What Price Marcellus Wiley?

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells | Wednesday, May 7, 1997

When I toured Columbia during my senior year in high school, the tour guide made a special point of stressing how difficult it is to transfer credits to Columbia.

'If you come to Columbia from any other college, you're probably going to have to start over as a freshman,' she said. 'We had a junior from Harvard who transferred exactly one credit, and a friend of mine who had finished two years at Brown came here and had to start over.'

Strange then, that Columbia accepted a year's worth of credit from West Los Angeles Community College for a student who had already been kicked out of Columbia for academic failure.

This past Saturday, Marcellus Wiley, a defensive end from Columbia and the most talented player to come out of the Ivy League in recent years, was drafted in the second round by the Buffalo Bills with the 46th overall pick. The story of Wiley deserves consideration because it indicates that Ivy League institutions may well be willing to subvert existing academic standards in favor of advanced athletic accomplishment.

In 1990, with Columbia's football program showing no signs of emergence from the deep competitive slumber in which it had spent the last century, the powers that be in Morningside Heights decided that a change was needed. They turned the program over to Ray Tellier, an energetic young coach who promised to take the program to unprecedented success.

Tellier subsequently set about recruiting nearly exclusively from the West Coast, especially from Southern California. He succeeded in bringing to Morningside Heights better athletes than had ever appeared for Columbia before. By 1996, the effects were starting to show. Last year, Columbia was the second best team in the Ivy League and, with a series of excellent recruiting classes, has established itself as an Ivy League power. More importantly, attendance at Columbia's games has risen sharply in the last few years and alumni and student
involvement has also soared.

Tellier's star was Wiley, a 270-pound defensive end fast enough to have been recruited as a running back by national power UCLA. After spending his freshman and sophomore seasons as a 220-pound running back, Wiley bulked up, was moved to defensive end by Tellier, and became the most dominant player in the Ivy League.

Unfortunately, Wiley's grades failed to keep pace with his athletic success, and, following his breakthrough junior year, Wiley was kicked out of Columbia for academic failure. That alone happens extremely rarely at that bastion of institutionalized liberal tolerance. To return, he was told, he would have to spend a year at an institution of comparable academic quality and maintain a B+ average.

Wiley chose West Los Angeles Community College.

Wiley's academic downfall had serious potential consequences for Columbia's football program. He was not only the star but also the leader of a program still fragile because of its youth. The full effect of Tellier's recruiting had not yet been felt; Wiley was needed to carry the program through this critical stage.

The alumni groups and athletic department were not about to let the program of which they had become increasingly fond fall back into the perpetual mediocrity from which it had just recently emerged. The administration understood the pressure, and Wiley was readmitted, with a year's worth of credit from West Los Angeles Community College.

During his senior season, Wiley was again the most dominant player in the Ivy League, and he led his Lions to unprecedented (at least in living memory) success; they were the sole real challenger to Dartmouth for the title the whole season. The development of Columbia's football program was allowed to continue, as the alumni groups and athletic department wished, uninterrupted.

The importance of this story is not a condemnation of Marcellus Wiley. His supporters claim that he is an extraordinarily intelligent and motivated young man who merely fell victim to overconfidence. This may very well be the case. Certainly Wiley deserves credit for choosing to attend Columbia in the first place, instead of accepting an athletic scholarship at an academically lesser school.

The importance of this story is, instead, that it provides us a glimpse of institutional practices that are changing, perhaps not for the better. The fact that pressure was applied from alumni and the athletic department to accept credits from West Los Angeles Community College is appalling in itself. The fact that Columbia, which prides itself on being a school nearly impossible to transfer credits to, bowed to such pressure suggests something far more significant. It suggests that the institutional apparati for waiving academic standards in order to achieve further athletic success may already be in place.

This year, the Ivy League produced three early-round draft prospects. In addition to Wiley, Cornell running back Chad Leavitt was drafted in the fourth round by the Oakland Raiders and Dartmouth offensive tackle Brian Larson, considered at season's end a comparable professional prospect to Wiley, passed up the NFL to attend medical school.

There exists the disturbing possibility that coaches will be troubled by the talent around them and, accompanied by pressure of the sort that prompted Wiley's readmittance, will convince admissions departments to significantly lower admissions standards in order to admit more talented football players. The emphasis in 'Ivy League athletics' has always been on the 'Ivy League,' and all the academic rigor that implies, and never on the 'athletics.' The Marcellus Wiley story indicates that that traditional formula may soon be subverted.

Marcellus Wiley was reborn in West LA. The hope is that Ivy League athletics will not, likewise, find its resurrection in lowered academic standards.

What Price Marcellus Wiley?

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