The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY)
October 21, 2003 Tuesday
SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. D1

COLGATE GETS COMPETITIVE UPGRADE;
STARTING NEXT FALL, THE PATRIOT LEAGUE SCHOOL WILL AWARD SOME ATHLETIC SCHOLARSHIPS.

By Matt Michael Staff writer

In the late 1980s, the Patriot League was formed on the Ivy League concept that all scholarships for athletes should be based on academics and financial need, not athletic ability.

But it didn't take long for that concept to go out the window, leaving Colgate University administrators with a difficult choice: Award athletic scholarships like most of the other Patriot League schools, or stay the course and keep the Colgate teams at a competitive disadvantage.

After 13 months of soul-searching, hand-wringing and numbers-crunching, the administrators decided to level the playing field. Colgate University, a founding member of the Patriot League, announced Monday that it's going to start awarding athletic scholarships in selected sports starting with the class that will enter school next fall. 'The (Patriot) league moved beyond us,' said former Raiders athletic director Mark Murphy, who left Colgate this past summer to become the athletic director at Northwestern. 'We believed in the original principles of the league, but nobody else did.'

Colgate, an original member of the Patriot League, will award a total of 31 scholarships per year in the following sports: men's and women's basketball, ice hockey, lacrosse, soccer, and swimming and diving, and women's field hockey"  @ 10:28 AM