I enjoyed reading this article in the NY Times today: there is some grumbling at some schools that BYU sports teams have an advantage because so many of the players are older because they went on missions.
There’s an easy solution, of course: more schools need to recruit more Mormon young men and women! And then everybody with lots of Mormon players would have an advantage.
Interesting side note: according to the article, 82 percent of BYU men and 13 percent of BYU women go on missions. As a complete outsider with nothing to do with BYU, I would have expected both numbers to be higher.
I would think results would show that BYU doesn’t really have any kind of successful advantage. How many national championships does BYU basketball have?
My thinking would be that yes it would be a benefit for less “skill” players, say, football linemen, and much less of a benefit for someone like a football QB or basketball point guard. Yes, you do get that maturity, but 2 years with little to no sports is a big hindrance too
Proof is in the pudding. BYU football with lots of RM’s has been great. The model works for football.
BBall at BYU is to be honest not that great. So it seems that the RM model is not working.
I was a little surprised a little by the amount of players on the team that never went, or came home early.
Our youth went out to TCU a month or so ago to watch them play BYU. After the game, several players gave an impromptu fireside-like pep talk to our youth. All of them talked about how important the church was. I don’t like BYU much, but I thought it was really good for several of my YM to hear about how sports isn’t the biggest deal, and that it all starts with the mission, regardless of other talents. Now I find out half the players who spoke didn’t deem it important enough to go or stay out for the full two years. That’s not information I think I’ll share with my YM. (Maybe they had better reasons for coming home or not going than I’m imagining.)
I would say apparently not. Members of the church rank BYU football much higher than the rest of the world. BYU doesn’t scare anyone really. I am sure the disadvantages BYU places itself under far outweigh any advantage they gain.
Those numbers seem low. My only guess is that they’re a percentage of the student body at a given time, which would include premi freshman.
As to the old BYU students have an unfair age advantage claim, people start bringing that up whenever BYU starts winning. Some coaches like to bring it up whenever we win a single game. It is, however, remarkably absent from the conversation any year that the football or basketball teams have losing seasons.
If there is an advantage it is a very weak one. BYU has yet to win a National Championship in men’s basketball or football. Also, BYU players never get drafted high in the NBA or NFL draft.
I agree with Dan that the extra two years is spent with little to no practice of the sport.
I don’t expect this to become an issue until BYU starts winning more games.
25% of BYU men are freshman, thus unlikely to be RM’s. And many sisters graduated before going on missions: Thus, the numbers reported. Little logic, that’s all.
I started at the “Y” in 1969. We were a perennial doormat in football then (as I recall, the defense outscored the offense the first half of the season — I do remember our cheerleaders leading us in “the best offense is a good defense”). Tribal knowledge around the country was that we’d never become a power *because* of missionary service — and this was before SWK’s every-young-man-should-serve-a-mission pronouncement of the mid-70s and while BYU’s coaches discouraged missions, at least among the players they wanted on the field.
#7 RE: BYU has yet to win a National Championship in men’s basketball or football.
Please check 1984 at http://www.nationalchamps.net/NCAA/past_AP_Polls.htm.
#5 RE: “Members of the church rank BYU football much higher than the rest of the world. BYU doesn’t scare anyone really.†True now, but here’s how the rest of the world ranked BYU Football (as revealed in the final AP polls) back in the day’s that we who remember miss so much:
’79, #13
’80, #12
’81, #13
’83, #7
’84, #1 (National Champions)
’85, #16
BYU lost the first game of 1983 36-40 to Baylor, then won the next 25 games in a row, beating UCLA, Missouri, Pitt (ranked #3 pre-season, first game of season, at Pitt), and Michigan along the way. We finished 1984 as #1. Washington beat Oklahoma in a bowl game to finish #2. We beat Washington 31-3 in the third game of the following year.
We also finished ’96 as #5.
Miami, Florida’s ranking in final polls was: #1, 1989; #3, 1990; #1, 1991, #1. What happened in 1990? A 28-21 loss at BYU!
These are the days meant when Bronco speaks of a return to glory.
(I am a proud BYU graduate, but my education did include logic.)
