<
lass="page layoutArea column" title="Page 1">

This piece will be addressing the poorly written and ill-worded article with regards to the football team written by Owen Duncan. First, I would like to thank you for acknowledging all of the hard work that goes into preparing for a football season. Lifting 4 times a week and conditioning twice a week (at 7 and 8 am on Wednesdays and Saturdays) during the winter and spring terms (and for almost all of us, the summer before the season) is extremely grueling. Nonetheless, that is not the point of this piece. This piece will address some key misunderstandings in your previously published article.

The riddance of our football team would not benefit anybody. Being able to attend a prestigious private college while enjoying the sport that most of us have played for our entire lifetime is amazing, and sports (in general) is a great outlet for the rigorous workload that we have to manage. You know this, as you are an athlete yourself.

In a recruiting mindset, our coaches are constantly hustling to find prospective “Carleton Football Players”. A teammate of mine outlined the process in very basic terms for me, and I would love to share it with you. About 1,000 emails are sent out by our coaches to players they think would be interested in playing football at Carleton. About 30-40% of these kids reply, since most are looking for an opportunity to play at the Division I or II level. With the remaining 300-400 kids, half of them look up where Carleton is located/political views of the campus and immediately become not interested in Carleton. Down to about 150 kids, another 50% of them will cut Carleton off their list because of size of the fan base/student involvement/football atmosphere (since it’s so limited). 75 players are left, and 40 of them are not academically eligible to get admitted into Carleton (the admissions process here at Carleton is, to put it bluntly, brutal). Now, 35 players are left. They then come to Carleton to visit, and we (the football team) host these prospies. The recruits visit and get to know the campus better, and some of them will feel that the campus is too small and that they would not be able to blend with the current student population. So, we are left with around 20-25 “Carleton Football Players”. Not to mention that during the offseason, our coaches travel the country to visit and look for prospective players.