Brains and Brawn
Could it be Harvard vs. Yale in the bowl championship? Maybe, if tuition were free.

"Ivy League a Rising Force in Football."

No, that's not a prophetic headline from 1875 but a distinct possibility if America's elite colleges increase financial aid. Recent Senate hearings explored whether colleges should be required to spend a percentage of their endowments each year, just as foundations do. Harvard's $35 billion endowment and Yale's $23 billion pile mean that tiny fractions of the annual investment returns could cover all tuition expenses.

With a little imagination and a lot of government pressure, one can glimpse a future in which attendance is free for all accepted applicants. This democratization of education would impose upon American society truly profound changes, none of which will be explored in this column.

Instead, as Missouri and West Virginia play in separate games tomorrow for their chance to meet in college football's championship, readers who went to small private colleges may want to ask: Why should state-school alums have all the fun?

A shift in education financing could bring private schools closer to contention. Today, under NCAA rules, a "bowl subdivision" team like Missouri is allowed to provide athletic scholarships--including tuition, room, board and all necessary expenses--to 85 players. The Ivy League, on the other hand, has long abstained from offering athletic scholarships. If football recruits are accepted, they are treated just like the other students. If their total family income is below $50,000, they will likely be able to attend for free or close to it, but if mom and dad make anything more than that, the kids try to assemble a package of grants, loans, a campus job and help from parents to cover the bill. A free education would open up the entire middle class to football recruiters from private colleges.

Before we get to the caveats, let's consider what it would mean if schools with a lot of money could essentially offer an unlimited number of athletic scholarships. Harvard, known as the "Team of the '90s" for its inspiring play during the decade prior to 1900, has a chance to recapture gridiron glory. If money is no longer an object, is there a better brand for recruiting? Yale, whose player and then coach Walter Camp basically created the modern game beginning in the 1880s, used football to build the school's national reputation and can do so again.

In fact, the academically inclined have recently made impressive gains on the playing field. The Ivy League boasts 15 players in the NFL this year, versus just six a decade ago. Brown University athletic director Michael Goldberger credits "uniformly stronger coaching," expanded spring practice and players who commit exclusively to football. "There are far fewer two-sport athletes," he says. Ivy League spokesman Brett Hoover says that renovated stadiums have raised the profile of programs, while Yale spokesman Steve Conn notes the "air show" of the past decade, as teams such as Yale make more use of the forward pass a century after Mr. Camp secured its place in the rulebook.

Does better football always require lower academic performance? Interestingly, the Ivies' recent renaissance on the field has come during a period of increasing standards in the classroom and fewer football recruits allowed across the league. Says Yale coach Jack Siedlecki: "No one in the league can recruit a kid below 171 on the academic index," which translates to about 1100 on the SAT and a 3.0 average in high school. Each school can accept only about two players each year who score 1200 or below on the SAT, and Mr. Siedlecki says his freshman players last year averaged more than 1300, significantly above the level when he came to Yale 10 years ago. His team won the league title in 2006 and recently lost its bid for an undefeated season and another title when it fell to Harvard.

How would it affect recruiting if Yale could offer all qualified applicants a free education? Based on current financial-aid programs, most Ivy coaches can compete for the rich and the poor, but they have trouble persuading middle-class families to spend their nest eggs and take on heavy debt to cover tuition. One result for Ivy coaches, says Mr. Siedlecki, is that "we've all had tremendous problems attracting minority students. We don't give merit grants in the Ivy League." Mr. Siedlecki says he could attract a huge percentage of academically qualified recruits (including many middle-class minority students) if the school went free. Would this new weapon in his recruiting arsenal allow him to take on the Oklahomas of the football world? Given the academic standards, Mr. Siedlecki says "no way," although he hears from alums who want the school to go free and compete for the best in every arena, academic and athletic.

In fact, he may have trouble just competing with other private colleges. Princeton recently announced that it is eliminating loans as a component of financial aid. Amherst, Williams and Davidson have made similar announcements. Of course, that doesn't mean the schools are free, only that people once eligible for loans as part of their financing will now receive grants. The first school to go absolutely free for accepted applicants might find that it can scoop up every high-school senior with a 350-pound bench press and an A in physics. The NFL has managed to find starting safeties and offensive linemen who are, on average, significantly more intelligent than the average American, according to the Wonderlic Personnel Test. Why can't more of them attend selective colleges?

It's a question that Ivy couch potatoes might ask themselves this weekend while they're watching other schools have all the fun.