Taken for a (free) ride:: my response
I still don't have my copy of Tennis Magazine containing Jon Wertheim's column "Taken for a (free) ride" but he was kind enough to send me an unedited version so I could continue this discussion knowing what he had written.
Usually I agree with Jon, but I think he’s mostly wrong on this topic. He demands outrage, but any I feel is reserved for the NCAA’s lackadaisical enforcement of their rules for amateur status when it concerns foreign players. There is absolutely no justification or excuse to give foreign citizens the benefit of the doubt on this. If they are pros, or ever have been, they should not be eligible for athletic scholarships at an NCAA Division 1 university. That needs to change---now. But beyond that, he loses me.
As I’ve written in response to the many comments I’ve received on this issue before, I don’t support quotas. I don’t care if other countries have them. I consider myself a free-trade sort, brainwashed no doubt from reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page daily in my previous career, but I believe erecting barriers to competition stifles excellence. Sports is a meritocracy. If Division I college tennis limits the opportunities for foreign amateurs to a certain scholarship number or dollar amount, it is the quality of tennis that will suffer.
Brian Boland, the men’s head tennis coach at the University of Virginia, has not gone the foreign recruiting route. He was asked about this issue recently on the blog No Man's Land.I will start by saying I have no problem with foreign players as long as they are eligible. I think they are part of our sport as tennis is an international game. One of the reasons the top Americans even look at going to school is because the competition is so good. If it were not for the foreign players we would not have the depth we do in the college game.
Wertheim wonders why the USTA and ITA have been strangely mum on this issue. Well, they haven’t. They have published a thorough Q & A that I’ve linked to in the past. (This link is to a pdf file that is required reading for anyone with an opinion on this issue.) But those organizations don’t want to see college tennis slip into irrelevancy, which it was dangerously close to doing before the influx of overseas talent helped revive it.
Nor do I agree that American universities supported by taxpayers have any special obligation to avoid foreign athletes. Should the University of North Carolina reserve a starting position on the basketball team for the best Tar Heel state product? Should the University of Oklahoma be compelled to have a player from that state in every football position’s depth chart? Or are they free to recruit the best players from Michigan, Ohio and Florida for their teams? Even though they didn’t pay any taxes to help support UNC or OU?
And when he brings up the European Basketball leagues and their quotas, it leads to comparisons that Wertheim might be better off avoiding. Which title conveys more prestige, theirs or the NBA’s? It’s the NBA’s precisely because they DON’T limit who can play on their teams based on nationality. If you can play the game, the NBA wants you. They don’t care if you’re from Argentina, Germany, China or Canada.
I was called a “Pollyanna” by a commenter when I addressed a variation of this issue last year. Guilty as charged. And in character, I’ll end this post with an excerpt from a comment by pg over at Peter Bodo's TennisWorld. I have shamefully taken these two paragraphs out of context and I hope you’ll read the entire comment for more of his insights.I played college tennis for my hometown university in florida. We were and still are very competitive. Our top 5 were consistently international students and they all had some sort of pro experience. This was before tighter rules on prize money etc. came in. I was 18 coming out of juniors and these guys had so much more tennis experience than me and easily beat me on court. Obviously, it was a bit unfair.
That said, the years I played were great years of my life. In terms of tennis my play improved dramatically and I made radical changes because I was playing these top flight players everyday. In terms of life, I made some really good friends from all around the world. They were a cool bunch of guys. All of whom made great student athletes.
Again, I urge you to use a nickname or initials when you comment so that there is some frame of reference for the rest of us.
6 comments:
I don’t know that I want to get into this debate, but there are a few things that I feel the need to say.
First, I have not been a fan of Wertheim since he wrote the Sports Illustrated piece on the fictitious junior tennis player. Junior tennis has so little publicity to begin with I felt the article just took us two steps back. In this piece, however, he raises some valid points based obviously based on research, yet there are some points he does not address.
The move toward coaches filling their teams with foreign players is not just about looking for the “better players.” Despite the complaints about American players, we do have lots of great players who can and will be great college tennis players. Often it is a matter of coaches spending numerous hours begging American players to come play while he has foreign players writing and calling, selling themselves and talking about how much they want the education and to be on the team. I’m not saying this accounts for all – or even the majority – of foreign players on teams, but the fact is that many foreign players are selling themselves to American coaches while the U.S. players need to be convinced to go to a particular school.
