The Other Student-Athletes

The field lies empty as the sun rises on a Spring morning. As 1 p.m. approaches, droves of people appear in the distance. Soon, the once quiet field is alive with the sounds of softball, as teams begin to warm up for the upcoming games. With the blast of a horn, play begins. It is Sunday afternoon, and the intramural softball season is underway.

Cornell's intramural sports program, which has been around since the early 1900s, offers students the chance to compete against each other in some of their favorite sports throughout the school year. Intramural sports not only provide great exercise, but they can also help students blow off steam after a bad prelim grade. According to a study conducted by Professor David Kanters of North Carolina State University, participating in campus recreational sports can help college students lower stress-related anxiety.

Intramural records indicate that the All-Around Intramural Championship Trophy was first awarded during the 1927-28 academic year to Delta Chi, but recreational sports have had a presence on the Cornell campus since as early as 1904. Cornell's third president, Jacob G. Schurman, wanted to give non-varsity athletes the chance to participate in a variety of sports under the direction of the varsity coaches.

Nicholas Bawlf, who coached the men's ice hockey team from 1920-1947, was the first known director of intramurals, holding that position from 1937-1947. Before the advent of a full-time director, students were the ones responsible for organizing the intramural competition, and still play an important administrative role in the current program.

After being male-only for its first 70-odd years of existence, the intramural program at Cornell began offering competition for women during the 1974-75 academic year. Sigma Delta Tau and Alpha Phi were the first sororities at Cornell to organize teams in the women's division.

When the program changed its rules to allow men to compete on a single-sex team and a co-ed team, the number of co-ed teams competing increased dramatically. Rules were modified to encourage the utilization of women during the co-ed games. In co-ed basketball, a normal two-point shot is worth three points if a woman makes it, and a normal three-point shot is worth four points.

Dave Pearson is entering his second year as the Robert D. Kennedy '54 Director of Intramurals at Cornell, estimates a student participation level of 6,500 to 6,800 during the 2003-04 school year. Pearson, whose position is the only endowed one of its kind in the country, came to Cornell after working at Washington State and the University of Nebraska, where students take intramural sports very seriously.

"There was one particular individual at Nebraska who was on his ninth or 10th year as an undergrad. He had a degree, but he would sign up for one credit a semester so he could continue to play intramurals," Pearson said.

Pearson and new assistant director Betsy Johnson oversee the program, which offers over 30 different sports and events. Students are also involved in the day-to-day functions, as supervisors and referees. Seven senior supervisors and 13 student supervisors are responsible for overseeing the 150 officials during the games and solving any problems that may arise.

"We always tell the students that work for us that it's their program and we're just there to facilitate it," said Andrea Dutcher, who served as the director of intramruals from 1988-1996.

Jill Mikolayczyk '05 has been working in the intramural program since her freshmen year. After serving as a referee and scorekeeper in volleyball, basketball and floor hockey, she became a student supervisor her sophomore year and is currently a senior supervisor.

"Trying to keep everything on schedule and running smoothly and having enough officials on each field, that's probably one of the hardest things that I have to do," she said. "You have to take into consideration the ability of your referee and the level of the game they're going to be refereeing. You don't want to put a referee who's only had two games under his or her belt in a very intense fraternity game."

Running an intramural program the size of Cornell's takes a large organizational effort. While a software program takes care of scheduling games for the different sports, assigning referees to individual games is trickier, as there are not always a sufficient number of referees available. Being an official can be stressful at times, as some Cornell students are very competitive during intramural sports.

"They want intramurals to be, I think, as competitive as some varsity sports," Mikolayczyk said. "They see all these great referees on television and expect students that are just like them to be top-notch. Our officials are very good. A lot of them come in with no sports knowledge whatsoever, and I think that by the end of the year, their improvement is amazing."

One of the factors that must be considered when running an intramural program is risk management. The staff must ensure that the participating students are safe during the games. For sports like ice hockey, this means strict equipment requirements for all players and the use of non-contact rules. Riskier sports that were once offered by the intramural program at Cornell, such as fencing and box lacrosse, have been discontinued.

At the University of Notre Dame, the only school in the country to offer tackle football (most schools offer flag football as an intramural sport), extra safety considerations are extremely important. Equipment must be in excellent shape, interested players must sign a waiver form, and there are EMTs at every game. Despite the hazard involved, tackle football has a high participation level.

"This program is by far our most popular men's intramural sport," said Rich O'Leary, the director of intramurals at Notre Dame. "We do not have fraternities or sororities, so the dorm competition is quite intense. Dorms hold barbecues before or after the games, and some halls provide half-time entertainment. The championship game is played in Notre Dame Stadium."

