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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When I was in college, I was part of the athlete crowd, so I had a pretty good sense of who could do what (even though I'm admittedly only a pretty middling athlete myself).  My experience was that the men's sports with the best overall athletes were basketball, crew, football (including not only the glory positions but also the line and the special teams units), soccer, and swimming.  The men who made those teams were uniformly excellent athletes.  The lacrosse, baseball, and hockey players (along with other sports like rugby) were mostly filled with middling athletes like me.  Each of those non-core sports would have a handful of excellent athletes, on par with the other core sports, but those top athletes really stood out as exceptions on the non-core team.

I think a lot of this had to do with the fact that making these teams as a recruited athlete (or even as a walk-on) meant fighting thru lots of competition, so the ones who made the teams were uniformly good athletes.  My theory is that the core sports (crew, football, basketball, soccer, swimming) have tons of competition, so only the very best athletes made those teams.  For non-core sports, like lacrosse or hockey, there was less competition, so many of the ones who made the teams were good-not-great athletes.

Admittedly, my college had particularly strong crew, basketball, and swimming programs, so that probably skewed my perception.  For example, at another college with a weak crew program, the crew team might be only middling athletes.  However, my college did have strong lacrosse and hockey programs (not Duke/Princeton level, but still top 20), so I was a little surprised to discover most of the lacrosse players were not any better athletes than I am.

I'm definitely not suggesting lacrosse players are poor athletes.  (I sure don't want DCUM's "lacrosse mafia" flaming me!)  To be clear, for all these sports, the men who made the teams were all good athletes.  But I did sense a distinct difference between the core and non-core sports.  In short, even as a middling athlete, I could hang with just about anyone on the non-core teams when we played pickup games.  But when players from the core sports joined our game (or the top athletes from the non-core sports), I'd get smoked unless it was a sport I was strong at.

Just my 2 cents.[/quote]

Tons of competition for crew?[/quote]

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