As for the age issue, it is a very real problem that is not being addressed. Wertheim’s states, “To its credit, the NCAA is toughening up its standards, mandating, for instance that athletes who first start college after their 20th birthday must first sit out a year.” Why does he feel this is positive? This will just put more 24,25 and older players on the rosters. The NCAA should be mandating a maximum age not encouraging older, more experienced players.
I don’t see any major changes coming in this situation for years. I feel this is an issue that should be what the new USTA Junior Collegiate department is about. I don't know that I want to see "quotas," but I do want to see amateurs as NCAA players should be. In the meantime, I encourage junior players to actively pursue college tennis teams they are truly interested in. There are still available scholarships out there and many coaches who very much want to have Amercian players on their team.
Marcia Frost
Editor, College And Junior Tennis & College Tennis Connect
Member, USTA/Eastern College Tennis Committee
A couple points
1)Marcia is correct that foreign players want the opportunity much more than the high ranked American juniors. The US juniors are still living the dream of being a pro at ages 17-19. Do some research and you will see a portion of the top US juniors could not even get into college because of their academics.
2)Most US kids know what it means to play at Stanford, Georgia, UCLA, USC etc. Big colleges, great sports and usually great experiences. The mid tier US junior is getting weeded out of those opportunities because of the foreign influx. I don't know the answer, but for a kid to play tennis all his life, be one of the top 100 US juniors and still not be good enough to attend a top 40 program doesn't sound right.
3)College coaches are paid employees that are expected to produce a winning product. That pressure definitely plays into wanting to get the best players out there. I wish I had a productive solution to offer all kids wanting a great college experience, but I don't.
That was an impressive defense, Colette. You are obviously bright and a good writer. However, there are several flaws to your points as well as your logic. First of all, you attack our ideas as “quotas” but that term implies that we propose the EXCLUSION of foreign athletes from COMPETITION. However all we are proposing to limit is the scholarship money. The foreign athletes would be free to compete as much as they’d like, we just propose a limit to two scholarships per team for foreign players.
The term “quota” is also a highly-charged and pejorative term that connotes racial discrimination. However, nobody is advocating limitations based upon race, skin color, gender or ethnic background. Therefore, I believe that this is an inappropriate characterization.
Later you imply that the USTA and ITA are dealing with the issue, but all you do is cite the same Q&A that you’ve linked to in the past and that we’ve all seen a millions times. This document that they put out is just a lame public relations tool that tries to minimize the extent of the problem and basically concludes that they won’t and can’t do anything about it.
I don’t know whether this was intentional or not, but your statement next regresses into the exercise of a rhetorical device called “false analogy.” For those of you not familiar with this term, “false analogy” is basically a debate trick. This device is commonly used by slick politicians to make a point when the facts or logic aren’t on their side. Richard Nixon’s famous “Checkers Speech” is often studied in college courses on rhetoric and is used as a good historical example of this technique. The way it works is that you compare something else to the relevant subject to illustrate your point, but that something else is fundamentally different from the subject matter. In this case, you bring up the National Basketball Association as an example of how when an organization opens its doors to players from every country, such a move makes the organization more competitive. However, the NBA could not be more different from United States college tennis. The NBA is a PROFESSIONAL organization that’s goal is to include, represent and showcase the best basketball players in the WORLD. It is professional and international. In stark contrast, U.S. college tennis is an amateur organization, representing U.S. colleges only. If college tennis was either professional or if its U.S. teams competed against colleges outside the U.S. and all over the world, then it might have been appropriate to use the NBA as a fair analogy. Since U.S. college tennis is neither professional nor international, your analogy is unfair and not helpful.
Your other analogy comparing our proposition to the idea of limiting college teams to in-state players is also a false analogy. First of all, while U.S. NCAA college tennis is not an international competition between colleges all over the world as I discussed above, it is certainly a NATIONAL -- not a state -- organization. Therefore, when you go into your analogy about how it would be unfair to limit the players of each college to the state that the college resides in, this is totally off the mark. And, by the way, AGAIN no one is talking about limiting foreign players’ opportunities to PLAY college tennis; we’re only talking about limiting the number of scholarships. We’re only talking about a financial matter and actually state colleges do charge out-of-state students more tuition than they charge in-state students and I don’t recall any complaints about this as it has been going on for 100 years.
