Playing the Game to Win: Understanding the Demands of Campus Athletics
October 30, 2008
The following are remarks given by President Sharon Herzberger at the American Council on
Education's fall summit, "Advancing as Leaders: Celebrating Achievements, Addressing
Challenges." The speech was delivered at the Atlanta, Georgia, meeting, in a session to senior
college administrators considering making the move to president.
Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today about this important topic. I will start by telling
you a bit about my journey to this day. Perhaps it will be reassuring to some of you in this room.
I am not an athlete and I have never "played one on TV." The closest I have come to athletic
expertise and prowess is that I walk fast. I loved attending every one of my sons' games;
however, this activity was the extent of my participation as a fan prior to my becoming president
of Whittier College. My husband David and I moved to California after 25 years in Connecticut,
and all that time we had season tickets to his beloved UConn women's and men's basketball
games. I am sure that many of you will be horrified to hear that I saw these events as great
opportunities to grade papers and prepare upcoming tests. Partway through our time there my
husband got smart and started inviting other people to take my place.
I also must confess that I know very little about sports; rules for scoring, sports jargon, and
sometimes even knowing who has the ball continue to elude me.
So if there are others in this audience who are similarly challenged, I am delighted to tell you
that there is hope for you. Knowledge of athletics is not a prerequisite to overseeing an athletic
program as president, nor working with expert staff to build a successful one. But let me tell you
what you do have to know.
Miles Brand, the former president of Indiana University and now president of the NCAA, has
said, "The purpose of higher education is to take teenagers and turn them into people." There are
many adults on college and university campuses that play this kind of transformational role;
some of them are teachers whom we call "coach." Whittier's athletic director Rob Coleman last
year invited one of our most revered alumni, Stan Sanders—a Rhodes Scholar, well-respected
attorney, a person profiled in Tom Brokaw's recent book, Boom! Voices of the Sixties—to speak
to all of the student athletes who earned GPAs of 3.5 or better at a special luncheon in their
honor. He attributed every success he has had as an adult to the fact that his mother made him
read and his father made him an athlete. There is a reason why philosophers and presidents have,
for millennia, promoted the ideals of sound mind, sound body and have encouraged the
teamwork and camaraderie evident in athletics.
On a more practical level, athletics also serves as an important source of revenue, especially on a
small college campus. I am not talking about ticket sales, but enrollment management. When I
arrived at Whittier three years ago, our athletic programs were in the doldrums. We began to
rebuild, and are having astounding success thus far. My first fall I arrived at athletic contests
only to see that I was the only person there, with games cancelled because we did not have
sufficient players yet to start the season. You can imagine my reaction to learning that coaches
stalked the cafeteria, finding students who had played a little during high school or might be
tempted to try out a new sport. We had perhaps 100 recruited athletes (for 21 teams!) out of an
incoming class of 350. This fall, with Rob Coleman on the job only two years, we have 240
recruited athletes in an incoming class of 420. And we are not at our ideal roster sizes yet.
Imagine the support always under-resourced admissions staffs have when each coach is a
collaborator in identifying and cultivating great students to enroll.
Working collaboratively with admissions also can help a college's retention rates. Our coaches
understand our admission standards and the other qualities we seek in scholar athletes, and they
know that each student we recruit must want to be a student at Whittier, not just play on a team.
Perhaps this is why our athletes now have higher retention rates than non-athletes, with football
leading the pack last year.
You must know that a great athletic program helps with advancing the College in other ways.
Alumni care about athletics; they want to see wins and hear good news about the character and
quality of the scholar-athletes we enroll. With the onset of our drive to improve athletics, we are
bringing back many, many disaffected alumni, and gifts small and large are flowing again. With
generous support from alumni, we have not only increased our budgets for certain teams, but we
have renovated our tennis courts and our stadium—a boon to all students, not just those who use
these facilities for interscholastic competition.
The ripple effects across the campus have been exciting to experience. Winning, or at least
putting on a good show, builds spirit. Whittier College is named after the great Quaker poet and
abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier. Although we are proud of this origin, it has meant that we
are also called "the Poets," and we are always on the lists of the top ten worst mascot names in
America. And when your teams are losing more than winning, to be saddled with this moniker is
a sorry thing indeed. But now we say "Poets" with great pride, and we walk around with "Fear
the Poet" T-shirts, sweatshirts, and caps that fly out of the bookstore as soon as they come in.
Where there used to be empty stands, now more than 100 students congregate in the "Poet Pit,"
rooting for their classmates; and we have cheerleaders and a dance team and hope soon to have a
Poet pep band.
These are just some of the reasons to support and understand college athletics. And because I am
speaking to people who are considering the presidency, I should give you three more pieces of
advice.
First, just because you may enter the presidency with an understanding of and love for athletics,
do not assume that others share your opinion. You must find ways to explain athletics' role and
find others to help your effort. Let me suggest some ways of doing this:
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Enlist the help of your admissions staff and athletic director in explaining the significance
of athletic recruitment on enrollment goals. Show breakdowns of ideal and current team
sizes, and the tuition generated versus the budget expended. Calculate the yield in
matriculating students who are athletes versus non-athletes, and show the impact of
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athletics in reducing the gender disparity on your campus. In most cases, I suspect, the
benefits will be evident.
Enlist the help of faculty athletic representatives to track and share statistics on retention
and on how many athletes make the dean’s list, and use them to counter the typical
stereotypes about scholar-athletes.
Ask your advancement staff to report about gifts received from alumni grateful for their
own athletic experiences or from parents wanting to support their children's team.
Educate your campus about all the benefits from having an athletic program. And another way to
educate is through identifying the wonderful stories associated with athletics throughout your
institution's history, and sharing these stories on campus and off.
I love talking about Whittier's storied Southern California past, when we regularly beat USC and
UCLA. While these schools will never allow us the opportunity to try this again, talking about
this history lets alumni and parents know that we are thinking big and aiming high as we rebuild
to those glory days.
I love talking about individual athletes who have accomplished amazing feats, such as those of
Helen Garcia Copeland (Class of 1995), who was just inducted into Whittier College's Athletic
Hall of Fame. Helen started at the back of the pack in her first year's cross country team; but
through determination, hard work, and obviously a bit of natural talent by her senior year
participated in the national championship.
And I especially love to talk about Richard Nixon, who almost never left the bench during his
years as a basketball and football player at Whittier. In fact, there is a wonderful story of his
revered Coach Newman sidling over to the young student and saying something like, "Dick,
what would you have done on that last play?" to which he replied that he would have just pulled
the blanket a little tighter around his shoulders. President Nixon often spoke about the value of
those years on the bench, learning perseverance. But what really inspires me is knowing that
Coach Newman, called "Chief" by his players, also introduced them to Native American culture
and history, and thus initiated a conversation that shaped a President's domestic policy agenda
many years later.
These stories build pride, teach lessons, and inspire. I urge you to find them and use them.
Finally, as president I find it extremely important to others and helpful to myself to just show up
at games. I may not always follow the ball or know the rules of the game, but my presence is
noticed and appreciated. It makes a difference. And, frankly, in the busy life of a college
president, sometimes the only restful moment of the day or night is when you find yourself lost
in the joy of rooting for your students and their coach.
So I urge you to remember, as you assume positions of increasing breadth and responsibility, to
support athletics. By applauding this program and supporting its vital, integral role in producing
whole adults, you are advancing your institution, the impact of which will be felt for generations.