I still don't have my copy of Tennis Magazine containing Jon Wertheim's column "Taken for a (free) ride" but he was kind enough to send me an unedited version so I could continue this discussion knowing what he had written.
Usually I agree with Jon, but I think he’s mostly wrong on this topic. He demands outrage, but any I feel is reserved for the NCAA’s lackadaisical enforcement of their rules for amateur status when it concerns foreign players. There is absolutely no justification or excuse to give foreign citizens the benefit of the doubt on this. If they are pros, or ever have been, they should not be eligible for athletic scholarships at an NCAA Division 1 university. That needs to change---now. But beyond that, he loses me.
As I’ve written in response to the many comments I’ve received on this issue before, I don’t support quotas. I don’t care if other countries have them. I consider myself a free-trade sort, brainwashed no doubt from reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page daily in my previous career, but I believe erecting barriers to competition stifles excellence. Sports is a meritocracy. If Division I college tennis limits the opportunities for foreign amateurs to a certain scholarship number or dollar amount, it is the quality of tennis that will suffer.
Brian Boland, the men’s head tennis coach at the University of Virginia, has not gone the foreign recruiting route. He was asked about this issue recently on the blog No Man's Land.
I will start by saying I have no problem with foreign players as long as they are eligible. I think they are part of our sport as tennis is an international game. One of the reasons the top Americans even look at going to school is because the competition is so good. If it were not for the foreign players we would not have the depth we do in the college game.Wertheim wonders why the USTA and ITA have been strangely mum on this issue. Well, they haven’t. They have published a thorough Q & A that I’ve linked to in the past. (This link is to a pdf file that is required reading for anyone with an opinion on this issue.) But those organizations don’t want to see college tennis slip into irrelevancy, which it was dangerously close to doing before the influx of overseas talent helped revive it.
Nor do I agree that American universities supported by taxpayers have any special obligation to avoid foreign athletes. Should the University of North Carolina reserve a starting position on the basketball team for the best Tar Heel state product? Should the University of Oklahoma be compelled to have a player from that state in every football position’s depth chart? Or are they free to recruit the best players from Michigan, Ohio and Florida for their teams? Even though they didn’t pay any taxes to help support UNC or OU?
And when he brings up the European Basketball leagues and their quotas, it leads to comparisons that Wertheim might be better off avoiding. Which title conveys more prestige, theirs or the NBA’s? It’s the NBA’s precisely because they DON’T limit who can play on their teams based on nationality. If you can play the game, the NBA wants you. They don’t care if you’re from Argentina, Germany, China or Canada.
I was called a “Pollyanna” by a commenter when I addressed a variation of this issue last year. Guilty as charged. And in character, I’ll end this post with an excerpt from a comment by pg over at Peter Bodo's TennisWorld. I have shamefully taken these two paragraphs out of context and I hope you’ll read the entire comment for more of his insights.
I played college tennis for my hometown university in florida. We were and still are very competitive. Our top 5 were consistently international students and they all had some sort of pro experience. This was before tighter rules on prize money etc. came in. I was 18 coming out of juniors and these guys had so much more tennis experience than me and easily beat me on court. Obviously, it was a bit unfair.
That said, the years I played were great years of my life. In terms of tennis my play improved dramatically and I made radical changes because I was playing these top flight players everyday. In terms of life, I made some really good friends from all around the world. They were a cool bunch of guys. All of whom made great student athletes.
Again, I urge you to use a nickname or initials when you comment so that there is some frame of reference for the rest of us.