Interesting Article the Other Day

about a quarterback competition at an FCS school. 


Three competitors -- one, a freshman, one a transfer from an ACC school and the other a transfer from a Big 12 school. 


The school?


The University of Pennsylvania.


No, I am not bashing the Ivies and Penn in particular in this post (there are many other reasons to take pokes at the Ancient Eight and Penn both seriously and for fun).  What I am pointing out that is if the Ivies use their transfer allotments selectively (that is, most transfers are not transferring because they play sports and are wanted), they can help their cause tremendously.


Enter the Princeton Tigers, who have, in the aggregate, the best overall athletic program in the Ivies (and, if not, one of the top two or three).  The wags will say, well, if you lower your standards and take good kids who, absent the sport, wouldn't have had a chance to get into the school, this is what can happen.  Let's put that argument aside, because I do not believe we ever will achieve full transparency on the delta between the non-athletes' admission profiles and the athletes' admission profiles.  (Again, this is not meant to be a swipe, just a discussion).  Think about this, though -- Princeton has done this without any athletic transfers in the past 25 years (and, no, the circumstances behind the football playing Garrett brothers don't count because they were unique and also more than 25 years ago). 


None. 


I once discussed the topic with a Princeton assistant football coach who lamented that the Tigers did not take transfers (one of the reasons is that the size of the school was the smallest or second smallest in the Ivies, and it's hard to take transfers if a) kids don't drop out or fail out and b) if they don't go abroad to study -- there just isn't surplus room).  I offered that it would be nice if the football team could get four a year, because that could really help.  His answer surprised me.  He said, "we don't need for a year.  Heck, we could use one every three years if it's the right one."  And then he told me the story about how the team was short at a critical position because one player left school and another broke his leg and how if they were allowed to take this one kid from one of the service academies or a place like Northwestern, I think it was, that the results for the team could have been a lot different.  Just one player, too.


Princeton will start taking transfers in the next year or so.  Will they take QBs from BCS schools?  They apparently don't need to, because they just landed a QB recruit who turned down offers from many BCS schools because of the high quality of the education he can receive in Tigertown.  Will they augment a key position if they can?  Absolutely.


But so will the Physics Department, Jazz Ensemble, etc.


And so it goes.