Intramural athletes at Cornell also compete in the varsity facilities. The entire intramural ice hockey season is played in Lynah Rink, and the championships for flag football and basketball are played in Schoellkopf Field and Newman Arena, respectively. Basketball was an extremely popular sport last year, as a maximum of 160 teams registered to play across all divisions.

"I talk to the old intramural director about once a month, and when I called him and told him how many basketball teams we had, he just said, 'Holy cow!'" Pearson said. "He moved on to the University of Maryland, which is a basketball school, and we had more intramural teams than they did."

While intramurals provide great athletic competition for non-varsity athletes, every student hopes to one day win an intramural championship and the trophy that comes with it -- a T-shirt. Dutcher recalls one student who, having never won an intramural championship T-shirt as a student, purchased two intramural championship T-shirts at the Quill and Dagger Charity auction for $48. For those students at Cornell who have yet to win, another opportunity is just around the corner, whether it be in softball, indoor soccer, or dodgeball.

Never-before Published Column

Note: I wrote this column about the NFL Draft and then scrapped it in favor of an article I had written in my Writing for Magazines class about Cornell intramurals.

With the NFL Draft this weekend, we’ll be finally rid of those annoying Tom Brady commercials on ESPN. You know the one, “Tom Brady—didn’t even make the All Big 10 First Team, picked 199^th in the 2000 draft, made the team in camp, won three Super Bowls in four years, hosted an awful episode of SNL last weekend, despised by everyone outside of New England. The draft matters! You’d better watch all 2258 hours of coverage on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNEWS, ESPNU, and check out past year’s drafts on ESPN Classic!”

Thanks for pointing out the obvious, ESPN; that commercial definitely persuaded me to watch all seven rounds of the draft. That way, when the Jets’ sixth-round pick develops into an amazing player in four years, I’ll be able to say, “Hey, I knew taking C.J. Leak was a great move.” I’m surprised that ESPN hasn’t hired a psychic as one of their draft day commentators, so we would immediately be able to find out if Maurice Clarett will be the second coming of Ricky Williams.

The NFL Draft has the distinction of being the second-best draft to watch on television, but this is not that high an honor. First, you’ve got the NBA Draft, which generates so much buzz that we all tune in to watch the draft order a month ahead of time. Plus, it’s much, much shorter. With only two rounds and five minutes to make a pick, the NBA Draft is a sprint compared to the NFL marathon.

The NHL Draft is third on the list. This one is really exciting. Combine foreign players that you’ve never heard of and never seen play with Canadian junior hockey players that you’ve also never heard of and never seen play, and you’ve got all the makings of a ratings hit. (Oh wait, this year’s draft was cancelled a few weeks ago. Never mind). Finally, you’ve got baseball’s draft, which is conducted by general managers over a speakerphone. Plus, it’s a whopping 50 rounds. Yikes.

That brings us back to the NFL. Seven rounds, 15 minutes for each pick, 12 different teams of analysts, and … Mel Kiper, Jr. Yes, it’s going to be an exciting weekend. In the past two years, viewers have been treated to several interesting storylines. Two years ago, the Minnesota Vikings forever cemented themselves in draft day lore when they failed to make their selection in the allotted time. This led to a mad scramble as Carolina and Jacksonville submitted their draft selections in mere seconds, kicking Minnesota down to the ninth pick. Thankfully, this also gave everyone 30 minutes of their life back.

Last year’s draft featured Clarett’s failed legal battle and Eli Manning complaining about going to San Diego. However, with the dust settling on the 2004 NFL season, we can all see that the Chargers’ pick of kicker Nate Kaeding in the third round had much more of an impact on their season than Philip Rivers. What do we have to look forward to this weekend? Umm … the draft’s new location at the Javits Center? When Clarett will be taken? My mouth is watering.

I’m not too concerned what team ends up taking Alex Smith or Aaron Rodgers. In fact, I don’t think I’ll make it to the end of the first round, when the Jets finally get to their first pick. Besides, according to Mel Kiper’s bio, his first-round predictions are sometimes 80 percent accurate. You don’t even need to watch the draft at all with that kind of accuracy. Too bad you’ll have to pay for ESPN Insider to read anything Mel Kiper has written. While we’re on the subject of Mr. Kiper, is there anyone else in the sports world who spends so much time analyzing something that when you think about it is pretty meaningless? I mean, tracking the draft stock of college players is kind of pointless when he could be doing actual analysis during the season. Or, maybe he could be working as an actual scout for an actual NFL team. We don’t have an NBA equivalent of Kiper; maybe because it’s Jay Bilas would rather be doing analysis and color commentary during the college basketball season. Even though he’s not holed up in an office watching games via satellite all season, Bilas still does a great job during the NBA Draft coverage.

