I've had two conversations with different people recently that all help frame the problem. The first was with this woman in her mid-twenties who I met by chance at an airport sports bar where we were both waiting for connecting flights. She's a Brown alumna from Toronto who rowed crew. I shared with her a little of the current situation, and she made a couple of very interesting comments. First, she recalled that Brown seemed to always struggle to find top athletes partly due to their inability to compete with the other Ivies on financial aid, and also due to their rigid admission criteria. The latter isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if it's inconsistent at other schools, then you get what you get.
Her second comment had to do with Brown's relative place among other Ivies with regard to alumni networks. She said she's proud to hold a Brown sheepskin, but in her opinion, the Brown alumni network just isn't as strong or well connected as the other Ivies.
Her conclusion was that coaching aside, any student who has the AI to gain admission might have an even better opportunity at the other Ivies, with a stronger post graduate experience to look forward to. Ergo, competition even for Ivy athletes is tougher, let alone competing against the increased number of scholarship schools.
The second conversation was with a very successful youth coach here in the area. The question I asked him was, what do you make of the critics of Digit's coaching abililty? His answer was that it's irrelevant. he said, maybe she can coach, maybe she can't, but as long as there's unhappy players and parents there, they'll struggle to turn things around. His thought is that Brown should make a change even just as a good faith move among the players and prospects that Brown is looking to try a new approach.
My thoughts..... I think both of these opinions are valid, although I wonder what kind of individual they would have to find who could not simply paint a facade of change for a year or two, but really find a way to improve the program given the recruiting challenges that seem very, very real.