side. It’s also worth mentioning that very few athletics programs, certainly none in the Ivy League, make money for the school. Quite the contrary, in fact. Brown even had to cut some varsity sports a couple of years ago: losing money on athletics was one thing; losing that much money was untenable.
The plaintiffs also contend that “Regardless of whether considered as a restraint on the price of education, the value of financial aid, the price of athletic services, or the level of compensation to Ivy League athletes, the Ivy League Agreement is per se illegal.” Poppycock. None of these arguments have any legitimate standing, and the league allows athletes to partake in Name/Image/Likeness (NIL) opportunities, giving Ivy League athletes financial opportunities not available to the hot-shot historian or physicist: athletes’ skills are more public and therefore more saleable.
Curmie isn’t sure what the impetus for this suit was. Unscrupulous lawyers, who will collect for billable hours even though there is (Inshallah!) little chance of success? The arrogance of Gen Z, unwilling to accept anything less than their narrowly defined image of perfection, and unwilling to accept the consequences of their own decisions? Or of collegiate athletes (“it’s more expensive for athletes this way, so let’s make it more expensive for everyone else”). Curmie tends towards the old favorite: “D: all of the above.”
In the post linked above, Jack Marshall leads with “Some slick lawyers somehow talked some dumb and greedy jocks into launching a class action suit,” and concludes with “It’s an unethical lawsuit in a general sense but not in the legal sense: lawyers can bring contrived suits if they make a ‘good faith’ argument that the law should be changed, even if, as in this case, it is an uncommonly stupid argument.” Jack has always been kinder than Curmie.
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