All “national” “championships” in D1A college football are just mythical if they are not settled on the field of play. BYU is just glad they didn’t play Oklahoma or Washington that year. BYU’s “championship” — and every other “championship” before and since not settled by a playoff — are just barroom and blogroom fodder.
What I think is shocking is that only 13% of women serve missions. That doesn’t speak well to how well we are encouraging girls to serve.
I would note that most of BYU’s football and basketball success came from non-missionaries (McMahon, Detmer, Young, Sarkisian, Ainge, etc.). We may have the occasional successful year, but the fond memories of armies of RMs vanquishing the enemy on the field of play never existed and probably won’t.
Geoff, are you related to Howard L. Biddulph?
http://cgi.ebay.com/MORMON-HOWARD-L-BIDDULPH-MORNING-BREAKS_W0QQitemZ260094570676QQcategoryZ378QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
or
www. tiny url dot com/yqzzz7
———-
P.S. Is there a spam filter on here such that it won’t let a commenter supply “tiny url dot com” addresses?
Women are barred from serving their missions until they are 21. The average age of freshmen nationwide is still right at 18. And, even if every woman who attends BYU eventually serves a mission as a young single sister, I would still be surprised to get as many as 25% of current BYU female students (the vast, vast majority of whom are undergrads) who can report that they have already served on missions, given that so many women put their missions off till they’ve graduated (seeing as it’s more annoying to stop for 18 months between your junior and senior years than to just wait 9 months and not interrupt anything.) I don’t even have to bring up the comparatively vast numbers of women who attend BYU and get married before they turn 21, thus for the most part barring them from serving missions until their husbands either take a break or flat out retire from their careers.
Or, what Carlos said. Unless those numbers are meant to reflect all living alumni, any concern is incredibly misdirected. Sheesh.
The football team may have been lousy in 1969–I was a junior at Provo High School that year, and don’t remember clearly–but there had been some great years before that, with Virgil Carter as quarterback and Phil Odle at split end and John and Steve Ogden as fullback and halfback(?). Carter’s time at BYU ended with the 1966 season, but during his two years as a starter the Cougars were 14-6. Their 8-2 record in 1966 was the high point (but only good enough, alas, for a 2nd place finish in the WAC).
So, their perennial doormat status had taken something of a hiatus a few years before manaen arrived, then they went back on the floor until nearly the mid 70’s.
“What I think is shocking is that only 13% of women serve missions. That doesn’t speak well to how well we are encouraging girls to serve.”
Until President Hinckley came out in 1997 about too many sister missionaries, it was almost customary for single sisters at BYU to go right when they turned 21. Fortunately that has changed.
If all 21 year old women who wanted to serve a mission did serve, and they served for 2 years, would the number of sister missionaries exceed the elders ?
If the minimum age for sisters were 19, yes, according to one of my instructors at BYU who had been president of the MTC (George Durrant).
“Until President Hinckley came out in 1997 about too many sister missionaries, it was almost customary for single sisters at BYU to go right when they turned 21. Fortunately that has changed.”
I don’t think President Hinckley changed anything in 1997. As I recall, his message was to reiterate that there was no obligation for sister missionaries to go, but that the church would love to have as many sister missionaries as wanted to come at 21. And I’m not sure why it would be fortunate that we have less committed missionaries in the field. Or what would be fortunate about having a large chunk of our female population have excellent leadership and preaching skills. What am I missing, John?
jimbob: I looked up President Hinckley’s priesthood session gen conf talk in the Nov 1997 Ensign.
He prefaced his remarks by saying that there were too many bishops and stake presidents who believed, or gave the impression, that women who were still single by age 21 were _supposed_ to go on a mission. You’re right that Pres Hinckley didn’t change church policy. What he changed, and the change that John was likely referring to, was the mistaken impression that bishops and stake presidents were giving to young adult women.
If they wouldn’t recruit kids right out of high school, they too would have older players. I guess though they need to be in there with the first offer to get the best players. However, when you look at BYU’s overall winning record, I would say that USC is probably doing better, so why does any one complain.
It wasn’t just counsel, it was culture. That’s what changed.