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An Ugly Game, John R. Kilbourne

John R. Kilbourne

As a college professor and parent of a college athlete, I have been reading with great interest reports that small colleges have been seeking to increase their enrollments by promoting their sports programs. An article in The Chronicle last fall, for example, described how the president of Adrian College, in Michigan, devised a plan to raise enrollment by expanding the institution's intercollegiate-athletics program and assigning recruiting quotas to its coaches. Adrian's recruiting plan requires its 16 head coaches to sign up almost 200 athletes per year. Coaches who fail to meet their assigned quotas risk losing their jobs. The total …