So there you have it—the NFL Draft is overrated. There’s no allure to who gets picked first (only two players picked first overall since 1998 are actually bona fide superstars right now) and it’s way too long. Instead of spending four hours inside this Saturday afternoon, I’m going to be at the Cornell-Princeton lacrosse game at Schoellkopf. Maybe you should be too. [I ended sleeping in and not going to the game]

Mets Fans Caught in the Middle of Television Dispute

"I can see Shea Stadium from my roof, but I can't watch a Mets game in my living room? That's just crazy!" opines Andre from Corona, Queens. Yes, it's a difficult time for New York sports fans. Thanks to the squabbling of Time Warner and Cablevision, 2.4 million New Yorkers have been without MSG, Fox Sports Network NY, and Cablevision's other sports networks since March 7. This of course also affects the 350,000 Time Warner subscribers here in upstate New York. While one would normally expect to see the FSN NY and MSG networks on channels 24 and 100, respectively, they have been replaced by College Sports TV and NBA TV while the two parties duke it out.

Up until Monday, many of you were probably unaware of the channel pull, because, let's face it, no one really wants to watch the Knicks right now. However, with the start of the baseball season on Sunday, many of you were anxiously waiting to see the new-look Mets play their season opener on Monday against the Reds. Alas, that never transpired.

You probably first tuned into ESPN and ESPN2, but there were other games on instead. "Oh, it's probably on MSG," you thought. But wait, NBA TV was there in its place.

At this point, you were probably screaming at your television set. You would not be able to see Pedro's and Beltran's first games as members of the Mets. You were going to have to wait to see the highlights on SportsCenter. While you were listened on the radio or constantly updated the score on the Internet, you missed the Mets doing what they do best-losing the game after the bullpen squandered the lead.

Now that we're all familiar with the pain that Mets fans are experiencing, let's get to the actual dispute between Time Warner and Cablevision. According to givebackmsg.com, a website run by Cablevision:

"MSG has attempted to negotiate a fair and reasonable rights deal with Time Warner Cable for MSG Network and FSN New York. Time Warner Cable has declined the offer to keep games on while the dispute is brought to binding arbitration. Instead, Time Warner Cable has pulled the plug on MSG Network and FSN New York. MSG is still prepared to live by the decision of an independent arbitrator and call[s] on Time Warner Cable to give the fans back their games."

Right on, MSG! Fight the good fight! Interested to know more about the "reasonable deal" that MSG had offered, I perused the site for a few minutes, only to find that there was no other information about this deal. Instead, there were only video testimonials from such impassioned Mets fans like Gregg from Queens, who proclaimed that "We deserve to be able to see ... the Mets; The Knicks too. I mean, c'mon."

Gregg has chosen to invoke the classic "I mean, c'mon," argument, which can be very convincing. However, that wasn't enough for me, so I sought out a different source. According to the New York Daily News, Cablevision wants Time Warner subscribers to pay 30% more per month for FSN NY and MSG. Time Warner refused this increase because no one wants to pay more to watch the Knicks' drive for a lottery pick, and Mets games are not worth nearly as much as Yankees games. Cablevision's offer to settle the dispute via binding arbitration was rejected by Time Warner because the company felt that going to arbitration would only lead to higher prices for its cable subscribers.

While each side has been involved in similar disputes in the past (Cablevision with the YES Network in 2002 and Time Warner with Disney in 2000), I can't really in good conscience side with a company that tried to derail New York's Super Bowl and Olympic bids, stop the Jets from getting a West Side stadium, and run the Knicks and the Rangers into the ground.

Let's not forget that this whole dispute was probably caused by Time Warner's investment in the new Mets network, which debuts in 2006. With the Mets off of MSG and FSN NY, Cablevision will only have the pitiful Knicks and Rangers to show on its networks. Who is going to pay 30% more per month to watch those games? Not me.

While the Mets may have self-destructed on Monday, it would be very ironic if the team completed a huge turnaround this season and made the playoffs when a large portion of its fan base only got to see a third of its games. However, don't despair, dear Mets fans. If you send a copy of this column into DirecTV, you'll get free installation and free HBO for six months, as well as all the Mets game you can handle. If you're still angry at Time Warner for taking away your Knicks and Mets games, you can find solace with fellow Knicks fan Harold from Englewood - "I'm a real diehard Knicks fan. Not being able to see any of the new Knicks and things like that, [not] being able to see Sweetney and all that other stuff, it really makes me mad."