For the reasons that I’ve laid out in my previous paragraph, all of your rhetorical questions presented in the fourth paragraph of your posting about state colleges reserving starting positions is intellectually dishonest. With regard to the NCAA, we are talking about a national organization so it’s appropriate to allow interstate movement. I repeat; unlike the NBA, the ATP, or the WTA, the NCAA is not an international organization which must facilitate international movement. Furthermore, once again, we are NOT talking about limiting playing time, line-ups or any participation; we are ONLY talking about LIMITING, NOT EXCLUDING, scholarship money to TWO foreign players per team.
Your other main points sound good to the casual observer but they similarly use flawed logic. In summary, you mention the benefits of the current system to support your position which strongly insinuates that all of those benefits will be lost if they adopt our proposal. But those benefits will not be lost so it is inappropriate for you to bring them up. It’s sort of classic stuff whereby you quote some people who talk about benefits of international competition and meeting international players, but AGAIN since we are NOT advocating ELIMINATING foreign players and foreign competition, this doesn’t address the issue. For example, you quote the Virginia coach as saying that the foreign players add depth to the college game. Then you quote some anonymous former college player who says that while it was “obviously unfair” to have foreign players on his team, it did make it more competitive and they were “a cool bunch of guys.” That’s great Colette, but since we are still encouraging international players and only advocating LIMITING, not EXCLUDING, the foreign scholarships to TWO per team, under our proposition, there will still be PLENTY of foreign players which will mean plenty of opportunities for our U.S. athletes to compete with and meet “cool guys” from other countries. Again, you have used an unfair comparison because no one is advocating the total elimination of foreign scholarships nor are they seeking any limit on the number of foreign players. Had we advocated such a position, then these quotes and points might be appropriate. But since we have not, they are not helpful to the discussion.
There is also something else inherently limiting in the probative value of these quotes. Just because there are some, however minor, benefits to the status quo does not make it a BETTER situation than the one we are advocating. Increasing competition and allowing our U.S. players to meet more people from other countries are benefits, but those benefits will not go away with our proposition and they are, in any case, relatively minor in comparison to the problems in the current system which has gone WAY too far to the extreme.
Let me put it another way. We don’t see anything wrong with foreign players and we encourage them to participate. However, the situation has now gotten RIDICULOUS where -- as Jon Wertheim and Craig Tiley point out -- you have a U.S. College NCAA championship team at a U.S. university like Baylor where virtually the ENTIRE TEAM was composed of foreign athletes. Not one or two players or even half the team, we are talking about the ENTIRE FREAKING TEAM! Also, you have the top two teams playing in the finals of the United States College NCAA’s last year, and TEN out of the TWELVE competitors are foreign players. This is UNITED STATES COLLEGE tennis, not a professional or international competition!
I will also say that your primary mantra that “the more competition the better for everyone” is absurd. First of all, there will be more than enough competition with two scholarships for foreign players per team and many more additional scholarships for U.S. players. Second, you make it sound as if the vast majority of Division 1 college players expect to have a pro career which implies that they always need to compete with the best tennis players in world as part of their college experience. The ones that feel that way can always get any increased competition from the futures and satellite tournaments; this doesn’t NEED to be part of college athletics all the time. Moreover, everyone knows that at least 90% of even Division 1 players realize that they will not make a professional career out of their tennis games, so they have no critical need to compete with the best players in the world all the time. So, why not give those players a decent chance to earn a scholarship which was tough enough before today where now at least 20 of the top 30 players come from different countries? And, please don’t give us that crap that the USTA/ITA Q&A tries to lay on us that there are lots of opportunities to play college tennis in Div. II and Div. III schools when we all know that schools in those divisions cannot offer scholarships.
