NCAA athletic scholarships going to foreign nationals

RaceBannon said:

Sounds like international rowers are winning the titles American won't

UW_Doog_Bot said:

YellowSnow said:

So I've had pretty up close and personal experience with this subject over the years ( @whlinder too). My row boat era at UW in the 90's was really the last time the team was made up almost entirely of Americans, plus a few Cannucks on the side. In the late 90's Steve @Gladstone was on his second stint at Cal and started recruiting foreign national elite rowers and offering full rides (paid for from private endowments). They proceeded to win 4 NTs in a row from 99- 02 and left UW in the dust.

The only way for the other big time rowing schools like Harvard and UW to keep pace was to start recruiting internationally as well. So if you look at when we won 5 NT's in a row from 2011 - 15, the Varsity 8 was typically 50 to 60% foreign rowers. This is all fine and well in the short term, but the concern has been is where are those foreign guys going to be in 20, 30 or 40 years tim? You see, rowing at UDub has always relied heavily on alumni donations over the years to fund a fair amount of the program's budget. They have about a $14 million dollar endowment right now which pays for the Men's full ride schollies amongst other things like trip to Henley. So, it's incumbent to the program's long term success that you hopefully have a lot of alumni who end up living in Washington and becoming rich, successful businessmen who will write fat checks some day.

The tide has turned somewhat of late and our boat 2nd place loser boat last year had 6 of 8 rowers being from the US. Yale where @Gladstone corches now by the way is the 2 time defending champs and there boats the past few years are about 80% foreigners.

See this is I guess what I don't understand about people immediately shouting shit like, "We want to win" "But we have great international players" etc.

There's no competitive advantage if literally everyone in the NCAA is doing it or disadvantage if not doing it. I guess you can pose that private schools will dominate non-revenue sports if we? didn't recruit internationally but do we? care if USC, Yale, and Notre Dame dominate women's golf & tennis? (I'm sure you care about rowing. I care about rugby which is very international recruit heavy but light on schollies. The Mrs. went to a very famous private track and field college on schollie but all her team mates were Jamaican.)

I guess I don't understand why this was such a WTF party simply for wondering if tax payer money should be paying for other countries citizens' educational costs.(Triggered too many people from other nationalist arguments I guess) In my mind I would rather be sponsoring academis scholarships for bright minds and giving them a fast track to citizenship if you want to fund "internationalism" as it's own goal. One of our roomates in college was from Libya and was a brilliant graduate student in Biomed. For obvious reasons he wanted to stay in the US after graduating but wasn't allowed to. He also actually paid for his own education out of pocket.

It's a fair argument to make that the overall numbers are insignificant but it seems like in specific sports they aren't which is what the article explores. I can tell you from personal experience there are lots of Chinese families that are looking at what sports can get their kids a discount education and a fast track student visa and are planning accordingly. Mind you, if no public monies are involved IDGAF. Private funds, sports that fund themselves, or private institutions can do whatever the fuck they want.

Fuck, I'm also perfectly happy to talk about a fast track immigration status for anyone who comes to the US and finishes college etc. I just don't see what the return is if you are packing them up at the end of their career and sending them back home.