college athletes and fraternity rush
 

my little brother went scouting out colleges
he's getting a scholarship to play ball
and though i can't name the schools that he's looking at
he really wants to be in a fraternity too

how do fraternities deal with pledges who are involved in sports?
because he's going to obviously have trouble balancing everything in the fall with basketball, academics, etc.

should he join in the fall? what would happen if meetings, socials, etc. clashed with his practice schedules? would a fraternity still be interested in him?
should he wait until spring and rush a fraternity?

The fraternity probably wont have any problem with him playing sports because they want athletes. The coach on the other hand will be a different story. Many coaches prohibit their players from pledging.

Madmax is right on. It totally depends on the sport and the coach.

White Chocolate, what sport and what division is your brother looking to play at?

If its D1 basketball, I can tell you that there are pretty few (proportionate to football or baseball or other sports) fraternity men that are also athletes. Not to say that it doesn't happen, but for instance, Pike has less than 15 D1 basketball players as compared to more than 30 football players.

This may not be the case for fraternities other than Pike, but in terms of NIC fraternities, I would say that its probably true.

I'd definitely have your brother ask the coaches about joining fraternities and see what his stance on it is. My guess is that most don't like it, but will put up with it as long as it doesn't effect their performance on the field/court, etc. or in the classroom.

i would have him talk to the coaches. it's more their decision that the fraternities. i know that fraternities like to have althletes tied to them. but here at creighton, most teams aren't allowed to go greek.

I know there are quite a few DI Sigma Nu footballers.. notably Eli Manning of Ole Miss.

It's totally up to the coach though. The one thing they have going for them in football is that A LOT of DI coaches are greek themselves.

One of my pledge brother goes to varsity wrestling Iowa State (yup, they have an excellent program). In his case, he got burned out by all the loads and he moved out. :( Too bad.
Also, my pledge dad was in the Cyclones Football Team for a semester before he decided to choose the house instead of the football.

I guess the word of wisdom is, if you commit to both, you can do it. You can see examples, some of the college athletes are also in Greek houses. Our Charges in Brown and Stanford are famous for football players. In fact, James Lofton is a brother from Stanford.

So, go for it! College is not a college without joining a Greek System! :D

At Kansas, there have been a number of athletes in fraternities - including a few basketball players. I would advise your brother to:

1. Ask coaches if they have problems with athletes being in fraternities.
2. Try college life without the fraternity for a semester. This will give him a good idea of whether he can handle school, sports, and a fraternity or whether he should stick to school and sports.

Good luck to your brother, whatever he chooses!

Funny, a couple of weeks ago my brother who was a Pike at UGA was telling an story about his Pike fraternity brother who happened to be a star football player. Okay, this was a couple of decades ago, but if Dooley allowed it, I'm sure others should.

Hey, my brother-in-law was a Pike at UGa and played football! When did your brother play, Lynn?

White_Chocolate, it really depends on the campus and the coach. I cheered at my university and didn't pledge until junior year...among other things, I didn't think I could handle "pledge duties" and still cheer and pass my classes! However, BlazerCheer will be rushing and cheering because she's super-organized and her coach is supportive of Greek cheerleaders. As a matter of fact, her coach regrets not pledging while she was in college.

It would be a lot harder to pledge if you had some jerk coach who made it hard on Greeks.

Hey Carnation!
 

we should have CutiePie 2000 meet BlazerCheer's coach so they can talk alum initiation!!

he's going to be playing at a Division 1 school
and i guess it will depend on his coach
we were talking about it over the phone last night
and he's already done research on some of the fraternities that i know and recommend
plus, spring break, he met a bunch in south padre
he's keeping in touch with these guys
i told him that he could always wait until sophomore year
just to see if he can handle the scheduling

i think he's just scared because he's going to be a freshman
and he thinks that he'll have a hard time making friends
but i told him he's going to be an athelete
and no matter how bad his college team sucks
the athletes are always popular

When I was at Ball State in the late 80s/early 90s, it was unheard of for Basketball/Football players to go Greek. It wasn't such a big deal for the other sports, but the coaches had the Basketball and Football players living in the same dorm together, eating together, and the general attitude was "the team is your fraternity."

It really depends on the coach and the campus environment. I have a sister who will be playing D1 volleyball next year and wants to rush. Thankfully she is going to a school with deferred rush, so she won't have the conflict of away games during rush. The problem is there is only one girl on the team who is greek right now and the coach is VERY against her rushing.

When I was in college at UCLA in the mid-90's, there were several football players, basketball players and baseball players who were in fraternities. They were all in two fraternities which were probably more accepting of their time constraints.

Good luck to your brother!

Laura

Listen to these people who say the fraternity won't have a problem with it but, unfortunately, the coach most likely will. None of the money sport athletes I knew in college belonged to a fraternity. From what I hear, though, they're pretty much their own fraternity.

I played D1 tennis and managed to be in my sorority, but then, no one cares about womens' college tennis!

White_Chocolate
no offence and
not too related to the topic
but your posts remind me of poems
since you write them in this format

but I like them a lot
because they are different from the rest of the posts
all you have to do now
is writing them in rhymes and even syllables
:D

;)