One final point. You have probably noticed that probably every parent who has kids that are trying to play Division 1 tennis and/or get a college scholarship are for SOME limits on the foreign DOMINANCE of these opportunities that persists today. Without knowing anything about you personally, I am willing to bet that you don’t have a son who is presently competing for these opportunities. I’m also willing to bet that if you had a son in a similar position, your opinion on this subject would change. [I say “son” because everyone knows that partly due to the combination of Title IX and the dominance of male college football programs, the scholarship opportunities for girls seeking tennis scholarships are far greater than those for the boys.] It must be nice to be a pure “tennis fan” who can just sit back and enjoy the show as these boys try to battle it out (and usually lose out) against the best international players in the world to play varsity tennis and/or gain a scholarship at a U.S. college. Such a goal would still be a very challenging -- yet not impossible -- task without this dominance of international players. For parents like us and our kids, we don’t have that luxury of being purely a spectator and what we can plainly see is the unfairness. While I know that your “extreme right wing” Wall Street Journal editorial page does not encourage the concept of empathy, I encourage you to “grow a little” and put yourself in the shoes of our children and try to see things from their perspective.
First off I’d like to say that this was a great post that really got me thinking. Some of my ideas here come directly from Peter Wright’s write up about this foreign players on the ITA website (http://www.itatennis.com/sightlines-wright.pdf). He makes some great points, but stays away from a few issues I feel still need to be addressed, maybe because one relates directly to him.
Lets just get this out of the way, foreign players will exist in college tennis whether you like it or not. Possibly a quota could be put on teams to restrict the number of foreign players, but I find even that highly unlikely. Instead of attempting to put quotas we should look at what we can do to get U.S. juniors more prepared for college tennis. If you read the write-up, Coach Wright makes a great point; top juniors improve by playing against players older and better than them. It happens all over the tennis world, except in the U.S. Here, high ranked national juniors in the 16’s and 18’s cannot practice with players older than them because they are in college. On the link to the USTA “FAQ” the question 12 begins to address this. Obviously the top ITF players and many other high ranked national players find ways around it, by going to an academy and consistently playing with top ranked peers or by traveling the world and playing ITF’s. This still leaves the majority of U.S. juniors, who could I’m sure benefit dramatically by practicing with their local college players. But can’t because the NCAA is too stubborn to allow different sports to have a different rule, even though it makes much more sense.
What I think needs to be changed is age eligibility. I completely agree with Marcia that a MAXIMUM AGE rule should be made. The highest seeds in the NCAA individuals representing the Pac-10 are both 24 years old( Kohloefell and Niland). That is not fair to 19 year old U.S. freshman. Unless your Matt Bruch or Sam Querrey, how do you compete with a player who is five years older than you and has played a year on the ATP tour? Between the experience and the physical disadvantage 19 year old U.S. freshman have no chance, and that needs to be changed.
Hopefully I got my points across with my poor writing. I just realized that I think Kohloefell (#1 seed) is a junior and might still have eligibility next year at the age of 25…that’s not fair.
Collette,
In light of the Miseviciute situation, your post couldn't have been better timed.
Can I suggest that this issue would handled best if all concerned parties (especially the 'powers that be')could answer the fundamental and relatively straight-forward question: 'what is the purpose of college tennis?'.
We cant and shouldnt stop forgeiners from coming over here and playing tennis, but there needs to be an age rule and here's what it should be. Lets say you go to school right after high school and redshirt freshman year, then you play for two years, then you tear your acl and are forced to take a medical redshirt, then you play your final two years of college. That is six years after you graduated high school, which means you are probably 24, so theres the cutoff. Now if you take a year off after high school before enrolling in college and then do the steps that I just discussed then it would be okay to finish your playing career seven years after graduating, but if you take two years off then you should lose a year of eligibility. If you take three or four years off you lose two years. each of those steps should ensure that the player is done with college tennis by the age of 24. the one exception is taking a year off, then redshirting, then somewhere along the way having a medical redshirt.
Something no one has mentioned yet though is the fact there are only 4.5 schlorships...but wait...there are six starting positions, hmmmmm. When you cant even give your starting lineup full rides its tough. If everyone in the starting lineup had equal schlorship money they would each have a 75% full ride and no one on the bench would get a dime. That's a sleeping giant no one talks about. Remembers, these forgein players are almost always great students, which means they are able to get academic schlorships as well to compensate for the lack of athletic funds. Thats all for now.
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