The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/athletics/)
Two basketball players from Brown University filed a class action lawsuit against the Ivy League on March 7, arguing that Cornell University and other Ivy League institutions violate antitrust laws in their refusal to offer athletic scholarships.
It all started with a pair of ill-fitting, droopy sweatpants. Saggy in the wrong places, tight in even worse places — they were unwearable. I gave them to a male friend. They fit him perfectly. My teammates and fellow athletes on other women’s varsity teams encountered similar grievances with these sweatpants, because they were not made for women. They were men’s pants. They simply wouldn’t stay on, and even if they did, they looked awful.
These notorious sweatpants were mass-issued by Cornell Athletics to their athletes earlier this school year. For background, the Cornell Athletics Department issues a multitude of assorted clothing items to their athletes prior to and throughout their seasons.
Collapsing pools. Broken and molding locker rooms. A legacy team being pushed from central campus.
These are just some of the milder complaints raised by Cornell student athletes when asked about their facilities. To many people in athletics, it’s become sort of a sick joke — Cornell continually underfunds its athletic facilities.
As Cornell announces new ambitious academic buildings, like the multimillion dollar Bowers CIS building, years of pent up frustration builds. Decades of inadequate maintenance and investment has put Cornell years behind its competitors — especially its Ivy League peers.
The joke has been going on for long enough. It’s time that Cornell invests more seriously in its athletics program.
The Cornell Women’s Wrestling team was established this year to broaden athletic opportunities for female athletes at Cornell.
How many Cornell students played or captained a varsity sport in high school? I could not find any specific data points online but speaking with other students, you almost certainly can find a higher percentage of students that played varsity athletics in high school than the current 8 percent of Cornellians that still do. So what changed from high school to college that resulted in less students playing varsity sports?
There comes a time in almost every high school-to college-aged kid’s life where they stop playing organized sports.
For some, it’s a moment of relief. You never really wanted to play soccer anyway, you only really did it because you weren’t half-bad and you knew your teammates and parents would be a little disappointed if you quit. Besides, it looked good on the college app. Maybe you were done after freshman year of high school because you worked up the courage to say no, this isn’t for me. Or maybe you enjoyed your time playing your sport, but you were just ready. It’d been a long season, and it was bittersweet to be done, but it was right.
Nicki Moore named Cornell’s first woman Director of Athletics, who previously served as the vice president and director of athletics at Colgate University.
The general Cornell attitude is that student-athletes should be treated just as any student would be. On the surface, this statement makes sense, yet our peers are often the least supportive of any additional needs that student-athletes have. I’ve been told by several naive peers that student-athletes think they’re better than the rest of the student body; this idea is a pervasive one that exists across campus. In my experience, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
It’s time to make a change in the Cornell University Football Team’s leadership. David Archer has had more time than any football coach in the long 100+ year history of Cornell University football to produce, at the very least, a winning record with the team. He has failed to accomplish this in 8 seasons, despite leading the program for a total of 9 years. Instead he has only a meager 21 wins over 8 playing seasons, averaging less than 3 wins a year! A near decade of losing has to end, and Archer must be held accountable for his record, just as any other coach would in another sport. Cornell has attained great success in other sports like hockey and lacrosse. There’s no reason not to demand that same level of success in football.
I am astounded by the kid-gloves coverage by the Sun of the Cornell football program. In Cornell’s nearly 70 years in the Ivy League, the University has somehow managed to share the title a total of only 3 times, and has never outright won the league.
Head Coach David Archer’s record is 21-59. Cornell should not countenance that kind of failure in anything it does, especially in football where it invests considerable resources, including many precious admissions spots. We have recruited the last six University Presidents from Big-10 and Pac-12 schools, where records of 59-21 get coaches fired, yet they come here and support a non-competitive football program.
Week after week, year after year, decade after decade Cornell football is an embarrassment. There is no accountability in the athletic department at any level. The Sun’s coverage perpetuates this by failing to ask Coach Archer hard questions about the repeated failures of his teams, to question whether he should continue to retain his job and to ask the same of the athletic director. Andrew Wong ’89